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Asked by anon-282400 on 26 Feb 2021. This question was also asked by anon-289205.
Question: Why did you become a scientist?
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Jonathan Willis answered on 26 Feb 2021:
I’ve always been interested in science but in reality it wasn’t really a conscious decision, I kind of gravitated towards it and it probably had more to do with some of the places I worked than anything else. That said I do enjoy it, I find it challenging and I am always learning new things and I think that is important, keep learning, being inquisitive.
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Chris Waller answered on 26 Feb 2021:
I never really set out to be a scientist, it just sort of happened. That said, I’m happy with how things turned out. Ever since I started learning about chemistry in Year 9 I have found I have myself fascinated by how the world works. I started out just picking elective science courses at high school because I wanted to know more things, which eventually led to me studying even more science at university. Learning new things made we want to learn even more so I just kept on going. It’s good fun to learn something new everyday!
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Enrico Ferrari answered on 27 Feb 2021:
I’ve been always interested in understanding how things work and I always loved learning about nature. In the end it just happened that this became my job.
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Tim Burrow answered on 27 Feb 2021:
I wanted to be everything when I was younger, an architect, fireman, all sorts of things! I think subconsciously I was planning for a career as a scientist as I loved chemistry and physics, learning about how things work and form. Simply though, I have a strong curiosity for wanting to understand what is currently unknown!
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Karen Burstow answered on 27 Feb 2021:
At school, I always enjoyed that Science taught me about how real world things are made and work. During A Levels, I liked my Chemistry lessons the most and so chose to study Chemistry at university. I then wanted to get a job as a scientist, as I’d get to do a mixture of lab work and desk work. I really enjoy the variety of work I do now, that I’m always learning new things and the satisfaction when a project goes well – and I get to share results with my team and with clients.
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Anna Westland answered on 28 Feb 2021:
I just love learning about biology and I didn’t want to stop! But sadly you can’t stay at school or university forever – eventually you have to stop learning what other people have found out and make new discoveries yourself.
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Jo Brodie answered on 28 Feb 2021: last edited 4 Mar 2021 12:05 am
Hi Ben
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I just really liked science at school and that led me to do more of it at university. At university I started to learn more of the ‘bigger picture’ about how science helps us discover things and do things that we perhaps couldn’t do before, so I wanted to be part of that and do something both useful and interesting.
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After a few years I decided that what I wanted to do next was tell people about science, as a science communicator. One good way to do that of course is to be a teacher but I spent several years working at Diabetes UK answering people’s questions (by phone and email) about diabetes science and research. In my current job I support teachers (ones who teach computer science) by producing a free computing magazine (CS4FN https://cs4fndownloads.wordpress.com/) with my colleagues that teachers can give to their students, or use as in class discussions.
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Megan Metcalfe answered on 1 Mar 2021:
When I was younger I had no idea what job I wanted to do. But what I always enjoyed was nature and being outside. Science gave me the opportunity to understand the natural world in a different way (for example understanding things such as how different soils and rocks are made and why they look a certain way in the data), which helped me to turn something I enjoyed into a job.
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Alice Cardall answered on 1 Mar 2021:
Becoming a scientist wasn’t always my first option, I originally wanted to become a doctor but was never any good with blood. I liked science at school, especially biology, so I looked at other routes and courses I could do at University, which is why I did a degree in biomedical science. This was the best of both worlds, I was able to learn a lot about human diseases and how the body reacts to different infections but I could also do lots of fun lab experiments to test different things out. Also being a scientist can take you many places, I’ve been to lots of different countries for conferences or work placements too.
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Callum Thomas answered on 1 Mar 2021: last edited 1 Mar 2021 4:51 pm
When I was a kid I loved being outdoors in nature, exploring and learning about different plants and animals – especially bugs! I was also very curious and wanted to find out the answers to lots of questions I had about why things are the way they are. I also really wanted to travel to different places, meet people from different countries and help make the world a better place for everybody.
I was never sure I wanted to be a scientist at first though, in fact I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to do when I finished school. In the end I studied biology as well as history because I thought both were interesting and helped me answer questions I had about why the world is the way it is.
Later on in university I learnt about diseases that are spread by bugs like mosquitoes and how scientists are working to try and prevent these diseases from being spread. I thought this was really interesting and decided I would also like to work with these scientists to try and prevent diseases that kill people or make people sick.
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Nicola Morrice answered on 2 Mar 2021:
I really loved learning about science as a child but when I left school I had thought that I would like to become a teacher, so that’s what I went to university to study. I realised during my course though that I really missed studying science, so I left my first course and changed to a degree in Biochemistry and have continued in science since then.
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Mohan Sridharan answered on 3 Mar 2021:
Hi Ben,
Scientific research usually seeks to explore and understand the laws of nature. From the time I was in primary school, I have been interested in automation in machines. Over time, this morphed into my current interest in artificial intelligence and robotics, and more broadly in computing. So, instead of understanding nature, I focus on understanding the laws governing reasoning, learning, and action in machines, humans, and animals.
–Mohan
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Lizzie Pendlington answered on 5 Mar 2021:
I’ve always had lots of questions about the world around us (some big ones like the start of the Universe or smaller ones like why does my cat eat grass….?) and science is able to answer most of those questions!
Comments
Robin commented on :
At school the sciences were just the lessons I enjoyed most, so I went with that. Then, after University, I was offered an opportunity to keep doing research and it seemed like a more fun and worthwhile job than lots of the other things I saw at the Careers fairs at the time. I’ve been so lucky to be able to learn so much about the world – there’s always something new to find out.
Claire commented on :
I’ve always been fascinated how things work. From a young age, I would take apart things to see how they worked and try to put them back together. In school, my favourite subject was always science. I loved how you learnt how things around us worked and why. Why was always an important question for me. So, science and being a scientist were always a natural fit.
Jess commented on :
I was very interested in science at school, especially biology. I did biology for one of my A-levels and went to study microbiology at uni, because i love all the cool facts and leaning about diseases! It was there that i knew i wanted to be a research scientist, so i decided to do my PhD.
anon-286588 commented on :
What is the most successful thing you have done in biology.