• Question: who inspired you to become a scientist and how did they influence you

    Asked by ethanm on 7 Jan 2022.
    • Photo: John Tulloch

      John Tulloch answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      My school science teachers and my family. My biology teacher in particular (shout out to Mr Rouen) encouraged us to ask any question and always seek the answers to things I did not know. I am from a rural background and my family instilled the love of animals into me. This is why I always wanted to work with animals and know work in veterinary science.

    • Photo: Samuel Ellis

      Samuel Ellis answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      Great science teachers are always a big inspiration. One of my favourite school memories is one biology class where the teacher got most of the internal organs from a pig from a local butcher, so that we could see how they connected and watch him dissect some parts. A lot of the class hid outside, but I found it fascinating (although still quite gross)! It was that sort of curiosity which I think led me to end up working in science trying to discover new things.

    • Photo: Prabs Dehal

      Prabs Dehal answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      No single person inspired me, but things that are explained well and interestingly (such as by David Attenborough and others) do inspire me. I was always interested in how things work, by nature, space, etc. Concepts that would pop up in films like Star Wars or TV shows like Dr Who would make me curious to find out more. I think science (and society) advances because of teams of people working together, not necessarily because of a single person.

    • Photo: Jonny Coates

      Jonny Coates answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      I wasn’t really inspired by any single person. During college I had lots of people tell me that I couldn’t ever be a doctor and so I think that made me want to prove them wrong. But I mainly became a scientists to help others – what I do is a small part of a much bigger picture that does eventually help people. I am the first in my family to go to university and to get a PhD so I’ve been very self driven. But my mum has always been as supportive as possible and is where I get my work ethic from. There have also been lots of people who’ve helped along the way and been supportive.

    • Photo: Pam Vallely

      Pam Vallely answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      I don’t ever remember a time when I wasn’t interested in science, I think it was always going to be a career in science for me. I really liked biology at school and had a rather fearsome but very knowledgeable biology teacher called Miss O’Grady and she inspired me to always ask why.

    • Photo: Chris Budd

      Chris Budd answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      Primarily it was my grandfather. He was a scientist, and during WW2 worked on radar. Later on he worked in telecommunications. We talked all the time about science and he helped me a great deal to think about my future. Every Christmas we would avoid the rest of the family and watch the RI Christmas lectures together, and then talk about them.

    • Photo: Amy Mason

      Amy Mason answered on 7 Jan 2022:

      I’m a bit unusual – I fell into medical science work because there was no money to do the pure maths I was interested in. But it turns out I really love it and it is a much better job for me. You don’t need to be inspired to work in science, you just have to be willing to turn up and do the work.

      But I have several people who have really inspired me.
      Florence Nightingale, for publishing work that saved countless lives from her bed after she because disabled after an illness caught in the Crimean war. She was still publishing in her 80s!

      Nina Snaith, my PhD supervisor, who showed me how awesome women can be at mathematics. She ran the women in maths lunches, gave talks to propective students and generally gave me the confidence to promote myself and mathematics.

      The last is my friend Katy – who started a PhD at Harvard and dropped out. She showed me that it is okay to change career, to stop something if it makes you unhappy and that there are a thousand uses for STEM skills outside academia.

    • Photo: Valerie Vancollie

      Valerie Vancollie answered on 8 Jan 2022:

      I came to science late, during my last year before uni. I’d liked it before, but hadn’t really thought of going into science before then. Luckily, I was studying in the US at the time where you need to continue with most courses if you want to get into a good uni. So I was still doing everything (English, History, Science, Maths, Foreign Language…) my final year before uni and it was in taking Psychology that I was introduced to neuroscience, which is when my passion for science really took off.

      This led me to take more science courses in uni and eventually chose it as both of my majors.

    • Photo: Holly Kerr

      Holly Kerr answered on 10 Jan 2022:

      I have always been inspired by my family that work in the NHS, particuarly my mum who has been a nurse since she was 17! They all made me really interested in human health and disease, but I was always wanting to know more about the molecular detail of diseases, and less about wanting to see all the blood and gorey bits that going in to medicine might require. In high school, I had an amazing biology teacher which helped too.

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