• Question: If you could work with one scientist, who would it be?

    Asked by Hera to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 14 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Julian Onions

      Julian Onions answered on 14 Nov 2014:

      That’s a tricky one! Especially if you include historical figures
      Isaac Newton was extremely clever, but by all accounts not a very good team player, and was probably not someone you could easily work with. Besides, I doubt I’d be able to keep up with his explanations.
      Einstein would be far to mathematical for my brain to keep up with, so although he sounds like a much more interesting character – I don’t think I’d be able to keep up.

      Richard Feynman is a very popular character in science, and was very good at explaining his ideas, so I think I’d have loved to work with him for a while. He was also frighteningly clever, but I hope his ability to explain things would offset that!

      There are other people I would like to work with, but usually because of what they have done. I count myself lucky that the people I do work with are all very interesting and help me along, and usually know far more than me! It is very useful to have a burning question, like I did last night actually, on (in this case why are there only three types of neutrino), and to be able to ask an expert on the subject by just dropping into her office.

    • Photo: Heather Campbell

      Heather Campbell answered on 15 Nov 2014:

      Interesting question!
      I think I’d most like to work with the three astronomers, Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt, Adam G. Riess, who won the Nobel prize in Physics, 2011 of the discovery of the accelerated expansion of the Universe using Type Ia Supernovae. These are explosions of stars which are all about the same brightness so can be used to measure distances in the Universe. This is what I work on so to work with the scientist who pioneered this field would be fantastic. I’ve met Adam G. Riess, once and that was pretty cool!

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 16 Nov 2014:

      Brilliant question! 😀
      I think I’d quite fancy taking the Tardis back to work with Edwin Hubble – he discovered that the Universe was expanding – possibly the most important result in 20th century astronomy. He also realised that some distant groups of stars were in fact other galaxies.
      I’d also love to have met Richard Feynman, even though he wasn’t an astronomer, he sounds like he was a pretty interesting (and astoundingly intelligent) guy! I’ve read a few books about him, and his safe-cracking, bongo playing adventures besides his huge contributions to particle physics. There’s a book called ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’, that’s definitely worth a read sometime.

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