• Question: Who is your #1 favourite scientist (not including you!) and why?

    Asked by Nipkin to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 6 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by ponylover2304.
    • Photo: Mark Mirmelstein

      Mark Mirmelstein answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I think that Sabine Hossenfelder is quite rad 🙂

    • Photo: Lisa Baddeley

      Lisa Baddeley answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      My favourite scientist would be a man called Nikolai Tesla.He did a lot of cool stuff with currents and electricty (his work was fundamental in developing the modern AC current). He also has the unit of magnetic field strength named after him. He was also a bit of a showman and liked to wow audiences with daring defeats creating artificial lightning.

    • Photo: Sammie Buzzard

      Sammie Buzzard answered on 9 Mar 2018:

      I think Katherine Johnson is a real inspiration and she’s only recently getting the recognition she deserves- she worked for NASA and did loads of super important calculations such as for the moon landing. The first American to orbit the Earth trusted her calculations more than that of the computer. Being a women and black during that time it must have been really difficult but she still achieved so much, you can learn more about her in the film Hidden Figures I’d really recommend it!

    • Photo: Tim Duckenfield

      Tim Duckenfield answered on 14 Mar 2018:

      I agree with Lisa, I would love to have met Tesla – he invented so much of our modern world like wind turbines, electric motors, etc back in the early 1900’s! I also like Richard Feynman, who was a legendary physics professor who was really good at explaining really REALLY hard concepts like quantum mechanics. If you ever do physics, I highly recommend reading his lecture notes, everything makes so much more sense when you do!

      I like physics and maths, so I’d also like to say my favourite mathematician was a German lady called Emmy Noether. She did some quite abstract work that takes a while to understand, but when you do, wow! She explained using maths how conservation laws, such as the conservation of momentum or conservation of energy, come about because of symmetry. When I saw her work, it was the most profound and awesome thing I have ever seen!

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