who inspired you to be a scientist. – Disease Detectives Zone

Question: who inspired you to be a scientist.
- Keywords:
  inspiration
Asked by anon-253593 on 13 May 2020. This question was also asked by anon-254469, anon-258609.
- Amy Mason answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  Lots of people.
  Florence Nightingale – she was disabled, but had a huge impact on statistics communication and how hospitals are run by writing books and letters to government from her bed.
  My PhD supervisor, Nina, who showed me how to support other women in maths and made me feel like maths was a career path open to young women.
  And there is probably a good chunk of inspiration from watching Star Trek, and similar sci-fi when I was younger. Something about optimism and being a force for positive change in the world.
- Alex Holmes answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  So when I was younger I was inspired by trying to find out new things and constantly asking questions. Luckily my school teachers didn’t find this too annoying so they really encouraged me to look into science as a career and after school.
  
  Now that I’m in science, I’m inspired by people like Rosalind Franklin. She was a scientist that lived quite a while ago, but was involved in working out what DNA looks like and used the same technique that I do!! Unfortunately, because of some “science politics” and the fact she was a woman, her data was stolen and passed off as Watson and Crick’s (both men) and they even ended up winning the Nobel prize based on her work. This didn’t just happen once to Franklin, her male PhD student got a Nobel prize based on work they did together too! She also died very young (only 38) because of dangerous working conditions. She inspires me to keep going even though sometimes it’s tough and sometimes other scientists are difficult because I think she would love to know that people know her name and she’s one of the icons for women in science and has helped more and more women do science.
- Helena Fisk answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  This is a great question but I also think it’s important to not feel like you need that lightbulb moment of something or someone inspiring you to want to be a scientist 🙂
  I liked science at school but I also enjoyed music and art so at college I took A Levels in biology, chemistry, psychology and fine art to keep doing what I enjoyed but also to think what I may need to get into university. I still never felt like a scientist or inspired to be a scientist during the majority of my university studies. I had really enjoyed nutrition science and diet & disease modules at uni so applied to change paths and do a 2 year dietetics training degree through the NHS but didn’t get a place. I thought I would just get a job in the meantime and try again the following year. I took a job in a school which I really didn’t enjoy so up until this point I had felt pretty uninspired and a bit down trodden but I’m not one to give in so I kept looking. I then got a job as a research technician at the university of Southampton. It was this job and being in a research environment that made me want to get more involved in research and that’s when I applied to do my PhD. It wasn’t until I was in this role and I felt truly inspired. I have an incredible boss who values self progression and has given me the freedom to explore a lot of opportunities at work and as part of my PhD and I have worked with some amazing female colleagues who have progressed to have lecturing positions and their own research groups. These colleagues now inspire me to set my own goals and work even harder towards them to keep progressing as a scientist.
- Judith Sleeman answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  Lots of different influences, though I don’t recall ever actually making a decision to be a scientist…. My Mum had always wanted to study science, but couldn’t as the school she went to didn’t really do science: the closest she could get was Geography! Then my older sister studied history and art. Everyone seemed to expect me to do what she did, so that was sort of an anti-influence! Once I had chosen sciences at A level, I had a really inspiring Biology teacher, who used research a lot in his teaching and used to talk to me about what I should do “after you’ve finished your PhD”. I had a few false starts along the way, including applying to medical school, and actually doing my PhD was a very difficult time for non-scientific reasons, but I ended up a scientist after all!
- Emma Daniels answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  Hi Amy, thanks so much for your question! I don’t have just one thing or person that inspired me to become a scientist. I always liked science classes at school, and I always pushed myself to learn more and more. My family were also very supportive, especially my Dad who is very interested in science himself (he studied physics at university). I also had some amazing female science teachers which I admired, and I was inspired to become more like them. But most of all, I think I became a scientist because I love learning and pushing myself, so I guess I inspired myself!
- Beth Webb answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  I wouldn’t say that a particular person inspired me to pursue a career in science. My parents have always encouraged me to do something that I enjoy and that led me to science. I’ve always been interested in science, in particular biology. I do believe that all the women that I’ve met in science have inspired me further and made me very happy with my decision to pursue a science career. I also had an A-level chemistry teacher who was the first person I’d met that had a PhD, I wouldn’t say she inspired me as such as I was already passionate about science but she was really encouraging and I think she made me realise that there was a space for women to pursue PhDs if they wanted to, which was something I’d not considered before.
- Eleanor Williams answered on 13 May 2020:
  
  There wasn’t any one thing I think – just a curiosity that my parents and teachers encouraged and a love of the new and exciting. I always loved space as a kid (even though i’m a biochemist now) and so I loved things like ‘the sky at night’ on tv but also shows like star-trek where they have fantastic adventures but they also use a lot of science (even if that science is mostly made up) – it showed that they valued science as a way of solving problems.
  
  I really admired Helen Sharman – the first British astronaut and the first woman on the Mir space station who went up with the soviet space program in 1991. (Tim Peak was the first British astronaut supported by the European Space Agency but this was 20 years later!). She was a chemist and did experiments in space.
  
  Now I really look up to people like Dorothy Hodgekins – she was a crystallographer like me (she worked on finding out what proteins look like – finding their exact shape and arrangement) and won a Nobel prize for her work being one of the few women to do so!
- Alena Pance answered on 19 May 2020:
  
  Hi Amy, I’ve been inspired by many different scientists throughout my career. During my undergraduate degree, I was interested in tropical diseases because in Venezuela that was a huge burden for public health. The role model for all of us was Arnoldo Gabaldon, who led the campaign against malaria in the 60s and actually managed to erradicate the disease and turn Venezuela in an example to the world. Another legend was Jacinto Convit, who devised a therapy for Leishmaniasis, one of the most important tropical parasites in the country. I had the priviledge of meeting him when the student union of my university invited him to do one of the ‘tree of life’ talks… really inspiring. During my PhD in Cambridge there were many amazing people but my utmost hero is John Gurdon, his initial nucleus transfer experiments demonstrated that every cell in our body has the full genome and that in different cell types different parts of the genome are active. Meeting a Nobel Prize winner who is more interested in asking about my work than talking about his own is just breathtaking.

Question: who inspired you to be a scientist.

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