who is your favourite scientist

Philip Denniff answered on 2 Apr 2020:

My favourite scientist. There are so many. May be JJ Thompson (1856 – 1940), his discovery allowed me earn a living. He invented the first mass spectrometer and used it to discover the first sub atomic particle, the electron and weigh it. In the photo he is showing off his mass spectrometer, by the way that’s a few thousand volts he is poking with the pen in his left hand. Now his mass spectrometers are used drug testing and discovery, food contamination detection, pesticide residue analysis, isotope ratio determination, protein identification, and carbon dating, and have been sent to Mars.
Link to photo https://www.thoughtco.com/j-j-thomson-biography-607780

Martin Coath answered on 2 Apr 2020:

I love all those that were forgotten by history. A few have been re-discovered recently, which maybe gives a more balanced view of the history of science. But I have been tracking down and giving talks on the ones that nobody has heard of for years! 🙂

Check out for a start: Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Friedrich Reinitzer, Georg von Békésy, Sophie Germain, Émilie du Châtelet

All did really important, fundamental, not-very-flashy work that we rely on every day. It isn’t a surprise that a large number of these ‘hidden figures’ were women.

Carol Wallace answered on 2 Apr 2020:

I’d have to say Marie Curie – 2 Nobel prizes in different disciplines!
I’ve always thought that her life was amazing – to achieve so much as a woman in what was most certainly a mans world!
there’s been a film made about her life and I can’t wait to go and see it

Edoardo Vescovi answered on 2 Apr 2020:

It’s difficult to name one, as many contributed to what we know now in diverse times and forms. I pick Galileo Galilei for the effort of marking the difference between modern science (called natural philosophy at his time, as a branch of philosophy rather than an independent one) and other parts of knowledge. For example, math as the language of science, the observation of nature before thinking why things are the way they are, the importance of making questions and test our ideas through experiments.
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Ancient Greeks and their followers for about 2 millennia identified some of those important points, but failed to recognise the importance of observation and the two-way exchange between mind (= making questions and give human-made explanations) and observation (test those ideas in nature).
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If you like theatre, a nice way to learn about his personal life and discoveries is the short play “Life of Galileo” by Brecht. A thicker book – yet enjoyable and simply written – is the masterpiece “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems”, where the old and new science speak in the voices and views of the two main characters.

Kaitlin Wade answered on 2 Apr 2020:

I love Professor Alice Roberts – my research is in no way similar to hers (which is more anthropology, paleontology, etc.) but I’m fascinated by her research and love how prolific she is in the media (and she’s pretty great at explaining really complicated theories) and how inspiring she is.

Michael Schubert answered on 2 Apr 2020:

My own personal hero is a palaeontologist (dinosaur scientist) named Phil Currie. He inspired my interest in dinosaurs when I was very young – one of my first memories is of being two years old in daycare and learning the names of all the dinosaurs I could find!
One of my favourite inspiring science stories, though, is the story of how computers would not exist without the contributions of hundreds and hundreds of women who never got enough credit for the work they did. If you want to learn more, check out this link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing

David Sobral answered on 4 Apr 2020:

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Swan_Leavitt). She discovered the first cosmic and extra-galactic ruler, allowing us to start “travelling” to other islands of stars and understand just how big the Universe really is. Before her, we thought our galaxy was the only one. After her work we went on the path to understand that there are something like 2 trillion galaxies out there!

Question: who is your favourite scientist

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