• Question: Who is your favourite scientist in the world ?

    Asked by FootballFred03 to Andrew, Jade, Jessica, Kevin, Lynn on 17 Jun 2015. This question was also asked by Zlatan Ibrahimovic, beastlyboy2477.
    • Photo: Andrew Fensham-Smith

      Andrew Fensham-Smith answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      My favourite scientist… ooh that’s tough! At the moment I would say it is probably a guy called Professor David Macmillan at Princeton University. A lot of what chemists find out is done by luck – or serendipity (a fancy word for luck). His group has lots of robots that mix random chemicals together in the hope of discovering new reactions which we either couldn’t explain or wouldn’t think would happen. So imagine if only 0.001% of all the new reactions you do worked – because his robots are trying thousands of reactions a day, he might find a new reactions once a week! That’s comparing to me who might find one in four year of my PhD!

    • Photo: Jess Wade

      Jess Wade answered on 17 Jun 2015:

      My favourite scientist is a lady professor at Imperial College, my university. She did all of the beginning work of plastic solar panels. She is so well recognised she is a fellow of the royal society, which means she is basically a science VIP. Now she writes lots of the science policies that tells our schools what to teach us. She also gives great lectures and is a very good teachers.

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