• Question: who is your favourite famous scientist ?? x

    Asked by shantaya to Callum, Gina, Katie, Michelle, Sam on 14 Nov 2012. This question was also asked by wilcox, sharnacoogan.
    • Photo: Sam Godfrey

      Sam Godfrey answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      Ooh, that’s a tough one. I reckon Isaac Newton, because he pretty much shaped physics and was incredible. I’ve no idea how some people are that clever. I also always liked a guy called Edward Jenner who noticed that people who caught cow pox didn’t get small pox, so he invented the first vaccine, and that was more than 200 years ago.

    • Photo: Callum Johnston

      Callum Johnston answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      Hey Shantaya,

      I think my favourite scientist is VS Ramachandran but unfortunately he’s not very famous…yet. He is still alive and in the last 40 years he has found out tons about the brain. He works like a dectective working things out by meeting patients with weird brain symptoms; things like phantom limbs (where a limb has been removed, but the patient still feels pain where the arm or leg used to be) and synesthesia (which is where people always have the same colour associated with numbers when they count in their heads). He has discovered why these things happen and came up with ingeniuos ways to help sufferers of these weird conditions. There is a lecture he done here which is quite complicated but really interesting and funny too, he is an amazing guy! http://www.ted.com/talks/vilayanur_ramachandran_on_your_mind.html

    • Photo: Katie Howe

      Katie Howe answered on 14 Nov 2012:

      Hi shantaya,

      That is a difficult question as there are so many scientists that I really admire!

      One of my favourites is Alexander Fleming. In the 1920s he discovered penicillin which is used to kill harmful bacteria. This was a really important discovery and stopped many people dying of infections – for example soldiers who had been wounded in battle.

    • Photo: Michelle Linterman

      Michelle Linterman answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi Shantaya. My favorite scientist is Lenardo da Vinci because he did so much, and and made so many discoveries about so many things. And he still managed to be a painter, sculptor and architect as well, so impressive!

    • Photo: Gina Tse

      Gina Tse answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Oooh this is a really tough one.

      I think my most favourite scientist is Rosalind Franklin, she was responsible for finding out the shape of DNA in the 1940s/50s, using a technique called x-ray crystallography.
      She worked together with Francis Crick and James Watson who together pieced all their information together to get the shape we all recognise today – the double helix!

      Back then they didn’t realise how bad x-rays were and that they could cause cancer. She would work with x-rays for long hours at a time unprotected, which led to her getting ovarian cancer. Sadly she died aged only 37. Missing out on the Noble Prize given to Crick and Watson for discovering the double helix because dead people cannot be awarded it.

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