• Question: Are there any teachers you had that encouraged you or dis encouraged to to pursue a career in science ?

    Asked by mercyolatunde to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 18 Nov 2011.
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      Yes my very first science teacher Mr Harman was excellent. He really loved science and had an ability to describe things that made the world sound utterly magical. I couldn’t wait to look through the microscope or get hold of the bunsen burner. It was great!

      My physics teachers later on were not as good actually and i think there is a lack of really passionate physics teachers which is a shame and why things like this are great because students like yourself can come and talk to some people actually doing physics and get a feel for what it’s like 😀

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      I had a really great Physics teacher during my A-levels, but he never actively encouraged or discouraged me to take a career in science.

      What he did do was encourage me loads in learning about physics: talking about physics beyond what we needed to know for exams, lending me books that he had and answering questions I come in with after reading news articles of recent experiments.

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      I had a teacher in primary school, Mrs Eckersley, who was really into science and I guess that’s where some kind of investagative spark was set.
      At senior school I had good teachers too in all three sciences, so this kind of cemented my appreciation of science.
      I had a variety of teachers for A-Level maths, the last one we had for a few months had done a PhD in string theory at Imperial College and was some kind of utter genius, but he also had the uncanny ability to make A-level maths simple and straightforward – I think it was just being taught by him and seeing the problem solving techniques he used that made me realise that I actually *could* go on and study physics further and he actively encouraged this (before that, other teachers had never really encouraged me to look at taking science further, some even said I might not cope with A-level maths – but I proved them wrong, haha!).

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 17 Nov 2011:

      It was my chemistry teacher, Dr Coulter, who really inspired me. He told us all sorts of stories about when he was a student and the crazy research he did! He also loved teaching and wanted us all to do well. In my lower sixth year he spoke to me after class one day and said “you can do this, you can go to Oxford or Cambridge” – no one had ever put that much faith into me and it spurred me on to do well.

      At Oxford, my supervisor is very inspirational. He is 31 (young for an academic) and has 2 PhDs, many publications and is amazing as a tutor. He encouraged me to take part in this competition – he wants me to stay in science!

    • Photo: Natalia Parzyk

      Natalia Parzyk answered on 18 Nov 2011:

      I don’t remember talking with any teacher about being a scientist. But as a sort of inspiration, definitely. I was always have good maths teacher so I always like maths. After, at high school (in Poland that’s the stage before university) my chemistry teacher was so brilliant that I came with the idea – at Uni I’ll do sth with chemistry and maths, that’s how the ‘material engineering’ came (m undergrad degree). But as it was joint between department of chemistry and physics, I’ve met some brilliant scientists – physics, so passion and devoted to physics, that quite quickly from chemistry orientated, I moved toward physics and now I’m doing a ph.d. at it:)

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