• Question: what famous scientists have you met

    Asked by bourketm01 to Amelia, Jim, Liz, Prateek, Richard on 20 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Lizzard O'Day

      Lizzard O'Day answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Hey! Well Jack Szostak aka the Nobel prize winner in Chemistry in 2009 is on my thesis committee- and I know him quite well. Gary Ruvkun is surely going to win the Nobel prize one day and he also sits as the chair of my committee.. it’s so humbling to be surrounded by so many smart people! Being at Harvard and in the Boston area is definitely an inspiring place for young scientists.

    • Photo: Amelia Markey

      Amelia Markey answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      The other week I met a man (Andreas Manz) who first came up with idea for the work I do which is to put several chemical/biological reactions on a small fluidic device.

      He gave a talk in our building about some of his new work which seemed pretty cool. He also seemed like a really nice normal guy, which even the most clever people usually are.

    • Photo: Jim Caryl

      Jim Caryl answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Well, I’ve met quite a few famous scientists, some of whom are famous amongst scientists, and other who are famous to everyone 😉

      I guess those whom you might have heard of include Professor Lord Winston, Professor Brian Cox, Professor Jim Watson (who with Francis Crick published the structure of DNA), and Professor Stanley Cohen, who basically invented genetic engineering, and Professor Sir Alec Jeffries, who invented DNA fingerprinting – which is now used to work out who is related to who, and to tie blood at crime scenes to the criminal who left it.

      I guess amongst scientists it can be interesting to think of another scientist as famous, but thankfully few scientists would try and live up to their fame, and behave differently. If you’ve got a good question, they would be very happy to speak to you as a fellow scientist.

      @Liz I would love to meet Jack Szostak though, I have always loved his work 😉

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