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Why did you get
into science?
I think I was just born that way!
How did you get
in?
Before I worked in science communication, I was an academic
scientist in a university. To get there, I took the
usual route of specialising in science at school, doing
a science degree, and then a science PhD.
Working in a university, you do teaching
as well as research, and after a few years I realised
that I was enjoying the teaching much more than the
research. Also, to do research you have to be a specialist,
but I'm interested in all sorts of science. So the move
into science communication was very natural for me.
What's been the
highlight of your working career so far?
Working as part of the team that developed one floor
of the hands-on science exhibition at Glasgow Science
Centre.
What keeps you going
through the hard times?
You have to remember that if science was easy and straightforward,
it'd be boring! You also need to back yourself to succeed
and recognise that it may take time. I once spent weeks
trying to prove a mathematical result that I needed
to finish a paper I was writing. I had lots of reasons
to believe that the result was true, but I just couldn't
prove it rigorously. In the end I gave up.
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About 18 months later I was
flicking through my lab notebook and came across
my attempts at the proof. I thought I'd give it
another go and 20 minutes later I'd proved it!
Why do you work in the
area that you do?
In my academic life, I worked studying human vision.
It was while I was an undergraduate that I was
introduced to vision.
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Are you a scientist
24/7?
Sort of. Everywhere I look there's something to
interest me scientifically. There is so much beauty
out there that non-scientists miss. But I do other
things too - for the last 3 years I've been busy
teaching myself to play traditional music on the
tin whistle, I like climbing and walking in the
hills, making things, and watching sport on the
telly! |
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What's your favourite trivial
pursuit category?
Guess! But I can do OK on sport, too.
What was the title
of your last published paper?
Craven, B. J. (1998) A psychophysical study of leg-before-wicket
judgments in cricket. British Journal of Psychology,
89, 555-578.
What scientist do
you admire from the past?
You have to admire all the great names for their ability
to bash their heads against brick walls for years on
end until they'd cracked the problem they were up against.
But if I am forced to choose, it has to be Isaac Newton,
for figuring out what colour was about, whose laws of
motion I use all the time, and who (simultaneously with
Leibniz) invented the calculus, a piece of mathematics
that is as miraculous as it is useful.
What would you like
to be remembered for?
I'd like to be remembered for being a brilliant mountaineer,
or for playing cricket, but as I'm not much use at either
of these activities, posterity will have to judge me
on other things.
Many people are intimidated and
feel very unconfident about maths and science - for
several years at high school, maths used to make me
feel sick. If my abilities as a communicator and enthusiast
have made a few people feel more confident about their
own abilities in these areas, or if I've opened their
eyes to the fascination of things they previously thought
were dull, that'll do me very nicely, thank you.
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