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Asked by meggielou to Alex, Laura, Richard, vediacan on 24 Jun 2015.
Question: If you had to pick one scientist, who is your favourite and why?
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Richard Prince answered on 24 Jun 2015:
Hi Meggielou,
I am going to cheat here and give you a couple of different answers.
Of all time? Probably Leonardo da Vinci. He would be the person I would most like to travel back in time to meet. He was so far ahead of his time …. designs for helicopters, tanks etc. He worked out how the valves of the heart operate…. you name a field and he seems to have been involved in it (ok, maybe not nuclear physics). And then there is the art…….
From the field of pharmacology, the winner has to be Paul Ehrlich. He was a German doctor who was a pioneer in the field of receptors (which I work in – he was the first person to propose the idea of a receptor). However, his real achievement is that he was the first person to develop and use synthetic drugs. The drug that he is most famous for is called Salvarsan, which was used to treat syphilis. It was the first medicine to be developed using modern “rational” drug discovery methods – the screening of lots of compounds to see if they work on an animal model of the disease. He also developed the first fully synthetic treatment for a major disease – malaria, methylene blue (which has the notable side effects of turning the whites of your eyes blue and your urine green!). During his research, Ehrlich coined a phrase that we still use today. Based on the idea that if you put a spell on a bullet, it would only hit its intended target, Ehrlich used the term “magic bullet” to describe a drug that only targeted the disease it was aimed at, avoiding serious side effects. We are still searching for magic bullets for most diseases!
Best wishes
Richard
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Vedia Can answered on 24 Jun 2015:
Hello again Meggielou!
My favourite Scientist would have to be Albert Einstein because he was awesome 🙂 His discoveries are endless. One of the reasons he is my favourite scientist is because he was determined and passionate about science and would question the unknown to ensure there was always an answer. I also have a favourite inspirational Scientist; Rosalind Franklin (pioneer Molecular Biologist). Although, she was the lady that originally realised that DNA had a double helix, at the time she was not credited for her realisation because she was a woman. Her research and her determination paved the way for fellow female Scientists across the globe to follow in her footsteps and become a Scientist in a Male orientated industry.
Best Wishes,
Vedia
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Laura Newton answered on 24 Jun 2015:
Hey Meggielou!
I would have to pick Rosalind Fraklin and Dorothy Hodgkin. They both worked with a technique called X-ray crystallography which they used to find the structures of molecules. Rosalind Fraklin was the one that did all the experiments to find the structure of DNA (even though it was a bunch of men that took all the credit). Dorothy Hodgkin was the first person to use X-ray crystallography to find the structure of proteins (insulin was the first one she did) and she did get her own Nobel Prize. She’s also from the same university that I went to. They were both very intelligent, pioneering British women scientists. X-ray crystallography is also one of my favourite techniques, I love looking at the structures of proteins and figuring out how their exact structure let’s them do their specific job that other, different proteins can’t do.
Thanks for your question,
Laura
Comments
Richard commented on :
That’s a good choice Vedia, Franklind was clearly one of the pioneers behind the structure of DNA and Watson and Crick have both acknowledged this – they would not have got their prize without her contribution. I think it is also clear that they acted very badly towards her and that they probably would not have treated her that way had she been a man.
Regarding the Nobel Prize, things are a little less clear. Whilst the 50’s and 60’s were undoubtedly a very difficult time for women in science, I am not sure that her being a woman is the entire reason why she did not share the Nobel Prize with Watson, Crick and Wilkins though. Franklind tragically died of cancer in 1958 and Watson, Crick and Wilkins did not get their Nobel Prize until 1962. Before 1974, the Nobel Prize could only be awarded after someone’s death if they had already been nominated before they died (this only ever happened twice and they have since banned it completely unless the winner has already been announced). The second issue is that no more than three people can share a prize. Watson has suggested that the fairest solution would have been for Franklind to share a prize for chemistry with Wilkins and for he and Crick to have been given that in Physiology or Medicine. Given the significance of the discovery, that should have happened much sooner than 1962 which might have enabled Franklin to get her prize whilst she was still alive.
Richard commented on :
Kudos to Vedia for being the only one of the three of us who can spell Franklin correctly!