• Question: Who inspired you ?

    Asked by anon-214186 to Helen, Farah, Dave, Cheryl, Bastian, Alun on 15 Jun 2019. This question was also asked by anon-214750.
    • Photo: Farah Elahi

      Farah Elahi answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      My parents inspire me. They’ve worked hard their whole life and always contributed to society. They instilled in me the work ethic that I have and have always been supportive of my career decisions. We learn a lot from our parents (more than we think) and I’m completing a PhD right now simply because they encouraged me to do it.

    • Photo: Helen Faulkner

      Helen Faulkner answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      I was inspired by a couple of people really.
      The first one was my dad, he worked as a process research chemist for Glaxo (now called GSK) and it was his job to work out how to scale up drug production from research level to plant room scale. He had a PhD in chemistry and he would often do little mini home experiments with me like growing copper sulphate crystals or making red cabbage water change colour by changing the pH.

      The second was a TV presenter called Adam Hart-Davis who used to do a program called local heros. It was sort of a mix of history and science and he would often build slightly mad machines (in fact in a book he wrote he showed you how to make a photocopier) or do chemistry like making photographic paper.

      There is also a book that I read at university called ‘Electrified sheep’ which tells you little known facts about a whole host of scientists.

    • Photo: Dave Underhill

      Dave Underhill answered on 15 Jun 2019:

      One of my father’s (I have three lol) is an historian so he inspired my love of history which led me (eventually) to study archaeology. At university I had an amazing lecturer called Dr Terry Hopkinson who instilled my love of prehistoric archaeology, and then my Masters supervisor Dr John Mcnabb, really sparkled my love of human evolution. But there are many people who inspire me – particularly my mum who is an incredible women!

    • Photo: Cheryl Williams

      Cheryl Williams answered on 16 Jun 2019:

      I had a couple of fantastic science teachers at secondary school, and one of them in particular was really enthusiastic about science. He encouraged me to do triple science and gave me a confidence boost and made me believe in my abilities.

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