List the people you admire and look to for advice…

Issac Asimov, three laws of robotics

Carl Sagan, pale blue dot, astronomer and scientist

Noel Fitzpatrick, exceptional veterinary surgeon

Marie Curie, discovered Polonium and Radium

Sir Patrick Moore, famous amateur astronomer,

Sir Oliver Lodge, invented the spark plug

Dr Jane Goodall, primatologist

Rosamund Franklin, jointly discovered DNA, British Chemist

David Attenborough, naturalist, broadcaster and environmentalist

Chris Packham, Environmentalist and broadcaster

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, discovered Pulsars

Mary Anning, discovered fossils.

Albert Einstein, General and Special theories of relativity.

Richard Feynman, American physicist. Wrote ‘Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman’ and other books.

Is that a long enough list? I like to try and understand basic science, I don’t know enough, but I try and get some understanding. I think Asimov got me thinking about science at an early age. He not only wrote science fiction, but books about chemistry and other sciences. So I found out about the early chemist’s, physicists and astronomers. By reading his books they introduced me to Carl Sagan, who wrote books such as Cosmos.

At the same time I used to (and still do) watch ‘The sky at night’ on TV. So I learnt a bit about astronomy, but also about people like Jocelyn Bell-Burnell who discovered pulsars, and other scientists including Issac Newton.

David Attenborough introduced me to gorilla’s, in his TV programme ‘life on earth’ and so I heard about Jane Goodall and her work with primates.

Finally in the 1970’s there was a TV series that dramatised the lives of Marie and Pierre Curie. Having read about her in Asimov books it was fascinating to see what she had been doing in the early twentieth century.

It’s a random list, but it helps me explain my interests…