When you think of the word “successful,” who’s the first person that comes to mind and why?

It’s taken me ages to decide on a person or group of people to represent this.

I could have chosen a single person, a musician, an actor, sportsperson, vet, doctor, or a news caster, and of course the richest people in the world.

But no, I’ve decided scientists would be the best choice. There success has bought us so many inventions and knowledge. Yes there have been bad inventions too, but these are because of political influence to some extent? Yes, there are bad scientists that either create bad things, or alter the results of research to allow bad things to happen. For example Thalidomide was originally being used for elderly arthritic patients, but to sell more of the drug it was sold to pregnant women as a tablet that would stop morning sickness, with the resultant tetaragenic damage to babies (see the Sunday? Times report into it’s effects).

But then these are weighed against chemistry’s inventions such as the creation of analine dye that led to the discovery of quinine? The invention of batteries, using chemistry and physics. The use of x rays following discoveries by Marie Curie. And biological knowledge including genetic treatments, monoclonal antibodies, knowledge of how our behaviour is damaging the environment.

As with all successes they are balanced with failures. Each person will have their own opinions on this.