Author Q&A Session: John R. Helliwell

for hosting this event, to Lucy Pink of Taylor and Francis CRC Press for organising

it and to you all for coming along.

The Whys of a Scientific Life followed on naturally from my last book, Skills for a Scientific Life, which is a how-to guide for scientists and those that aspire to engage in science as a career.

I will complete the series with the third and final title The Whats of a Scientific Life, which I am actively writing now, making then a Trilogy: the Hows, the Whys and the Whats of a Scientific Life.

With this new book, The Whys of a Scientific Life, I feel honoured to be the first in the Focus Series on Global Science Education, and indeed it seems a good place for such a Series to start with an examination of these Whys.

I have had a diverse background in scientific research. This includes academic departments of physics and chemistry, including applying these disciplines to biological themes. I have also worked in the scientific civil service, including analytical services to industry, at the UK’s Synchrotron Radiation Source. These have all given me a wide perspective of the variety of the choices that scientists make.

The question Why is such a powerful one in science. Within basic curiosity driven science it need pay no attention to applications. In my own scientific career I mentioned “Why does a lobster change colour on cooking?” as a prime example of basic curiosity. It also surprised me just how much media, public and school children interest there was in our press release on this, made jointly with Imperial College and my colleague there Prof Naomi Chayen.

Fundamentally, a scientist asks questions based on curiosity. This is expressed in a variety of ways. Making a hypothesis, asking what happens if, devising a collection, wanting to see a research topic to completion and so on.

In addition though, the environment of the scientist is naturally very important. Society itself, particularly the individual voters, influences their elected governments, and thereby shapes the scientific research that is undertaken by scientists.

However the boundary between directed research and curiosity based research is always a sensitive matter for researchers not least if there is an attempt to move that boundary by governments. To be practical about it, new funding is the tool used by governments to incentivise such changes.

John Polanyi based in Toronto, Canada, Nobel Prizewinner in Chemistry, and who was a chemistry student here at the University of Manchester, both undergraduate and postgraduate,  provided me with the book’s frontispiece quotation:-

 “It is important that we reflect upon our craft, since our understanding of science will inform public policy towards it – 'science policy' as it is called.”

He also provided a glimpse of the strong feelings of scientists about such matters as government direction of research:-

“(In my country, Canada) We have 'Centres of Excellence' because we recognize that the skill on which discovery depends is possessed by a few. But then such centres are evaluated with just 20% weight to 'excellence'. A preposterous 80% is reserved for 'socio-economic worth evaluation'”.

At a workshop on research grant writing at the University of Manchester  I recall mischievously asking, in the section on research impact statements: did Faraday mention the electric light bulb when he was researching the fundamentals of electricity and magnetism?. Of course he didn’t but I think it made the point that it is curiosity that brought us electricity and magnetism.

In my book I try to steer a path, as objectively as possible, to explain the good intentions of governments and the good intentions of scientists in all such matters.  This includes innovation, patenting and commercialisation by scientists, in academe and in industry.

Where for scientists curiosity is a key driver in their scientific push, the context continually changes as technology pushes us forward beyond our own imaginations. The computer is a prime example.  Compared to its initial 32 words on the Manchester Baby, the first stored program computer in 1948, the 8 Gbytes of my laptop today offers opportunities inconceivable to 1948 scientists for calculations. The 1 Tbyte of hard drive data storage my laptop has is also just one part of the immense opportunities of digital storage capacity that data archives, such as the EU’s Zenodo, now offer. Today, archiving of primary experimental data, the raw data, offers the ultimate in scientific objectivity. Yes, science is about objectivity through data not only subjective consensus through collective opinions.  

In terms of writing style I have tried to make my book accessible to wide and diverse audiences. I believe it is:-

·         User friendly and concise;

·         This has been aided by my experience in mentoring science students and staff, both at the University of Manchester as Senior Mentor and at Daresbury Laboratory as Director of Synchrotron Radiation Science, and also in my outreach lectures for the public and in schools;

How did I conclude my book? I decided to make the final chapter on the joys of the scientist in research.  For me I cited the understanding of how molecular structures change with time to achieve their goals such as in enzyme catalysis as can be precisely studied by crystallography at physiologically relevant temperatures. This theme of course also emphasised the power of scientific data to underpin scientific understanding and objectivity.  

 Thankyou

again to you all for coming along."