Boketto

Many years ago, closer to the beginning of things, when I was a mere PhD research student with only the vaguest idea of where I was heading, we had a visiting Japanese scientist spend a year working within the research group I was part of. His name was Koichi, and he was on sabbatical from his home university; his wife and two young children had come with him and it was lovely to be able to begin to get to know them. (I still remember the children’s excitement at the sight of large expanses of green, and of snow.) Koichi was a nice guy; I liked him and enjoyed chatting over coffee whenever the chance arose; we kept in touch for several years after his return home. As happens in such circumstances, I learned a lot about his view of the world – and in the process began better to understand my own perspectives. One conversation has lodged in my memory ever since. It concerned the genesis of new ideas and of innovative approaches: he had been pondering the apparent success of the British to break new ground in the science and technology arenas. His conclusion was rather simple and straightforward: that we treated our coffee/tea breaks as inviolable periods in the day for ‘kicking back’ and chatting. The unfocused conversation might seem to be far away from the cutting edge of science for much of the time, but out of the relationships that began to form and to develop there would, from time to time, emerge something new: a synthesis of disparate ideas; the serendipity of discovery.

There is a Japanese word which encapsulates the act of gazing into space without thinking about anything in particular: boketto. If there is a special word for this even in busy Japan then perhaps that’s a hint that this is something worthy of consideration. The reality is that meaningful research is a pursuit which absolutely must have open spaces for the mind to wander through. It has become evident to me that pretty much anything that has a creative element to it requires periods of boketto. Indeed, it’s been the increased time I have devoted to outreach/public engagement with science that has helped give shape and substance to that thought.

Even before ‘retiring’ in 2015 I had increasingly benefited from working as a scientist within the agendas of others, including local museums (here and here), an art gallery (video output here and here), arts/science festivals (here and here), a script-writer and an author of books for young adults. It could be demanding, but was always rewarding. In ways analogous to my conversations with Koichi of four decades ago, I learnt about myself and about ‘my science’ as much as I did about the creative work of others. One of the dreams associated with having a little more flexible time in retirement was that I’d be able to write more: I enjoy the process of writing since it helps me to know what I’m thinking. In my professional life, writing a thesis, paper or report marked in some ways the culmination of a period of research. Outside of work, writing entirely for myself was often quite therapeutic. More recently, initially as a strand to public engagement, there have been a few blog posts of course, but I’ve also just completed a short ‘taster’ course in creative writing through the University of the Third Age (U3A). This has tested new facets of my writing in that out-and-out fictional work has never really figured much in the past. Our course leader presented us with a particular brief in order to define a story arc: fix a name and therefore gender, add a tattoo, then a second character who may have different motives towards the same goals or be opposed, have something go wrong but have it resolved in some way, … and all in about 1000 words. Well, here it is: this one scientist’s first attempt at a wholly fictional short story, and it definitely required periods of boketto:

This short story has been removed.

The statement in my profile that declares that I write mostly for my own satisfaction is true. Beyond that, there is a bonus if the things I want to reflect on are of some interest to others: hence the blog. I included this recent attempt at the creative writing of fiction simply because I wanted to demonstrate that scientists, as 'real people', have a life beyond their pursuit of science. Indeed, I had in mind a short series of personal, reflective posts along those lines - focused on reading, music and art. I have since decided to curtail this particular experiment.

p.s. However, you might like now to go to a later post for a less 'cowardly' update.

Blessed and Humbled: a celebration

A little over a month ago, just before 10 am on a decidedly damp day, my wife and I arrived at the venue for a one-day conference and evening meal. There was nothing unusual about the subject matter in terms of my being there: it was on ‘Partnerships in multidisciplinary studies of disordered materials and biomaterials’ – right at the core of my ‘nomadic’ scientific interests, which I’ve written about often (e.g. here and here). No, the profound difference here, and what rendered the conference unique, was that it had been organised by a friend and ex-colleague (Gavin Mountjoy) specifically as a means of “celebrating the scientific career of [yours truly] at his retirement”. What follows is a brief personal reflection on the day.

The formalities of registration and the ubiquity of accessing Wi-Fi at a modern conference are thankfully followed by …

…the first chance for all of us to meet, greet and start the process of catching up over a drink and some biscuits.

I am, and will remain, immensely grateful to Gavin for coming up with the idea and translating it into reality; it really was very kind of him, and given how busy I know him to be I dread to think how many hours he must have spent on it. However, the closer I got to the day itself the more trepidation there was alongside the enthusiasm for catching up with past members of my research team and with friends and research partners throughout my career. As one of the former members of my team noted in the emailed reply to Gavin’s invitation, which I got to see afterwards, and in her typically discerning fashion: “That's a long day for him to be the centre of attention, he may do some grumbling!” As is so often the case, no sooner had I collected my copy of the timetable and my name badge – yes, amusing in the circumstances – than the nerves disappeared and I found myself enjoying again the ebb and flow of coffee-fuelled, science-oriented conversation. What struck me almost immediately was the spread in those able to be present: 

° in terms of scientific background, with a fairly wide range of the sciences represented together with a few who’d not really call themselves scientists at all;
° geographically in that they were folk there not only from all over the UK but also from The Netherlands, Japan and as far afield as Beijing in China (an ex-postdoc in my team who’d flown over just for this event – with a gift to enhance my tea drinking life!);
° with regard to their various pathways in life, with some from my old research team having stayed in science and others moving into new fields of endeavour. It was an especial pleasure to meet spouses/partners for the first time, and in one case their lovely six-month old baby;
° and in terms of time. The latter, time, gave some unexpected and delightful twists. For instance, it was lovely to be able to introduce people to each other who, simply because they’d worked with me at different stages in my three decades as an academic research scientist, had never before met. Hearing recent co-workers describe me as, in essence, calm, wise and measured – which was very flattering – and then folk from the earlier days of my research team pointing out that this didn’t quite match their memories was glorious. Thus, although it was a little frustrating to have insufficient time to spend with each and every one of these wonderful people, there was something rather special that emerged from the conversations within small groups. After all, that’s the way we’d often spent the long hours waiting for data to come in (or the x-ray or neutron source to be repaired and be switched back on); science can be a very social pursuit (see also here). If nothing else, this offered evidence of change and perhaps of growth. If so, that’s a good thing I think; either way, it was very amusing. 

The simple pleasure of spending time with people ought never to be under-estimated; this is as true for scientists as for anyone else.

The talks, delivered by people I admire, trust and like, included much on the area of work I have written about before (e.g. here, here and here). One of the nice things about the topics covered, speaking for myself you understand, was that research was admixed with thoughts on science ethics and philosophy, with the need to communicate our work effectively through engagement with diverse audiences, and with more than a little time spent on the importance of supporting what one might call the community of scientists. It was good to hear about research developments since my departure from the scene and I took great pleasure in the thought that these kind folk still had before them so much of what I have been privileged to enjoy of the excitement of discovery and the camaraderie that can accompany it. Interestingly, my blog posts were cited far more than I would have anticipated; I found this a little curious, but also gratifying. However, out of all these riches I took away as a key point, and one I hope is diffused throughout my blog: it’s people, real people, who do science. Indeed, the speaker I have known for the longest time, since the early ’80s in fact, said as much and I’m grateful to him for encapsulating the thought so well.

The talks were a real pleasure to listen to (this, left, on synchrotron x-ray methods by Silvia Ramos, late of the Diamond Light Source); Julian Jones asked me to pose for a picture with him before the talks got underway – and then edited it into his slides on bioactive glasses, along with a cute Simpson-esque image to mark our meeting in 2002.

It is inevitable, perhaps natural, to hear decisions, events and outcomes described through the lens of post hoc rationalisation. There is a risk that history gets re-written. What may seem, looking back, to have been associated with a logical progression of thought and planning might in truth owe more to serendipity and ‘trial and error’, and to have relied upon individuals and the team as a whole being able to discern and sift the useful from the rest. Having said that, we can learn from the generic lessons revealed through hindsight – and we should value them accordingly. Apart from the central importance of the fact that it is people who do science, I also believe that one needs to be as open and generous with one’s co-workers as one is with ideas; sharing matters. Moreover, honesty and integrity are of course ideals always worth striving for – in professional life as elsewhere. Out of these things come the ethos of a research team, and of the partnerships and wider community in which it operates. However well or poorly I have learned or lived up to these tenets myself, I count myself as fortunate to have worked alongside many who themselves have shown a deep appreciation of their worth. My own contribution and legacy, whatever that is judged to be, will disperse and diffuse – as it must: I am moving on to new things, content in the knowledge that excellent people continue the work. 

One of many images captured by Gavin or my wife during the day: this one was taken after the dinner and captures the group who worked so well together during about 15 years of research on bioactive glasses (see here). The four ‘principal investigators’ are central to the front row – Julian Jones, Mark Smith, me and Jonathan Knowles; we were once described in connection with one of our funding bids as The Dream Team: a label that’s hard to forget.

And this brings me to the title of my post … at the end of the meeting, prior to the entirely enjoyable evening meal that was still to come, I was given the chance to say a few words. I had prepared nothing; my hope was that the events of the day would put words into my mouth. What came out as my heartfelt thanks to everyone was pinned to the two words ‘blessed’ and ‘humbled’: blessed to have been able to get to know and to work alongside some utterly amazing people, and humbled that they had given of their time (and money) to participate in this day of celebration in my honour. Those same two words still hold true as I complete this reflection. A day of celebration? Yes, certainly; but to my mind it was a day that celebrated us all, and did so through the relationships that bind us together across the globe, through time and in umpteen other ways.

Taken by Gavin, the event's originator and organiser, this image captures many of those who participated.

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I recently completed a series of posts in which I reflect on a few themes associated with my life and career as a research scientist and university academic; these may be found at:

1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.
6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team
7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?
8) Large-scale Facilities for Small-scale Science – the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture
9a) Experiments in Teaching and Learning – teaching at a university (part 1)

9b) Flipping Lectures – teaching at a university (part 2)

Flipping Lectures

(Reflections on a life in science: #9b teaching at a university)

This is the second instalment of my end-of-career reflection on undergraduate teaching and learning – or, rather, on a few of the ‘experiments’ I undertook in that context.

Final year projects are often regarded as the highlight of a student’s time with us and I was fortunate in having a leading role in defining their ethos. They offer the scope for genuinely open-ended high-level research, albeit necessarily time-limited and confined to areas in which there’s a suitable academic guide. Although still applicable to the minority of students, it has always encouraged me to see how many of them achieve enough work of a high enough standard to find its way into co-authored research journal papers. For the four-year masters-level degree programme, wherein the project constituted half of the final year and was therefore a ‘big deal’, a particular innovation was the introduction of ‘role play’ into their summative talk. I set the whole thing up as though it was a research conference: abstract booklet, tight timetable … and the pièce de la résistance: bringing someone in to film the whole thing and then using the footage to provide feedback. From its inception, this conference model had the effect of encouraging students to raise their game. One of the most common student feedback comments established that this was simultaneously the scariest and also the most exhilarating part of the whole exercise. Even now, a decade or so later and after successive generations of our external examiners have praised the practice, my old department remains almost unique in offering the experience.

Getting a pat on the back is usually fun, and my one-and-only entry into the Faculty awards process yielded sufficient prize money to purchase the camcorder, microphones and other kit needed to consolidate the longer-term use of video-recording as a teaching and learning tool. However, whilst I gladly left all that kit behind me when I retired, I made sure to bring home the mugs presented to me in the annual awards made on the basis of student nominations.

In some senses however, the role-play idea only really took flight in the context of the group projects undertaken by our three-year BSc students. Groups of six or so students would each settle on a topic to work on and then elect a Project Manager who would ‘pitch’ the idea to me – in my role as CEO you understand. Once we’d agreed the overall scope of the work they would define their objectives in writing, including work allocation frameworks, a rational Gantt Chart and so on. From that point onward I would interact only with the Managers (- unless something went horrendously wrong, which was exceptionally rare); progress was monitored via the minutes from their weekly meetings. Key to embedding this role play was to convey the idea that the group succeeded, or didn’t, as a group: at assessment, marks were given to the group rather than to the individual (- again, with rarely-invoked safeguards). Furthermore, peer assessment played a part; for instance, a group’s presentation at the end of the whole thing – also recorded for feedback by the way, subject to all the appropriate ethical permissions – was evaluated by the other groups. There was an unmistakable ‘buzz’ to these group projects. A fairly natural development became possible about three years ago when an admirable colleague (George Dobre) secured pump-priming funds from the Institute of Physics to create links between our students and industry and other external organisations. The whole group project concept is now set within joint work with a variety of places ranging from the aerospace industry to the NHS and local museums.

The group projects also provide me with my final example, which deals with the matter of teachers learning from their students. A group had decided to work around the topic of science in movies, and they expanded on this by designing a demonstration experiment projectile motion to illustrate one particularly poor bit of ‘Hollywood physics’. They trialed their experiment in a local school and with their first-year peers, and got some very positive feedback. I was so taken with what they achieved that I began to incorporate and develop the use of movie clips, snippets from newspapers etc. in my own teaching in order to try to spark discussion and analytical appraisal. Within a year I was extolling its virtues at teaching conferences. Somehow, a journalist in the USA heard about it and wanted to incorporate the idea in an article he was writing. Thankfully, the student group’s project manager was still around, by then as a postgraduate research student, and we jointly participated in a 45-minute ’phone interview with the journalist. The story made the front cover of the magazine, which was nice – but the bigger story remains centred on the long-term contribution made by my students on the way I presented physics to their succeeding generations. Such fun.

Science News was, and I believe still is, an American science magazine published by the Society of Science and the Public. The group project manager whose team kicked this whole thing off contributed hugely to the interview; she is now a lecturer in physics herself (here).

My innovative swansong was a move away from the more conventional lecture, which was an experiment unnervingly described as ‘brave’ by several colleagues. Having made audio recordings of my lectures for several years so that students could download them for revision (and perhaps for other good-natured purposes - see YouTube clip here) it was a natural step to volunteer to join the small team spending a year testing out the proposed new system for video-recording lectures. The trial went well; it was relatively easy for the lecturer to use once we’d ironed out the bugs, and my students loved it. Interestingly, the fear that students would simply not attend lectures, in favour of simply watching online, never materialised: evidently, the ‘live show’ is still worth getting up for. With a couple of years of video-recorded lectures in the digital bank, a tempting new experiment became feasible: FLIPped lectures. This is an approach which, in essence, has students study the next bit of the syllabus at their convenience in advance of the timetabled ‘lecture’ slot, and then use the face-to-face time they have with the lecturer to explore aspects they couldn’t fully understand, work through related problem-solving exercises and so on. My students had been asking for more supported/guided problem-solving work for quite a while, but the traditional timetable simply couldn’t accommodate extra sessions; FLIPping the lectures not only made this possible, but re-enforced the value of personal study and of studying alongside friends. There was additional support via small-group Peer Mentoring sessions (here) for those who wished to avail themselves of it. This was a scheme I introduced into the department a few years earlier within which, after some training, more experienced students held learning support drop-in sessions for their early-years peers. As for any novel approach, and arguably especially for a scheme that dropped altogether the teaching philosophy endemic to most of their education hitherto, there were a few sceptical students. However, on the whole the feedback was overwhelmingly positive; this was underlined by the end-of-year results: for the first time, as far as I can recall, absolutely no-one failed the FLIPped module. I’m delighted to say that a handful of my ex-colleagues are taking this approach forward within their own teaching; it’s good to know that there is a positive legacy.

This screenshot from my university’s e-learning web pages reveals a further legacy in that a few minutes from one of my own lecture recordings is still used to demonstrate the software to aspiring lecturers; quite flattering really.

I have studiously stayed away from any attempt at a review or appraisal of the more generic aspects of teaching and learning developments during my career: it’s a huge topic and would need far more space than is practicable this pair of blog posts. It is perhaps sufficient to note that I began teaching using a very conventional ‘chalk & talk’ approach – almost unaltered since before I was a student in the early ’70s – within which the technology was limited to the occasional use of an overhead projector. Students took handwritten notes; there were almost no handouts and neither were copies of the notes or other support material available on the internet (which simply wasn’t available then, any more than PCs were). However, as I pointed out in the first instalment of this two-part reflection, as ICT capability and capacity developed so it became possible to explore and exploit its potential, and by the time I retired video-enabled FLIPped approaches could readily be realised – along with a fast-emerging use of smartphones and …


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.
6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team
7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?
8) Large-scale Facilities for Small-scale Science – the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture
9a) Experiments in Teaching and Learning – teaching at a university (part 1)

Experiments in Teaching and Learning

(Reflections on a life in science: #9a teaching at a university)

More than six months ago I promised a colleague that I would record a few reflections on my three-decade academic career. With this post I hope to complete what was originally envisaged as three or four posts, but which has evidently grown to nine. Given that my work with undergraduate students has been such a major part of my career, it’s perhaps not too surprising that this turned out to be a longer post than the average post, much longer. One post has therefore become two, with the prosaic sub-headings 9a and 9b …

Teaching (and learning) has always had a special place in both my heart: from the school teachers who inspired me (here), and despite those who did not, through to the final university lecture I delivered earlier this year, and to my continuing outreach and public engagement activities (pick almost any of my posts, e.g. here). There must be a focus however, and in the context of this post I intend to concentrate on my teaching as a university lecturer – one of the many aspects of my job that I loved. I’ll try to highlight a few examples of the sort of innovation (experimentation, or 'playing' in other words) that I have stumbled upon during my three decades as an apprentice to several masters, including my students. In one sense, nothing has changed: after all, the fundamentals of Physics at the undergraduate level are largely the same now as they were at the start of my career. There have been changes to the syllabus of course. These are usually introduced to cull material considered as ‘redundant’ in order to provide ‘space’ for new topics – and skills – as their perceived importance emerges, or to rework the way in which the material is handled. Some of the more noticeable changes are arguably those associated with modes of delivery and of study. In part, although not central in my opinion, this is driven by a change in the culture of the profession. One might contrast my first lecture, when I had been thrown in at the proverbial ‘deep end’ a couple of weeks after taking up my junior lectureship, to the more overtly constrained nature of today’s three-year probationary period in which extensive training, monitoring and mentoring support is provided within a ‘lightened’ workload. This supportive environment is potentially of significant benefit; it was not, however, a part of my own experience. Thus, my motivation owes almost nothing to formal training programmes but rather a lot to a cocktail of inspirational colleagues, a desire always to be doing something new, and for want of a better description, a fear of being seen to do a bad job. In other words I pick up on interesting ideas, I don’t like intellectual stagnation and I had a need to battle ‘Imposter Syndrome’. It is also important to note the fact that, irrespective of one’s motivation, much of this change has been technology-enabled in one way or another.

The manifestations of these driving forces need not be confined to the lecture theatre or teaching laboratory of course. Indeed, the very first memory I have of raising the eyebrows of more ‘traditionalist’ colleagues was when I introduced Earl Grey tea and ‘proper coffee’ into my weekly small-group tutorial sessions with first year students, and encouraged them to bring along biscuits or doughnuts. We also had a habit of rushing through the set-piece assignments in order to get to some more interesting contemporary science. Years later, one particularly successful graduate who had been a part of this regime recalled her introduction to Earl Grey tea with such fondness that I donated my teapot to her when I retired; she is herself now a talented physics lecturer, so perhaps the habit will live on in some way. On the larger scale, I remain proud of the fact that I used what influence I had accumulated by the mid ‘90s – so, about a decade after arriving – to establish a large and well-situated room in our department as a ‘study room’ for our students, and to equip it with decent furniture, a suite of PCs and copies of key textbooks. Even in the face of a change of building and the intense pressure on space that exists nowadays, I am delighted to be able to say that the Study Room is still going strong. In truth, it has become so integral to the working life of our students that it would take a brave person indeed to close it down.

The Study Room as it looks in its present form (during the Easter vacation when its use drops off for a week or two). Amazingly, despite several moves, the compilation of cartoons on the walls have survived from when I pulled them together almost 20 years ago (from here); they depict events associated with science and technology as seen through the eyes of newspaper cartoonists from the ‘60s onwards.

However, the principal focus of this post was to be innovation in teaching. My first really bold step started in the late '80s and was associated with exploring computer-aided learning of basic maths. and of scientific programming (in Fortran 7, should you be interested). A novel hypertext software package, Guide, written by someone at my own university, became available and I was keen to explore its potential. I possessed the lecture notes and a pile of textbooks, but had precious little time available to turn them into the student-paced self-learning tools I envisaged. I invoked then a scheme I have since used many times in various guises: to recruit a suitable group of motivated students to work as a team in order to pull everything together under my guidance. For two or three successive Summer vacations, and using small amounts of money I had managed to obtain from one organisation or another (e.g. the Nuffield Foundation), I paid these small groups first to draft and then to ‘polish’ the material. It worked wonderfully well: the project students, several of whom wanted to go into teaching as a profession, gained some great work experience and I ended up with working software packages. The programming course was successfully deployed immediately and continues to be used to this day, albeit within a more modern hypertext framework (HTML), and further developed and modified by my several successors. The maths. package never really saw the light of day: almost as soon as it became ready for ‘field- tests’ our course design changed in such a way as to render it redundant and I took on new teaching duties. C’est la vie. It survived for a few years as an online tool for those students who wanted to use it for their own purposes. These were the very first examples at my university, and amongst the first in the country, of an entire lecture module being presented in this way. The key reason it was appreciated by our students was the freedom it gave them to work at whatever pace suited their abilities: the autodidacts and those already competent at part or all of the syllabus could race forward, whilst those needing to go over things more slowly could do so – and I was released to focus my efforts on those students needing the most help. It saved me absolutely no time overall, far from it, but I remain convinced that the learning experience was improved for the student. For anyone tempted to suggest that this was a forerunner of today’s MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), I can only say that I sincerely hope not: in my opinion, a key element to a university education is ‘social’ – learning with and from others, working within a team and so on, and I would always want to preserve this.

There have been exciting ideas and plans that have left only an ethereal legacy, or none at all, which is par for the course. One such project, which I led during the late ’90s but which never did come to fruition, was called Refreshing Physics (see here). This was predicated on the use of context-led learning: presenting physics not subject-by-subject in the traditional sense but through the context of ‘real-world’ phenomena and experimental data. For example, using natural phenomena such as earthquakes and storms as the setting for the physics of waves and vibrations, electric fields, angular momentum etc. (see here). Part of the philosophy was to make the transition between school ‘A’-level Physics and first year university work a lot smoother than is typically the case; we aimed to ensure that undergraduates were more enthused by Physics and less intimidated by it. Moreover it was a key tenet that we establish a strong advisory input from those companies and organisations that employ graduate physicists. Lauded by everyone we showed it to, from government ministries to professional bodies like the Institute of Physics, and by the educators we presented it to at conferences, we nevertheless failed to raise the financial backing required to explore it fully and to test it out. We found ourselves in a funding ‘Catch 22’, with our own University saying we needed to get external funding and the external organisations saying they expected, as a minimum, pump-priming funds from our university. To this day I remain utterly convinced of the value of this teaching and learning approach, but I have long since resigned myself to the fact that it’ll not happen – certainly not on my watch.

One of the very first things the Refreshing Physics team organised was an all-day meeting between some of our undergraduates and year 11/12 pupils (then called sixth-formers) and their teachers in order to understand better what the school-university transitional problems might be and how we might mitigate their negative effects.

The second installment will be uploaded in about a week ...

Earlier posts in this series:

1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions. 

2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences. 

3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposefuljourney? – a timeline in research. 

4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.

5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist. 

6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team

7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly– making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?

8) Large-scale Facilities for Small-scaleScience – the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture

Large-scale Facilities for Small-scale Science

(Reflections on a life in science: #8 the big ‘toys’ I’ve helped to build and to nurture)

Although my early-stage research career was mostly ‘laboratory-bound’ (see here for example) almost all of the last 35 years or so have been spent within the world of major national/international research facilities. I’ve already written a little about the associated ‘joys’ of what a former colleague labelled as suitcase science (here) and have alluded, many times, to the science and the partnerships that came out of it (e.g. here and here) – but I want here to talk about the facilities themselves. One of Spike Milligan’s many irreverently witty books had the title “Adolf Hitler: my part in his downfall”; what I intend here is more along the lines Major Research Facilities: my (very small) part in their success.

The significance of this short video clip will emerge later; suffice it to say that it marks and represents a key point in my story: the installation of an instrument – specifically, a spectrometer I designed, tested (in the USA) and commissioned. It shows me at about the age my son and daughter are now; I recall trying not to look at the camera or to trip over my own feet.

The obvious first issue is to define what ‘facilities are. I suspect the answer to such a question, were it to be posed, would vary a little from one scientist to another and certainly from one field of endeavour to another. However, in my area – the study of materials – one would be describing research equipment of a scale larger than could sensibly be provided at a level less than national, and more often than not at a multi-national level. Thus, within a financial, managerial and administrative framework appropriate for a large-scale project, there will typically be a purpose-built suite of instruments, and their associated support systems, which all rely in one way or another on a major central or core instrument. For example, one might have an electron accelerator at the core with many specialised instruments utilising the intense beams of x-rays and other light which it generates; the UK’s Diamond Light Source is one such facility. Thus, a facility will comprise many instruments, each with a sizable community of scientists/engineers who’ll compete for access in furtherance of their respective research team’s needs: hence the title (which is, I hasten to add, a phrase coined by others). I have both used such facilities, in the UK and elsewhere, and helped in their development and their strategic management. However, it would be a rather laborious – perhaps downright tedious – post were I to attempt to cover all this in detail; so, first a synopsis and then maybe an example or two …

A common factor in the successful management of the x-ray and neutron facilities I’ve had such a close professional relationship with is that, on a day-to-day basis, they are run by scientists, technicians and engineers who understand why they are there and not just how they ‘tick’. I should know, for four years in the early ‘80s I was one of the ‘beamline scientists’ at the UK’s neutron source ISIS and designed installed and commissioned one of its very first suite of instruments (aka beamlines); more of this later. Since then, I have been a member of, or have chaired, committees and advisory bodies charged with considering both tactical and strategic choices in relation to facilities both in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. (I wrote previously about some of my experiences with committees: the good, the bad and the ugly; see here.) Furthermore I have been instrumental, if you’ll forgive the pun, in several proposals for new instruments/beamlines; more often than not this involved working closely with a whole community of fellow scientists – each of us contributing our expertise towards the common goal. Some of these proposals came to fruition in a fairly direct fashion, others had the effect of spurring the relevant facility into action by identifying a scientific need, and others simply fell by the wayside as better and stronger proposals emerged from elsewhere. In passing, I might record the fact that ‘failed’ bids are always a disappointment; it always hurts a little, but it’s a necessary part of the scientific life to applaud the proposal our peers regard as better (exactly as we must the theory or data or ideas that go beyond, or improve and therefore supplant, our own).

SPIDA is an example of a proposal which came to nought, ostensibly. It was for a neutron scattering instrument to study the amorphous and liquid materials at the heart of my team’s research and that of many other teams in the UK and elsewhere. The approximately 30 pages of the proposal I submitted on behalf of this group of scientists detailed the scientific need, outlined the design of the instrument and costed the project at £780k (at 1992) prices. It wasn’t progressed at the time, but it did encourage folk towards the eventual design and construction of an instrument that would do all we had originally envisaged, and then some (see here). There are analogous stories on the x-ray side of things as well; the x-PDF instrument currently under construction at the Diamond Light Source (see here) would provide one of them.

TOSCA was a somewhat different story. Having supported an earlier, unsuccessful bid for a spectrometer which would enable the detailed study of hydrogen atom vibrations in materials, I was asked to lead the UK part of a joint British-Italian proposal for this even more ambitious instrument. This 40+ page proposal came with a £842k price tag for the UK contribution (1996 costs; I wonder what the equivalent sum would be now, 20 years later …) – and this one succeeded. For a few years, until ‘ownership’ was formally transferred to the ISIS neutron source, see here, there was a plaque on a nearby wall declaring that the instrument ‘belonged’ to my University; an odd sight. The collage shows the postcard, printed to show off the new instrument and sent with a note of thanks to all the project’s supporters, above a shot of me and the two scientists who were to run the TOSCA beamline (John Tomkinson and Stewart Parker) – we’re shown peering into its bowels on the day of its inauguration; to the right is the front cover of an Italian magazine which also celebrated TOSCA’s arrival. (In case the music buffs amongst you were wondering: yes, parts of Puccini's wonderful opera were indeed played during the opening ceremony.)

Although I’ve alluded to this part of my career before (e.g. here, third figure/caption) I’ll share a little more of my distinctly hands-on involvement with one particular beamline: the electron-volt spectrometer, eVS. This was my workplace ‘baby’, a term employed in the conscious remembrance of the fact that both my daughter and then my son enjoyed their own respective baby months as the project unfolded. Undertaking the scientific specification, overseeing the engineering design, tendering for construction, the assembly, testing and evaluation took almost three years. Included within this, and ‘helped’ by government budget cuts at the time which ‘encouraged’ me and others to offset costs by working out of the UK, my family and I went on an extended secondment to the USA – taking my newly-delivered eVS with us in a pair of huge wooden crates. After 15 months, the eVS returned and was duly installed within its beamline; as this was the last of the so-called ‘Day 1’ instruments for ISIS and someone realised that none of the earlier installations had been filmed, the event was recorded for posterity within an in-house documentary film on the ISIS facility’s construction. The 15s clip is shown near the head of the post (with the permission of the STFC, who currently run the UK’s major research facilities). The remainder of the post hereafter is told using a storyboard of images and their captions: it is the tale of how one particular beamline, mine, came to be.

From early blueprints through to fully-engineered spectrometer: this was eVS prior to being boxed up, along with a small mountain of accessories (- including a complete set of metric tools since only imperial-sized versions would be available in the USA). 

From the freight terminal at the airport and into the drab concrete building shown top left (see here for their current, much-altered, website), and thence into the cavernous experimental hall under the mound behind it, came the crates containing the eVS and its bits and pieces, which had to be unloaded and then craned into the hall – its home for the next 15 months.

The next task was to build the beamline, including all the neutron shielding and so on; I was shown how to drive a forklift truck and a crane in order to move stuff from the storage areas, and then had to put into practice my childhood training from my bricklaying dad …

The build in the USA progressed, including the collimated beamline which defined the beam of neutrons from the proton-accelerator source to eVS and then the vacuum pumps and detector electronics required to collect data. Yes, there is the hint of a large hammer (top left) – all the very best engineering methods came into play – but notice also the more refined surveyor’s theodolite (top centre).

Back at ISIS in the UK, eVS’ final home was of course taking shape at the same time as I was doing the initial designs etc. The place from whence its high-energy neutrons would eventually emerge out of the ISIS target/moderator assembly is shown top left at an early stage of construction. To the right is a somewhat later image, after much of the shielding and concrete had been added; eVS’ beam came from the second port from the left – the faint line on the floor indicating the beam’s direction. At the bottom is an image shot along the eventual beam direction from inside the target/moderator building; next to it is the analogous shot, taken much later, after eVS’ return to the UK, through the instrument itself and towards the target. It would be impossible to take such pictures in so simplistic a fashion today: the vantage points are now hugely radioactive.

One of the more enduring legacies to this project was the novel design of collimation. The key was to reduce to a minimum the hydrogen content of the inner surfaces of all components; our low-resin boron carbide aggregate formulation, ‘crispy mix’, went on to be used in other later beamline designs. (For the uninitiated, whilst hydrogen is very good at slowing neutrons down, boron is excellent at absorbing them once they are slowed; iron shot is added to the outer section in order to absorb gamma rays.)

Much concrete, steel and boron-loaded wax shielding tanks came next: more obstacles to clamber over and under. The final stages included building a floor above all the various beamlines/instruments, and then painting the entire place in readiness for the grand opening ceremony by the then Prime Minister – many months after the whole place had started running in earnest, and after I had left to start an academic career elsewhere.

That’s all folks: aligned, wired up and ready to roll. The eVS beamline is shown as the second (larger) red block as one goes counter-clockwise from the 3 o’clock position in the diagram.

P.s. I moved from ISIS to the University of Kent in 1985, but eVS continued to be developed by my successor. A while after he himself moved on to new pastures, and the decision was taken to re-work the beamline in its entirety. I was a little sad to see all my work ‘scrapped’, but I agreed entirely with their decision and went on to support and applaud the excellent science that came from the new instrument (see here). One of the things that make facilities like ISIS and Diamond world-class is the continual commitment of their staff and their user-community towards innovation and the desire to move forward – that, it seems to me, is a fact worthy of support and applause.


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.
6) Why so many? – gender balance in the research team
7) Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly – making things work: discussion, consensus and decision?

People in Glass Houses

Although intermixed with a few other topics en route, I have now posted seven themed personal reflections on my career from the perspective of an ‘apprentice’ retired person (see here for the most recent, which includes links to the other six). I need another break from this defined theme; maybe I’ll go back and write the final two – on teaching and on the building and development of major national/international research facilities – or maybe I won’t: watch this space. For this particular post I wanted to reflect on the way in which my interests as a research scientist have even seeped into playing MineCraft (for the unitiated, please see the promotional video below) with one of my grandsons. Moreover, I’ve adopted what is, in the context of my blogging, a novel way to present the material – I hope you enjoy it.

At the outset I ought to confess that I dislike computer games as a rule: any game, any computer platform. I am not very good at them and they don’t interest me – facts which are likely to be coupled I suspect. However, the chance of spending time with either of my grandsons is a powerful incentive, and slowly, very slowly, the older of the two – who is a MineCraft ‘master’ at the age of eight – has trained and coaxed me enough that I can join in with simple tasks in the virtual world initially set up for him by my 30-something son. (The process of learning from an eight year-old is itself interesting, but I’ll defer that to another post.)

A 1-minute promotional video outlining the essence of the MineCraft concept.

What emerged very quickly, as I graduated from following his avatar around and acting as the hapless target for various forms of combat practice, or the stool-pigeon for one of his cunning traps, was the realisation that I am as inspired by glass in the virtual world as I am in the research realm. To illustrate this, using a series of screenshots as the basis for a narrated slideshow tour, I present here the first house I built. I realise that this tongue-in-cheek exercise shows conclusively that I’d never make a good estate agent (- realtor for the few who read this in America) and that vlogging is unlikely to become my forte, but I hope that will be forgiven. The key thing is to discern my all-too-obvious fascination with glass. Although there’s not a great deal of overt glass science in this, I have already uploaded several posts on the subject should you wish to learn a little more:
Celebrating Disorder
Something good this way passed
Beyond ‘Fun with Flags’
Finding the needle

My tongue-in-cheek narrated slideshow created to accompany the blog post (- 5 min. long).

What next for my small corner of this virtual world? I think I may unleash my inner Capability Brown and try a little landscaping, followed perhaps by my inner Gertrude Jekyll for garden layout and then exploit my inner ‘Farmer’ George III in order to expand into farming; who knows. In the meantime, to put my paltry efforts into perspective, my grandson has recently built a highly credible version of the International Space Station and placed it in geostationary orbit above the virtual world: it has working airlocks, solar panels and a docking bay for the fully functioning supply rocket which visits regularly from the ground. Oh well, c’est la vie.

Committees: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly

(Reflections on a life in science: #7 making things work – discussion, consensus and decision?)

Being a member of a small body of people who have been ‘set aside’ to consider a themed set of issues on behalf of the wider group is ubiquitous in professional life, and beyond. If they are established and then led well, and comprise people of outgoing vision, they can be invaluable. I have been involved in more committees, working parties, advisory bodies, consultative groups, etc. than I would now have any hope of enumerating. To the best of my recollection, this activity began whilst a teenager at school (e.g. helping the local manifestation of BAYS – the British Association of Young Scientists, which no longer exists; a contemporary manifestation may be found here however). In the four decades that followed, there has been next-to-no period of time in which I haven’t been involved in this sort of activity in one guise or another. In my circle of academic colleagues I think it is true to say that I have had at least as wide a set of experiences as anyone, more than most. On the basis of these experiences I feel entitled to state, emphatically, that all committees are most decidedly not ‘equal’.

As an undergraduate in the ’70s I found myself responsible, as secretary to the student Physics Society, for identifying, inviting and hosting visiting speakers – which was a lot of fun as I not only got a ‘free’ dinner once a month but also got to eat it in the company of some of the big names of the day. This was, I suppose, an early example of being able to take enjoyment from the work: this still seems to me to be an entirely laudable approach since everyone tends to benefit more in the longer term. Similarly, as a postgraduate research student I discovered another benefit of getting involved in decision-making bodies – this time as the representative of my peers on the committee that oversaw space and other infrastructure allocations (called the House Committee for reasons I never did fully understand): it provided a vehicle for learning in detail about how the place ‘ticked’. These two early lessons have coloured my subsequent approach to committee involvement: if possible, learn and have fun.

Sadly, in the intervening period, I have also been obliged to join bodies which, although bearing the same title, caused a great deal of frustration, even anger, and stress as they wallowed ineffectually through swamps often of their own making. Perhaps one might call these ill-formed creatures the ugly face of committees, in which a lack of cogently defined purpose or terms-of-reference – or an unwillingness to adhere to them – leads to … well, to nowhere of much significance. (See here for a chuckle – just to lighten the mood a little.) These bodies are a ‘black hole’ for time and energy and are best avoided if one’s not willing and able to help to sort them out; oftentimes the only practicable way forward is to disband the committee altogether and take stock of whether a replacement is truly needed. I’ve also had to suffer my share of committees which have been chaired either by ‘tyrants’ or by those unwilling or unable to curb other members who themselves behave like tyrants or bullies. These are the bad ones, in which, for instance, it’s often hard for early-career people to have a voice or to grow in their professionalism; prejudice of various forms will often lurk in its undergrowth (e.g. the sort of sexist comments noted in an earlier post, here). I still remember keenly an occasion early in my career when a chair had, in essence, cynically set me up in order to ‘draw fire’ so that he could step in as the apparent hero of the hour; I didn’t fall for that one again. Committees which are over-powered by a small number of dominant self-serving people are best avoided if one has the choice – or, better, if one is strong or determined enough, the intimidation might be reformed or its effects mitigated through measured challenge. I make no claims to be a perfect committee chair, or indeed committee member, but I can honestly say that I regard it as important that we all try to learn, not only from our mistakes but also from those we perceive arising from others. My impression, for what it’s worth, is that things are not as ugly or bad as they used to be in these regards – perhaps people are indeed trying to learn from the mistakes of a more deferential and hierarchical past. Having said that, it’s clear to me that analogues of these problems do still exist; they are visible to those who have eyes to see.

However, I would much rather focus on the good. Thankfully, there’s a lot of it about. I have often been able to meet and to work alongside talented and creative people, the chance to learn, and the promise of being able to make a positive contribution to the wider good. The irony is that the latter benefit is often paired with the need to share in the burden of making difficult decisions that will inevitably upset some, even as the community as a whole hopefully gains. The ‘higher’ the committee, the more potential for professional reward and the more likely it is that someone will be upset. Without question, the pinnacle for me – in both senses – has been the work undertaken for the UK’s Research Councils and the facilities they are responsible for. I have written before about the neutron and x-ray research facilities that have played such a major role in my working life (see here, here and here for example) and it has been a privilege to contribute to their development. Although my principal contribution has been through the science published from results obtained through them, I have also contributed directly to their capabilities and their management. The former arose from the often leading roles I played in the provision of new instrumentation – about which I hope to write at some time in the future – and the latter, of more relevance to this post, through one committee or another. Whether through the tactical committees/panels that decide which of the many high-quality bids from research groups for access are successful, or via committees that seek to provide more strategic science-focused advice to facility managers, these activities have definitely ticked all three of the ‘boxes’ I defined at the start of the paragraph. Positive though these experiences were, I have been given the chance to practice this approach at a higher level still …

The whole of science research depends on funding. We need equipment, chemicals and so on, we need to be able to fund PhD research students and postdoctoral associates to do much of the work, and in my case there’s a need for those larger-scale facilities that must of necessity be provided nationally or internationally. Only the best can be funded from the finite budgets made available, and that means someone has to decide which projects go ahead and which are set aside or closed down. In the UK it’s the Research Councils that have that responsibility. I have had the privilege of contributing to the work of the Science & Engineering Research Council (EPSRC) since the 1990s through several standing, and some less satisfactory ad hoc, committees deciding on the allocation of many millions of pounds across a spectrum of research groups in the physical sciences. However, it’s my more recent committee work for the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) I want especially to write about. Quite why I was invited initially to join their Physical & Life Sciences committee (known as PALS to its friends) I couldn’t say, and at this level the scope for ‘Imposter Syndrome’ to cripple me was extensive. Setting those (very real) reservations aside, my time as a member and then as chair of PALS, and the subsequent years I spent on their highest-level scientific body – Science Board – ticked the boxes ‘big time’. To put it into perspective, the STFC has responsibility for all the neutron and x-ray facilities I alluded to above, but also for the UK’s major laser facilities, for our share of CERN and a suite radio and optical telescopes around the world. To be a part of strategic debate and decision-making at this level provided an astonishing array of opportunities to learn new things across a broad spectrum, to observe and work with some of the most talented and constructive people I have ever come across, and to share in the attempt to make a positive and constructive contribution to science in the UK. I remain grateful for these opportunities. I ought to add for completeness that these years were very far from the proverbial ‘walk in the park’. Prioritising excellent scientific projects and areas isn’t easy at the best of times, especially when such a wide range is involved, but if one adds to that the need to do so in the run-up to a government Comprehensive Spending Review (e.g. here) and at a time when budgets are under severe threat and it becomes all too clear that the potential for discomfort is high. Despite all the late nights and long days, the soul-searching and anxiety, the frustrations and annoyances, I wouldn’t have missed it. Here, although far from perfect, I found the best examples of leadership and well-prepared and selfless discussion, inclusive consensus and decision.

And then I retired ...


Earlier posts in this series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.

6) Why so many? - gender balance in the research team

Why so many?

Reflections on a life in science: #6 gender balance in the research team

I am acutely aware of the sensitivities surrounding gender balance in the sciences, and this post makes absolutely no attempt to define or to solve anything. It is a brief reflection from one retired scientist, in one corner of the academic world, of a few decades in which some wonderfully creative and talented people joined, and then moved on from, one particular research team; it’s nothing more than that.

In one of her many excellent posts, entitled ‘Why so few (still)’, Professor Athene Donald offered a handful of survey-derived statistics which made for depressing reading, and in the process defined for me the title to this post. One of these survey results suggested that two thirds of Europeans “think that women do not possess the required skill set in order to achieve high-level scientific positions”; the proportion is roughly the same for the UK alone. Initially, I found this difficult to take on board in the sense that I have always found it hard to ‘get my head around’ such a stance. The University I recently retired from is led by a woman of considerable talent, Professor Dame Julia Goodfellow, herself a scientist, and the department I was in (here) has a healthy gender balance in its staff complement and has been awarded an Athena-Swan Bronze Medal. Women of seniority are not a rarity on campus, even in the sciences/technology areas (e.g. here). Further afield, I have worked with staggeringly talented people of both sexes to whom I, and those around me, would freely offer professional praise. Having said that, a few seconds thinking through some of the decisions I’d witnessed and the comments I’d heard from colleagues in the earlier years of my career (and a few which, although often implied rather than overt, were still in play more recently) changed the mental image a little. In his novel ‘The Go-Between’, published in the year of my birth, L.P. Hartley coined the phrase “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there”. Maybe they do, but that alone is insufficient as a justification for anything. As a historical example, I recall a male scientist prone to declare that women simply didn’t have the sort of brain required to study Physics (- I got into trouble for openly challenging this view by the way). One is significantly less likely to hear those kinds of views expressed overtly these days – at least, I’d hope that is the case – but there evidently remains a problem. The stereotype regarding how men’s and women’s brain are put together, sometimes associated with the title of the book ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, holds no water (see here for example, or here). However, the effects of ‘unconscious bias’ persist; thankfully, there is a growing awareness of the need to counteract its effects (see here and also here).

Athene Donald has written and spoken often on matters of equality in the sciences (e.g. here for another recent article), and I applaud her tireless efforts: I am most definitely a ‘fan’. Having said that, it was the direct challenge posed to me by two fellow scientists via Twitter that inspired this particular themed post in my ‘career reflections’ series: Dr. Emma Barney and Professor Jenny Martin, who also writes and speaks on matters of equality/diversity in the sciences.

The Twitter exchange behind this post was brief, but to the point. Note the time delay between their questions and this attempt at a response: whoever says there’s plenty of ‘free time’ in retirement! (On that particular aside, I did squeeze out an update on my new season of busy-ness: here.)

Until I read Jenny Martin’s original tweet I’d never thought of calculating the end-of-career summative proportions of women and men in my former research team. Her follow-on comment was entirely reasonable: on the surface, the figures do seem to label my team as an ‘outlier’ in the physical sciences. From my own – necessarily limited – observations over the years, the ratio of women to men at the levels relevant to us here is more typically closer to 1 in 3 or 4. (The ratio appears to vary widely between disciplines, with Physics suffering far more than Chemistry for example, and all the ratios seem to worsen as one progresses from an initial undergraduate degree through the PhD phase and into postdoctoral research and beyond. My research team principally comprised PhD research students and post-doctoral research fellows/associates; with its roots in materials physics/chemistry, the team members were drawn from both Chemistry and Physics backgrounds. I’ve alluded to this background fact before, e.g. here and here). The additional questions then set my thoughts into a chase for rational answers: was it a conscious decision on my part to aim for this, are there any ‘secrets’ behind the evident gender balance, and given the fact that all involved were in relatively junior fixed-term posts whilst in my team, what could I say in terms of the longer-term situation regarding ‘seniority’ attained after they had moved on?

I’d love to be able to set out a cogent set of pithy reflections at this point, but the honest answer is that I don’t know why my team ended up with this balance; I have no crystal-clear explanation; I have no great secrets to share.

Apart from the naïve effects of ‘busy-ness’, the other reason why there is such a gap between accepting the need to try to address the questions posed to me and posting this piece was the need to do a little research. The obvious first port-of-call had to be via e-mails to all the women who had worked within the team during my time as an academic and with whom I’m still in touch (- thankfully, quite a few). I asked them to look back and to try to sum up what had drawn them to the team in the first place, what their experience had been whilst a part of it and what impact this had had on their subsequent lives. Interestingly, they didn’t fully explain the unusual gender balance either. What they did offer has led me to a few generic conclusions, none of which is in any sense new or ground-breaking – unless I have missed something. The thought of quoting their words directly did cross my mind, and for the most part they seemed fairly relaxed about me using the material, but for one reason or another I decided against this approach. The single most significant point that shines through is that their choice to join my team was influenced by exactly the same sort of factors I’d expect to hear listed by the men who joined the team: the topic was of interest, there was evidence of sufficient research opportunities/funding and of prior published output, and that, for the aspiring PhD students, there was cash available to cover a studentship. There was a hint that the existing presence of women in the team offered some sort of positive advertisement, but this hinted point was not stressed. It’s a rather similar gender-independent picture when it comes to their time within the team. In one way or another, they all commented on the benefits of a friendly and professional working environment and the availability of opportunities to broaden their experience through working with collaborating teams at other universities and research facilities. (The latter, by the way, involved working away from home-base doing our experiments: we travelled hundreds of miles, stayed in hostels and hotels, worked ridiculously long hours and all-too-often eat the wrong foods – an excellent arena for getting to know people; for more, see here.) Guidance and support – both for the duration of the PhD or postdoctoral contract and at key career development stages thereafter – also featured as being important.

There was, however, one key comment which did seem to resonate with what I’d like to believe: “you could not have cared less if I was male, female, … it was all about the joy of the shared intellectual challenge”. When I read this I was immediately reminded, albeit whimsically, of the ongoing #LetToysBeToys campaign, which has spawned some great material on Twitter (see also here). Perhaps we ought simply to #LetPeopleBePeople in this context – a sentiment which emerged within an exchange of thoughts with another of my correspondents I might add.

The final challenge initiated by Jenny Martin’s tweet concerned destinations. This is not an easy question to address, in part because my information is incomplete but also because the associated time-periods are so variable: the first woman to join my team, as a PhD student, graduated in 1989 whilst the last woman in the team is still getting to grips with her first job after she got her PhD as recently as 2012. We are therefore not comparing like with like. However, I am encouraged by the fact that, as far as I am aware, the next step for all but one was into an area of their own choosing – a statistic strikingly similar to what I know of the men when they too moved on. Some have stayed in science, or a cognate field, whilst others have chosen alternate pathways; this is eminently understandable, irrespective of gender. After all, why not try to do what one is good at and enjoys, and celebrate serendipity (as I have done throughout my own career, e.g. here). For some people, men as well as women, training and working as a scientist is but one phase in their lives. Undergraduate and then postgraduate qualifications, and the fixed-term postdoctoral research contracts that may follow, can represent entirely sensible steps on a winding pathway that eventually leads away from a career in science altogether. The value of those steps is not diminished by subsequent choices, but the quality of that later life may nevertheless be greatly enhanced by what went before. As examples, I can cite career destinations for these talented women scientists which include voluntary work as a tax advisor, senior school science and mathematics teachers, a university professor, a laser specialist in a national laboratory, a university science outreach officer, a senior company executive*, … An important caveat I must add here is that a person’s life surely ought not be defined on the basis of work or career alone, or perhaps even primarily on that basis (speaking as one now ‘retired’): we are all worth more than that.

And finally, for something incompletely different (noting the abuse of a much-loved Monty Python phrase) take a look at this post on a vaguely topical subject: ‘Girls Explain Star Wars To You’ – however, be warned, it contains spoilers for the new film ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’.

* see here – which, amongst other things, is currently engaged on a project for CERN building the machines that will be used to build the next generation ALICE detector. This respondent, who graduated with a richly-deserved PhD in 1993, also recommended some pertinent reading, which I here forward: ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow’ by Daniel Kahneman. 

Earlier posts in this particular series:
1) The Girt Pike – beginnings and transitions.
2) Do Labels Last a Lifetime? – people and other influences.
3) Nomadic Research: random walk or purposeful journey? – a timeline in research.
4) Tools of the Trade – instruments and gadgets.
5) Suitcase Science: travelling in hope – tales from a travelling scientist.