• Question: what got you in to studying what you do ?

    Asked by slothridley to Jo on 14 Jun 2010 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Joanna Buckley

      Joanna Buckley answered on 14 Jun 2010:

      Hello slothridley!

      I think it was a mixture of being in the right place at the right time and having some inspiring teachers.

      I was interested in chemistry from an early age because it seemed fun to mix stuff up and see what happened. I was lucky because I had a great chemistry teacher at school. I applied to study chemistry at York and got a place. I enjoyed it so much that I stayed to do a PhD. I didn’t think I wanted to do a PhD but I basically got offered one from the company I was working with at the time and jumped at the chance.

      I’m a materials chemist which means I’m interested in the structures of things and try to get them to do the best job possible. In the science I do, for example, It’s important to kill as much bacteria as quickly as possible. You can make tiny adjustments to materials and they work in a different way.

      That’s pretty cool, huh?

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    As soon as I started studying chemistry I was fascinated by the fact that there was a simple explanation of the hierarchy of the elements and their properties in terms of the atomic (electrons) structure and that this was also true of nuclear properties – the fact that one could explain much of the modern world in terms of how 3 things were arranged: electrons, protons and neutrons was very intriguing and my chemistry teachers at school were particularly inspiring. Luckily I was also good at Maths. So I thought I’d end up doing chemistry but I gradually realised that much of chemistry (at least the aspects of how electrons are arranged) is Quantum Mechanics and that is Physics – so I decided that I should study Physics (particularly since in general it is a bit more mathematical than Chemistry). I decided that if you take the difference between Chemistry and Maths you end up at Physics !
    At university I didn’t particularly enjoy much of the Physics courses but found the Particle Physics we did particularly interesting ie the aim of it: to explain nature in terms of a small number of fundamental particles (quarks, leptons) had much in common with my early love for chemistry and in my final undergraduate year I had an inspirational tutor teaching Particle Physics. I applied for jobs in industry but then realised that everyone interviewing me had a PhD and that if I wanted to be in their shoes then I should do a PhD (although no one told me that..) and so I applied to do one in Particle Physics and was accepted and I absolutely loved it. I enjoyed working in large international collaborations (and the associated travel) and that I was doing independent research almost from day-one – every day is different and with hard work and a bit of luck anything is possible.