Question: what would you doi if you werent a scientist

Mark Lancaster answered on 15 Jun 2010:

Good question – briefly I worked for a company writing software (Java, databases, Linux serves, MP4 streaming) and I’m also interested in promoting science to politicians and the media. So I’d probably work in one of those three areas – much of my work as a scientist is computer programming and I still get a buzz when I’ve written several thousand lines of code and it does what you want .. it’s quite a challenge often to take abstract ideas and code them into reality in a program abd even better when it actually does what you want.