Evolving Thoughts

Our Lords and Masters ask

Who would you nominate for Scientist Laureate, if such a position existed?

According to the dictionary, a "laureate" is "someone honored for great achievements; figuratively someone crowned with a laurel wreath". We can read this more than one way - you might read it as "having done the best science", or you might draw an analogy with "poet laureate" as the public scientist.

In the former sense, there are too many scientists who you never hear of to mention, so I'll mention only one, a man I know from working in the same institution. His name is Don Metcalf. Unless you have had extreme chemotherapy, and been given colony stimulating factor (CSF) to harvest your bone marrow stem cells so you can be "rescued" from an otherwise lethal dose of chemo, and you are the sort of OCD type who has to know who saved their life, you would never have heard of Don. But if you work on blood cell types, and use the haemopoetic cycle diagrams or information, you'll know Don. He can pick a blood cell type from a blurry micrograph in seconds. He is also a wonderfully curmudgeonly type, treating students and esteemed colleagues indifferently to withering criticism that somehow leaves them better off than they were before.

Don was deputy director of the Hall Institute when I arrived to take up the role of publishing and graphics guy. Taking my cue from the postdocs and students I dealt with, I held him in some awe, and was both horrified and relieved when, after doing my first Annual Report there, he came in and gruffly said "I guess I won't have to fire you this week". I didn't even know I was vulnerable! I later realised Don has a very dry wit, and of course didn't mean it. I hope.

Don's discovery of CSF means that millions of people are now alive from leukemia and other cancer diseases who might otherwise have died. I have heard an estimate that 40 million people survive because of Don's work. That's more than died in the second world war. I think it's a crying shame he never received the Nobel for that work. He is also the clearest speaker and one of the best thinkers I have ever encountered.

In the second sense, that of populariser of real science, I can't go much past two guys, who not coincidentally have written books with Terry Pratchett, my literary hero. They are Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen. Their witty prose manages to get otherwise arcane topics across to interested readers, and I have recommended passages for use in philosophy of science, of time, and of psychology courses. Others may write more exciting books, but they get the meat of the matter across.

Those are my picks.