Lunch with a Laureate

I am among those who think that science has great beauty. A scientist in his laboratory is not only a technician: he is also a child placed before natural phenomena which impress him like a fairy tale.~Marie Curie

Unfortunately sometimes in communicating the excitement of science to those that are not in science fields we somehow lose... well the excitement. To me, a new idea births a childlike curiosity and EXCITEMENT as it takes up residence in my brain and dances around. When I have a day like that, it is exhilarating.Today was one of those days where an observation turned into an idea that required excitable scribbling of more ideas, submission of a request for analysis and now I am full of hope and wonder as I wait for the results to come back. But ultimately it comes back to that childlike quality that we have as scientists in the lab where our eyes are widely opened in awe and wonder by the beauty of the science as it unfolds and we ultimately ask...like a child...but why?

The USA Science and Engineering Festival will be hosting a Lunch with a Laureate program where middle and high school students get to sit down and meet with a Nobel Laureate and let these students ask and find out what exciting ideas have makes these scientists so famous and how they got into science in the first place.

For this program we have two VERY special Laureates. In addition to our eighteen Laureates we are excited to have come and speak, we are also bringing BACK two Laureates from the past. We will have the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize,Marie Curie. who is actually is one of a small group of people who didn't just win one Nobel Prize, but won TWO in two different fields, Physics and Chemistry. AND well known by many...Albert Einstein. Interestingly enough he did not win the Nobel Prize for his famous equation (e=mc2) and his theory of relativity, instead he won it for his work on the photo-electric effect. And to make things even more exciting we have already had an Einstein sighting at Brain Awareness week. it is quite amazing that we are able to have these two notable Laureates join us in celebrating science and inspiring young minds to explore science.

What would you ask these two famous scientists if you got to have lunch with them??