Nature Network London bloggers talk about their most beloved scientists.

Matt Brown

Who’s your favorite scientist (dead or alive) and why?

Scott Kier, Royal Society.

Oh good grief. That’s an impossible question. Choosing one from such a large set is incredibly tricky. I’m going to have to discount all living scientists, as I know some living scientists and want them to like me still. Amongst the dead, where to start? If pushed, I’d have to go for one of my heroes, Robert Recorde. He was amongst the first popularisers of mathematics, being one of the first to write maths books in English rather than Latin. Famously, he designed the equals sign, as a beautifully elegant solution to the problem of having to write out the phrase “is equalle to”. He had a wonderful way with words, which included the coining of the tongue-pleasing zenzizenzizenzic. He was also a medical doctor, and controller of the Royal Mint, but after a political opponent sued for libel, he died in a debtors’ prison. John Snow, the founder of modern epidemiology, is a close second, and if you claim mathematics is disbarred for not being a science, I’ll fight you outside the pub that bears his name.

Andrew Hudson-Smith, Senior Research Fellow in spatial analysis, UCL.

Its going to have to be Dr Magnus Pyke rather than the standard Einstein answer (although he would be in my top 5). Pyke was on TV when I was a kid and made science seem kind of fun. And then, of course, there’s the use of Pyke in the Thomas Dolby song, She Blinded me with Science.

Jennifer Rohn, cell biologist, UCL.

Edward Jenner, who persevered in the 1790’s against doubt and ridicule with his theory that cowpox inoculation could cause immunity to smallpox. His convictions were so strong that he subjected his own infant son to the treatment – do you get that sort of scientific passion these days? It was a pretty big leap to go from clear-skinned milkmaids to cross-species protective immunity, a century before viruses were even discovered. The fact that similar practices were going on in Asia at the time does not, I think, detract from the intuitive observations he made in his own community, and the practical way he took the discovery forward.

Paul Wicks, research psychologist, King’s College London.

Isaac Newton. In many ways he formed the basis of all subsequent stereotypes of the scientist as reclusive, socially odd, but brilliant. In terms of his training he was also someone who had a foot in religion and occultism but could also clearly see the enormous power of reason. As for his contribution to science, his findings greatly advanced the rationalist revolution by rejecting the notion that the sun revolved around the earth, set the foundations for modern engineering, and did things to mathematics that I will never hope to understand. I’m not sure his publication record would get him a job today as a junior lecturer but still…

Kojiro Yano, physiologist and computational biologist at the University of Cambridge.

My favourite scientist is Francis Crick, because his book told me how theoretical biology should be conducted.

Fiona Jordan, AHRC in the evolution of culture, UCL.

I find it hard to decide as it depends on what my criteria for ‘favourite’ should be! There are people who have been inspirational or instrumental to me becoming a scientist…but mainly through their communication of ideas, rather than the science they themselves performed.

Then there are people who I know: mentors or colleagues, but that just seems like unfair weighting when they’re people you can chat to in the pub.

So I thought I’d pick someone outside of anthropology or biology: the physicist Richard Feynman. He was a marvellous communicator and teacher, and knew the importance of inspiring people – but he also did groundbreaking theoretical work and defended vociferously the importance of ‘big idea’ science as well as the individual sense of satisfaction from puzzle-solving. And he was the ultimate geek who thought safe-cracking was a fun hobby. And he played the bongos.

See how the Boston bloggers answered the same question.