"The best part of being a scientist
is pitting your wits and skills
against the unknown to
pruse out of nature her most
jealously guarded secrets
“I will never regret spending my life in science as I feel I have been an eyewitness to history in the making,” says one of Australia 's most widely known and respected scientists, Sir Gustav Nossal (or Sir Gus, as he is generally known). “Science and technology will shape the 21 st century more than any other force. A life in science, therefore, is a life led for the future of our nation. A career in science is immeasurably fascinating, challenging and rewarding.”
Sir Gus emigrated from Austria when he was seven. By the age of 34 he was Director of the prestigious Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, a position he held for three decades.
Though officially ‘retired', Sir Gus runs his own company, striving to improve infant health.
“I'm working with the World Health Organization and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – who've decided that third world health is their top priority. Basically, I'm helping decide how best to spend Mr Gates' money,” Sir Gus says. “And there's Foursight, which I'm involved in with three colleagues. We provide strategic advice in biotechnology development to funds with money to invest and to unis, CRCs and government departments.
“I had no thought to do research before third year medicine when I was reading about biochemistry – you know, the chemistry of life and all that – and it was really interesting. I then took a year ‘off' to be apprentice to one of the researchers. It was during that year that I met the man who would become my boss, Macfarlane Burnet, and it was when I got hooked on research.
“The best part of being a scientist is pitting your wits and skills against the unknown to prise out of nature her most jealously guarded secrets; plus you're working on the international stage and that's heady competition. The worst aspect is increasing managerialism and administration.
“I don't think you have to be different to do science, but you do have to have analytical intelligence, you have to be creative and imaginative and, something a lot of people don't realise is that science is incredibly competitive, so you have to have a lot of drive.
“To be illiterate in science is as shameful as being illiterate in the humanities. We're expected to know about Shakespeare, but we're not expected to know about Newton, and Watson and Crick , and that's an attitude I reject.”
“Don't worry about your first degree, do something that's fun and which interests you because your first degree is just what you do on the way to doing your next degree,” says Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, who has qualifications in physics, engineering and medicine.
“Physics is a really good thing to do because you won't get fooled again,” he says. “You can see the universe with a poetic sense of awe and wonder and be impressed: but with physics you can understand it – and it doesn't take away from the awe and wonder, you just see it on two levels.”
Just because you study science doesn't mean you have to wind up being a scientist. According to Dr Karl: “ Half the people in the derivatives markets in London come from science, and they're earning more than a million bucks a year.” It's something to do with Stefan-Boltzman equations of heat transfer, apparently.
Dr Colin Taylor , the Executive Director of Australian Science Innovations (the organisers of the Australian Science Olympiads – an international competition for high school students) has a PhD in physics. “I worked in laser frequency standards, which has applications in telecommunications, cramming stuff into a small bandwidth, and then I spent five years in research. Having a science background adds a dimension that other people in my area simply don't have.
“Most people who went through uni with me aren't working explicitly in science. I have a friend who has a PhD in nuclear physics; he works in the public service in telecommunications influencing policy decisions. When they're doing things like mapping mobile phone black spots, he can really cast a critical eye over it.
“The biggest task you've got in Year 10 is to figure out what you love doing and do it."
“If you don't stop asking questions when a teacher says, ‘I don't know', then you're likely to make a good scientist.”