• Question: opinions on Biological equality. not many Welsh scientists out there?

    Asked by moe999 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 15 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Tom Branson

      Tom Branson answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      There are great people from all the countries in the world. Being born in a particular place doesn’t make you smarter or better.

      My Dad is Welsh and he was a physics teacher. Are you welsh? You could be the next top scientist and make Wales famous!

    • Photo: Jack Heal

      Jack Heal answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      I’ve no idea whether there are fewer Welsh scientists or not. But Wales is a relatively small country so you would expect fewer scientists to come from there, because there are fewer people to start with. Wales has 3 million people and England has 53 million! But I expect the proportions are the same (so if there were 53 million people in Wales too there would be about the same number of scientists from Wales as there are from England).

      Here’s a top Welsh scientist: Lyn Evans. He is the project leader on the Large Hadron Collider experiment which is the biggest experiment ever done in physics!

    • Photo: Yalda Javadi

      Yalda Javadi answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      You’re right that there are not that many… as I couldn’t think of one from the top of my head. But just did a search and found a Nobel prize winning Welsh scientist:

      Sir Martin Evans, a professor of mammalian genetics, was given the prize for his work investigating how cells can be removed from the bodies of mammals, then grown separately in laboratories to help treat diseases.

      Go Wales!! I actually went to primary school in wales and could speak fluent Welsh… but then forgot it oooops 🙁

    • Photo: Jon Marles-Wright

      Jon Marles-Wright answered on 15 Mar 2013:

      In my field of protein crystallography, there is a running joke that one valley in Wales produces more of this type of scientist than any other place in the world based on population/area. My PhD supervisor was from the Valley and a few other people I know are also from there. In my previous lab we also had a welsh PhD student, so I wouldn’t say Welsh people were underrepresented in my field.

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 17 Mar 2013:

      I used to work with loads of Welsh scientists from Aberystwyth! They gave me some fish which I then put it a picnic hamper (to keep warm) and drove them up to my uni in Glasgow (7 hrs away).

      Perhaps you can do something to help put Welsh scientists on the map – especially if you’re as good as science as the rest of Wales is at rugby.

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