Dr Graeme J Ackland

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:A roundabout route. I was the first in my family to go to university, where I studied Engineering - I thought you had to be fantastically clever to make a living in Physics. At Oxford I realised this wasn't really true, so I switched do doing what I liked.

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Dr Dario Alfè

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:Into science: general curiosity, since childhood; into my chosen area of research in particular: the reading of quantum mechanics as an undergraduate.

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Mr Johannes Bauer

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:For me it has always been very much of interest to try to understand phenomena in nature on a more profound level and to find underlying connections. In science I was fascinated by the possibility of finding fundamental principles which describe nature, and that this is can even be done quantitatively in many cases.

My area of research, which is condensed matter theory, appeals to me because it describes the collective behaviour of many particles. Important phenomena like magnetism or superconductivity can emerge when correlations between the particles are included, and for me it is very interesting to describe these phenomena from microscopic starting point. I also like the fact that in my field experiment and theory are not too far apart and comparisons can be made, since I believe that is at the heart of physics.

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Dr Mischa Bonn

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:As a child, I was always allowed and encouraged to investigate and explore, and to question 'truths'. We always had heated debates at the dinner table during my childhood. The result is a personality well-suited for scientific research: my brother is also a scientist. That I am active in the area of surface science, originates from the period of my PhD; it is somewhat fortuitous.

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Dr David Bowler

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I learnt about science from my father (who is also a physicist), as I was growing up. We would often look at simple experiments (bathtub or kitchen physics) and this led me towards the framing of questions about the natural world that is at the root of science. My route into condensed matter physics and nanoscience was more haphazard: I worked for a small company modelling GaAs field-effect transistors after graduation, which stimulated my interest in research, but it was a friend's enthusiasm for the research he was doing in his D.Phil. that led me to do my D.Phil. in the Materials Department in Oxford, and hence into computational condensed matter.

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Professor Andrea Di Cicco

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I was interested in basic science and physics since I was a boy, playing with electronics at the beginning and being more involved in basic physics later at the high school in Rome, thanks also to a good professor in physics. I think that the common belief about culture as a fundamental value, shared by a generation in the sixties and seventies and transmitted sometimes to young people, played an important role. Science and physics in particular were considered by me at the forefront of culture development. I took the final decision to study physics while writing a short dissertation for the high school diploma (maturita) about the cultural revolution taking place in science (and not only in science) in the first 30 years of the last century. I remember of that time my fruitless efforts in reading the initial chapters of "Quantum Mechanics" pushing me to deepen my knowledge in physics at the University of Rome. The possibility of studying and working in the stimulating environment of Frascati laboratories in the mid eighties led me to the chosen area of research.

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Dr Georg Ehlers

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I grew up in an open-minded environment and have always found science (especially physics, of course) fascinating. Coming to the specific area of neutron scattering was purely accidental, though. The best offer for a thesis that I could obtain was in this research field.

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Dr Jonas Fransson

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:Growing up in a very non-academic environment, I was always told to get a vocational training and not to think too much about possible intellectual professions. Therefore, in high school I started on a program to become a TV repairman, but in the second year I realised that I wanted to understand how the electronics devices "really" work, so I just had to move on to university. There, I chose the Masters program in engineering physics, but my studies were mostly devoted to mathematics and classical physics, since I became more and more fascinated by the strength of the mathematical language. During my undergraduate studies, I found out that I had to go even deeper, so therefore I decided that I should continue as a Ph. D. student after graduating from the engineering program. Actually, I had set my mind on mathematics, but in the end I choose condensed matter physics since there I found the opportunity to play with equations, and to understand physics out of mathematical formalism. At the time when I began as a Ph. D. student (around 1997), the topic of mesoscopic physics and transport gave me a good chance to work analytically with mathematical tools in a "pen and paper" fashion, which I find extremely enjoyable. After Ph. D. my intention was to try to get a job in industry but then my professor told me to carry on with research and physics he really let me know that my work was worthwhile and that I might have a future within physics research.

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Professor Hajime Ishihara

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:In my childhood (60s-70s), Japan was in high economic growth and I felt that the world was filled with messages appreciating the progress of science. We were surrounded by things making us be fascinated with science and technology, such as EXPO, dream-inspiring scientific fictions, biographies of T. Edison, A. Einstein, and so on. (I remember that the name of Einstein often appeared in the scientific fictions.) Also, my late father always told me how wonderful science is. (He had dreamed to become a scientist in his childhood but he ended up a tailor somehow.) Those factors have greatly influenced the decision of my course. When I was a graduate student, my supervisor (Prof. Kikuo Cho) embroiled me in hard controversy about some nonlinear optical effect. Exciting and hard experiences at that moment have made me keep staying in the present area of research. I would like to sincerely thank my supervisor and all the people in that exciting controversy.

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Dr Masayasu Ishikawa

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I think that I rather naturally entered the field of science, because natural sciences and mathematics had always been my favorite courses in school. I also naturally got interested in the material science, probably because I have grown up in a small town near Hiroshima, used to be the biggest naval base during the wartime, where there were many steel making factories and ship yards.

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Professor Tadashi Kato

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:When I was in high school, I read a book of Oparin and became interested in the origin of life and also biochemistry. So I chose chemistry as my University major. After attending the class of (the late) Prof. Fujiyama (whose research field was molecular spectroscopy) for one year, my interest changed from biochemistry to physical chemistry. So I had studied physical chemistry of simple solutions in graduate school under his guidance. In 1980, I became Research Associate at Institute for Molecular Science and studied structures of alcohol/water systems. During these studies, I became more and more interested in surfactant systems, which is my present research area. It may be no coincidence that the self-organization of molecules play an important role both in the surfactant systems and the origin of life, my initial interest.

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Professor Christos N Likos

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I studied Electrical Engineering and I converted to Physics during my studies. Physics at high school didn't seem so exciting and I had to join the University to find out what it is really all about. My professors there and the textbooks we used (the Berkeley Physics Course) deeply impressed me and revealed that Physics is a discipline of unmatched economy, clarity, and beauty. Thus, I decided to pursue graduate studies in Physics, far above Cayuga's waters, in Ithaca, NY. At Cornell, my excitement for the subject grew further and I had the privilege to carry my PhD work with Neil Ashcroft as supervisor. His way of doing research has left a permanent impression on me. I opted for theoretical Physics on two grounds: first because I am fascinated by the fact that mathematics can describe Nature, and second because I would be a disaster as an experimentalist. Soft matter is terribly exciting because I can take advantage of the richness of systems there to 'play' with them.

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Dr Tanniemola B Liverpool

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:At school I found that I did well at the sciences, particularly mathematics and physics, without much effort. At university I chose natural sciences (physics) because in general, I preferred working on concrete rather than abstract problems. I decided to do a PHD in theoretical condensed matter because I wanted, and liked the idea of, a close and direct link to experiments. Now one of my major research interests is trying to contribute (as a physicist) to the current attempt to turn cellular biology into a more quantitative science.

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Dr Rolf Lortz

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I think I already was interested in simple physics experiments as a child. Nevertheless, when I finished school I was rather undecided what I could do afterwards. My parents proposed that I study physics (they met each other during a physics course at the University of Karlsruhe). That I continued my carrier in physics after my studies is the merit of interesting people who gave me the insight into the world of research. That is the curiosity and excitement when waiting for the results of an experiment and afterwards the joy in interpreting those results.

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Dr Miho Nakashima

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:When I was a 17-year-old girl, philosophy and physics seemed to be able to answer my questions: "What is the meaning of life?", "What is the nature of the universe in which we live?" (Of course, there are a vast number of problems still unsolved). Around that time, Steven Hawking's writing about cosmology was getting a lot of media attention. His explanation of the universe aroused my interest in physics, so I majored in physics at university. At university one professor showed us a floating magnet on a high-temperature superconductor in liquid nitrogen. Impressed by that, I decided to specialize in experimental physics, which can actually show physical actions or effects.

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Professor Eoin O'Reilly

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I was very lucky with my teachers in secondary school, Clongowes Wood College. I had two very good science teachers, Billy Campbell and Ben Sherry - but the most inspiring was my Maths teacher, Cyril Power, who was over 80 when he taught us. He had carried out an MSc in the Cavendish Laboratory in the 1920’s, where he was supervised by J.J. Thompson. I am very privileged to have in my possession Cyril’s original MSc thesis entitled The Electrification of Salts by Friction.

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Dr Amalia Patanè

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:When I was at school, my teachers felt that I was particularly good at Physics. Although I had thoughts of becoming a musician, in the end I chose Physics and graduated at the University of Rome with a first in Physics in 1994. Only later, I understood the privilege, being a physicist, to understand the natural world with the daily fascination for its beauty and mystery. I am now an experimental physicist and study the quantum mechanical behaviour of electrons in a wide variety of interesting and novel condensed matter systems.

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Professor Nicola M Pugno

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:My father, a professor of thermodynamics; led me into science but it was my grand father, a professor of structural mechanics, who led me into the chosen area of research. In general the curiosity, especially developed observing of Nature: I love Mountains.

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Dr Hannes Raebiger

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I got fascinated about science around the time I went to school. At first I was more interested in chemistry, but I guess it was my mother who first pointed out that chemistry stinks, and physics is cleaner and nicer... (maybe she was afraid that I'd start experimenting with household chemicals...). I decided my career when I was around 10 or 11, and since then have never considered any alternatives.

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Professor James Scott

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I grew up in the USA and was in secondary school when the first sputnik was launched. Many young students like myself who were good at maths and physics were then strongly encouraged to follow careers in science.

My PhD thesis was in optics and spectroscopy and was finished just as gas lasers became available for such studies. I finished my PhD at the relatively young age of 23 and joined a laser spectroscopy group at Bell Labs (Murray Hill). A principal topic of such spectroscopy was solid-state phase transitions, including ferroelectrics. I took a chair of physics at Univ. Colorado at age 29 to set up such a laboratory. Together with Carlos Araujo and Larry McMillan, I started a company (Symetrix) which made the first "integrated ferroelectrics" (ferroelectric film devices on GaAs or Si chips). This won a prize as Product of the Year from the Japan Electronics Industry in 1994 and produced >100 million chips for 2.3 GHz use in mobile telephones.

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Dr Inna L Soroka

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:I chose physics rather long ago, at the end of my school years, using mostly elimination approach. I thought that in politics people should be able to give long talks about nothing and I cannot do it; economics uses artificial laws and it is not interesting to study them; in liberal arts I have very marginal abilities. Thus, natural sciences seemed to be a proper area to be engaged in. In addition, I had a very good physics teacher at school, I knew and liked physics better that the other subjects. However, the area of the research, magnetic nanostructures, was chosen accidentally. At the beginning I was dreaming about particle physics.

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Dr Erik Vesselli

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A:When I was a teenager I realized that the town where I lived (Trieste, Italy) was a very qualified center for both theoretical and experimental physics. I got in contact for the first time with the world of science and research when I was eighteen and visited the labs at SISSA (International School for Advanced Studies) in Trieste. On the contrary, I chose my area of research only at the end of the university studies (physics) and during my PhD I firstly got in contact with the world of hydrogen as a fuel.

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Yuejian Wang

Q:What led you into science and your chosen area of research?

A: My major during the undergraduate period was nuclear engineering. After several years working on heavy isotope separation as an engineer, I came to USA for my advanced postgraduate studies. In Texas, Prof. Zerda showed me a high-pressure press, which can reach pressures up to 8 GPa, equivalent to about 80000 times ambient pressure. It is being used to synthesize some novel compounds under high pressure and high temperature conditions, and also to study the physical and chemical properties of materials at extreme circumstances, as well as to simulate the environments inside the earth or other planes. I am so interested in this sophisticated instrument and active research area. Later, I got chance to visit national laboratories and collaborate with the scientists there using the cutting-edge facilities. Their support, guidance, and inspiration enrich my knowledge and skills step by step in the research area of high-pressure physics. I am happy with my original choice.

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