Life in Science Stories, Opinions and Advice for a New Generation of Scientists

About this book

Life in Science is a collection of stories, reflections and advice written by proficient scientists. They address the question of what doing science means to them, and describe attitudes and working practices that have proved effective and rewarding. The book is aimed in particular at young people who are attracted by science or already undertaking undergraduate studies, and who are considering making science their long-term profession. It will also be helpful and revealing to early-career scientists who are searching for their own best route to success. The book serves as a platform for experienced scientists to describe their original inclination, how that subjective disposition found its expression in their way of doing science, whether their expectations were met, and what achievements they can claim. But it is not restricted to success: contributors also share details of the limitations and failures they have encountered. Last but not least they describe how they see science now, how they think it will be in the near future, and what advice they would give to the their much younger colleagues. Readers will appreciate the diversity of the individual paths shaped by different education, motivation, ambition, inclination, intuition, feeling, belief and eligibility. At the same time the stories confirm that science relies on a translation of this subjective level into an objective level, one that is shared and accepted by the international scientific community, and whose results are produced with a commonly accepted and fully rational scientific method of investigation.

Contents

1. Motivations: The Individual Side
2. Work Done: My Personal Scientific Approach
3. Up to Now Science And Its Future
4. Advices to a Young Scientist
5. A Prologue

Customer Reviews

Biography

Diego Breviario worked for 40 years in the field of molecular genetics applied to yeast, humans and plants. His work took him to the National Institute of Health USA; North Carolina State University USA, and the Italian National Research Council. He has been a scientific leader of more than 30 projects, with more than 100 international publications to his name. He has been on the editorial board of the journals GENES, Transgenic Research, and PLOS ONE. He has received awards from Ciba-Geigy, Academia dei Lincei-Rotary, and the National Institutes of Health USA. He has also authored three novels on science, published in Italian. Diego has also prepared texts for educational videos in English and Italian. As an inventor, he appears on three released patent applications, one national and two European. He has served as an advisor for the EU and for national and international Universities. His major areas of expertise are genetics, genomics, and cell biology, and his major area of interest is agrifood.

Jack Tuszynski is a Professor of biophysics at the Department of Physics, University of Alberta and a Professore Ordinario in biomedical engineering at the Politecnico di Torino in Turin, Italy. He obtained his PhD from the University of Calgary. From 1983 to 1987 he was a faculty member at the Department of Physics of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's. Between 2005 and 2020 he held the prestigious Allard Chair in Oncology at the Cross Cancer Institute. He held visiting professorship in China, Germany, France, Israel, Denmark, Belgium and Switzerland. He is on the editorial board of almost 30 international journals including the Journal of Biological Physics. He is an Associate Editor of The Frontiers Collection, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg.