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Author Archives: Athene Donald
Attacks on the Royal Society Miss the Point
This post was originally posted at ScienceGrrl. Another year, another occasion to thump the Royal Society for the make-up of its new fellows. This time it was Nature that screamed ‘Royal Society still trails the US National Academy in female … Continue reading
Posted in Equality, refereeing, Research Councils, Royal Society, Women in science
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Mentors: Does Age Matter?
Over the years I have benefitted significantly from mentors. Two in particular stand out: in Cambridge Sir Sam Edwards (whom I wrote about here) and, at that critical juncture when as a postdoc I quit the world of metals that … Continue reading
Posted in Career advice, Science Culture, support
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Do You Believe It’s All Your Fault?
Currently I spend far more time giving talks around gender issues than about my science. I don’t know what I feel about this. I am, after all, a physicist not a psychologist or social scientist but increasingly I seem to … Continue reading
Posted in Athena Swan, career progression, Equality, MIT, Unconscious bias, Women in science
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An Iconoclastic and Flirtatious Master
I am currently reading Patricia Fara‘s recent book Science: A Four Thousand Year History which cuts an interesting swathe through different cultures, different individuals and different discoveries (sometimes even the same discovery in different places). It is not your average … Continue reading
Posted in book review, China, Desmond Bernal, History of Science, Joseph Needham, Lu Gwei-Djen, Patricia Fara
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Hacked Off
Can one ever escape the workaday grind, successfully avoid slipping over the edge to descend into the chaos I wrote about a little while ago or even manage merely to keep one’s cool despite provocation? There are so many things … Continue reading
Posted in hacking, Science Culture, social media, twitter, vacation
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A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Prejudice Go Down
I wasn’t really paying attention to the radio. I was busy cooking, but it sounded to me as if the question Clive Anderson asked the film-maker Andrea Calderwood on Saturday’s episode of Loose Ends amounted to ‘how come a nice … Continue reading
Posted in Equality, interviews, Jenny Saul, Unconscious bias, Women in science
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The Stuff of Brains
That migraine I was waiting for finally struck this week. Amazingly it didn’t throw my life into disarray, because it hit me during a week I was supposed to be having ‘off’. Consequently it only spoiled a day of relaxation, … Continue reading
Posted in cognitive illusion, Daniel Kahneman, Matthew Lieberman, neuroscience, self-affirmation
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Science and Nerves at the BBC
Last week you would have found three professors gathered nervously together in the depths of (Old) Broadcasting House waiting for the studio to be ready to air the week’s broadcast of In Our Time. Three professors who had never met … Continue reading
Posted in Andrea Sella, BBC, Communicating Science, education, In Our Time, Justin Wark, Melvyn Bragg
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On Saying No
The comments on my last post have prompted me finally to write this one, one that I have had in mind for a few weeks. In fact, ever since I gave a talk at Merton College, Oxford, when an audience … Continue reading
Posted in CV, opportunity, Research, Science Culture, Women in science, workload
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Living on the Edge of Equilibrium
Last week my bike got a puncture. So what, you might ask. In itself this is totally trivial, but it also represents the way the trivial gets in the way of everything else. A puncture for me represents potential disaster. … Continue reading
Posted in accidents, luck, Science Culture, stress, workload
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