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Author Archives: Athene Donald
Past Women in Science, Present Digital Age
Following on from my last post I’d like to discuss experiences of a very different interdisciplinary meeting which I went to after immediately after the STS one I described there (I suspect I will return to that theme another time). … Continue reading
Posted in Ada Lovelace, digitisation, heroines, History of Science, Revealing Lives, Trowelblazers, Women in science
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Social Scientist for the Day?
This week I attended what was probably my first serious social sciences/STS (variously Science and Technology Studies or Science, Technology and Society) conference in my life. I was only able to attend the first day and I came away not … Continue reading
Posted in Blogging, Communicating Science, communication, journalism, Science Culture, social science
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What Can You Do in a Minute?
Responding to the simplest questions about life as an academic scientist seems to pose me serious problems. I have written before about the difficulty I have in answering the straightforward question ‘who inspired you?’ because I don’t feel as if … Continue reading
Posted in Communicating Science, education, excitement, microscopy, practical work
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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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