Scientific Spaces and Places

The Guardian runs an interesting ‘”Writer’s Rooms” feature in its Review section every Saturday in which a writer (or sometimes an artist) discusses a photograph of their office or workroom, pointing out significant objects. The idea (as in Desert Island Discs) is to gain an oblique insight into the subject’s mindset.

Well, it’s hardly an original idea but wouldn’t be interesting to take the same approach with scientists? Perhaps we can get a series of our own going on Nature Network. To kick things off, here is a photograph of my office, taken just last week:

My office, late September 2008 (Flickr )

My room at Imperial is in the rather unlovely Huxley Building, named after Darwin’s famous bulldog, T.H. Huxley who used to teach at the Royal School of Mines, one of our constituent colleges. It looks out over an elegant street, Queens Gate, but I keep the blinds drawn most days because glare from the westward facing windows strains my eyes when working at the computer all day long. The computer, a sleek and silvery Apple Macbook Pro (yes, I am a fan, but let’s not get into that!). The laptop is attached to a widescreen monitor to give me a much bigger work area because this arrangement makes you more productive. I owe it all my success…

Nestling behind the monitor is an old stereo brought in from home (busted tape-deck) that I can plug into the computer when listening to music. I usually only have music on when ploughing through relatively tedious tasks such as exam marking. On these occasions I am to be found, iTunes on shuffle, reading the scripts aloud to myself. When I have sixty or more essays on ATP hydrolysis or phasing methods to get through, this mantra induces a trance-like state that dulls the pain of those dismal days.

On the shelf above the desk you can see the blue spines of old lab books – some of them mine, some from former students and postdocs. I prefer the Banner notebooks, 244 pages, all pre-numbered. Every so often I reach for one of my old notebooks to re-trace a method or show a new student the exemplary standard of record-keeping that I expect them to maintain. Alas, there are occasions when my notebooks reveal me to be a hypocrite.

The desk and table (yes, it is olive green) are scattered with papers and it is a constant battle to keep them in order. When it finally dawns on me that I am spending way too much time looking for stuff, I know that a major tidy-up is in order. The last of these was back in January and I think I am due another very soon. The only trouble is, term is about to start…tomorrow!

Peeking into the photo from the left-hand side is my whiteboard. It’s used for tutorials but when I’m trying to grapple with a new problem or project I like to wipe it clean and stand in front jotting down my thoughts, trying to impose some kind of coherence. Having a big space to work on helps me to seek out the patterns in my thinking so I can grope my way forwards. The notes then glare at me for the succeeding days, worming their way into my brain and bringing me finally to some devastating insight. That, at any rate, is the theory.

Sadly I’m showing my office and not my lab bench since I spend most of my time in front of the computer and don’t have any bench-space to call my own: I really must get myself a sabbatical and re-discover the pleasure (and pain) of wet-lab work.

So is anyone else willing to open their door? Needless to say, you don’t have to be a scientist to participate – you could be an editor, intern, a popular science writer or whatever…