Scientists Show Posh And Becks The Red Card
Victoria and David Beckham may be Britain's most famous and successful couple, but surprising results from a new survey show that more Brits are inspired by scientists Albert Einstein and Marie Curie.
A MORI poll, commissioned by The Cancer Research Campaign and Imperial Cancer Research Fund and announced today (Mon 19 March) to coincide with National Science Week, has found that over two thirds (71%) of people are more inspired by pioneering researcher Curie, than by Posh Spice. And the wiry haired physicist, Einstein, scores higher than football legend Becks.
However, only a disappointing 15% of Brits have thought of becoming a scientist because most don't feel they've got what it takes.
"It's encouraging to hear that people are inspired by these famous scientists," says Sir Paul Nurse, Director General of Imperial Cancer Research Fund, "but the challenge now is to inspire people to think about working in science themselves. It's important to get people from all walks of life to think about a career in science, because ultimately our goals are reached by people pooling their ideas and working together."
The good news is that young people are more likely to think about working in science, with around a quarter of teens and twenty somethings at least considering it an option.
But tragically, people from poorer backgrounds (C2DEs) in particular don't consider science as a possible career. And the poll shows that people from more affluent backgrounds (ABs) are three times more likely to think about working in science.
The Cancer Research Campaign's Director General, Professor Gordon McVie says: "It's wonderful to hear that quite a few young people, who have the future in their hands, have an interest in science."
"Our job now is to convince those poorer youngsters with untapped potential that they have what it takes to become scientists. We need to give as many young people as possible the confidence they need to become the new generation of Einsteins and Curies."
Two of the world's greatest scientists, Einstein and Curie came from humble beginnings. Einstein worked as a clerk and was taken out of school when his parents could no longer afford to send him. Marie Curie had to flee her home in Poland where she had only received a basic education and when she moved to Paris she and her husband scraped a living by teaching.
It's not only the poor who seem to lack confidence. Northerners too lacked faith in their abilities. 51% of Northerners who had not considered science as a career, compared to 31% of Southerners thought science required too many qualifications, even though many of the country's finest scientific minds were nurtured in the North of England.
Ernest Rutherford, for example, made revolutionary discoveries in our understanding of physics at Manchester University and Manchester-born physicist Sir Joseph Thomson won the Nobel prize and became president of the Royal Society.
Technical details
MORI interviewed 1,918 adults aged 15+ in 190 sampling points throughout Great Britain from 1-6 March 2001. All the interviews were conducted face-to-face in home and the data have been weighted to the known profile of the British Population.
Marie Sklodowska-Curie (born in Warsaw, Poland, on November 7, 1867) was one of the first woman scientists to win worldwide fame, and indeed, one of the great scientists of this century. The first woman ever to receive the Nobel Prize for science, she in fact won two of the prestigious awards, for Physics in 1903 and for Chemistry in 1911. She performed pioneering studies with radium and polonium and contributed profoundly to the understanding of radioactivity.
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Wьrttemberg, Germany, on March 14,1879. He began his working life as a clerk at the Swiss Patent Office, but went on to become arguably the most renowned scientist of modern times. His work is, of course, well chronicled, but his most famous works include Special Theory of Relativity (1905), Relativity (English translations, 1920 and 1950), General Theory of Relativity (1916), Investigations on Theory of Brownian Movement (1926), and The Evolution of Physics (1938).
For more information on Science Week see: www.britassoc.org.uk
