• Question: What are the reasons why you became a laser scientist, and what inspired u to do it and not another area of science.

    Asked by andreacutts123 to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 25 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by palacewillmott, tino, indrit, raejon, redcherries, alses002, ilovepokemon, 10hornbya, 10onyekweres.
    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Well, it started with physics at uni, which I did because I enjoyed A-level physics. Then I asked my (potential) in-laws for their daughter’s hand in marriage and they insisted on a 5 year plan – panic!

      SO the obvious choices for a physicist are:

      finance (good with numbers) – it’s all about greed
      defense – I’m very much against war
      basic research – poor job security
      medicine

      The medical physics route was well structured and they paid me to do a further degree, plus it was a chance to have a positive influence on society.

      Why lasers? Most medical physicists spend a lot of time making sure radiotherapy or x-ray machines are working properly. This is very boring. I was trying to set up a PhD in ultrasound research when this job appeared (for which a PhD was already set-up).

      I never planned to work with lasers, but I’m enjoying it now!

    • Photo: Tianfu Yao

      Tianfu Yao answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Actually, I just want to explore something new at the begining. And fibre lasers are becoming more and more popular in the sicientific research area. I was attracted by the features of light and the potential applications of fibre lasers.

    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      I didn’t originally want to be a laser physicist (I wanted to be a weather forecaster), but when I was studying at university, I discovered that playing with lasers was pretty good fun, and really interesting. My uni had quite a lot of optoelectronics and laser research going on, so there were a lot of people who knew a lot about lasers and I found their enthusiasm infectious.
      As part of a university degree, you often have to do a small research project in your final year, and mine was to do with using lasers to weld plastic together. That got me hooked, and the rest is history.

    • Photo: Philippa Bird

      Philippa Bird answered on 25 Jun 2012:

      Because I could see the potential to answer fundamental questions about drug delivery. And I absolutely loved learned about lasers at university. It just fitted together.

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