Skip to main content

Laurie Winkless - Four Way Interview

Laurie Winkless (@laurie_winkless) is an Irish physicist and author. After a physics degree and a masters in space science, she joined the UK’s National Physical Laboratory as a research scientist, specialising in functional materials. Now based in New Zealand, Laurie has been communicating science to the public for 15 years. Since leaving the lab, she has worked with scientific institutes, engineering companies, universities, and astronauts, amongst others. Her writing has featured in outlets including Forbes, Wired, and Esquire, and she appeared in The Times magazine as a leading light in STEM. Laurie’s first book was Science and the City, and her new title is Sticky, also published by Bloomsbury.

Why science?

I was a very curious kid: always asking questions about how things worked. I suspect I drove my parents mad, but they never showed it. Instead, they encouraged me to explore those questions. From taking me to the library every week, to teaching me how to use different tools, they supported my hunger for learning. As soon as I found out there was this thing called 'science', I knew I wanted to get involved in it. I briefly toyed with the idea of becoming a paleontologist - I think Jurassic Park can take credit for that! - but physics and astronomy captured my imagination, and set me on my path. I loved being a research scientist, and I miss it. But now that I'm no longer working in a lab, I think my relationship to science has shifted a little - I've become much more cognisant of the wider context in which it sits, and feel a sense of responsibility to do more than just blindly cheer on research-for-research's sake.

Why this book?

When I was in the midst of writing Science and the City, I found myself thinking a lot about friction - mainly between train wheels and rails, and between tyres and the road. And despite having studied it in various courses, and even doing some friction / surface science-related work in the lab, I realised that I didn't truly understand it. I went off on a research tangent, to learn more about the fundamentals of friction. I found that while it was surprisingly complicated, it was also fascinating and could potentially house a rich seam of interesting stories. I also couldn't find any existing pop-sci books that focused on topics like that. So I started working on a proposal. The team at Bloomsbury weren't entirely convinced by my initial pitch, so I reworked it a bit. Thankfully, they liked version #2, and we signed the contract. Too many years later, Sticky: The Secret Science of Surfaces, has finally been published :)

What’s next?

Honestly, I'm not sure. As much as I'd love to be a full-time book author, most of my time is spent consulting with research labs and engineering companies all over the world - I develop communications plans, advise on strategy, train their scientists, and write different types of content. I also do lots of science journalism too, and some university-level teaching. I'm always juggling various projects. I moved to New Zealand five years ago, but for several reasons, I feel like I'm only just starting to find my feet here. So one big priority for me is to do more NZ-focused work. I haven't (yet) had an idea for book #3 - this one was such a huge undertaking, I think I'm still recovering from it - but I will continue to write, and see what happens! 

What’s exciting you at the moment?

Selfishly, I'm excited that people are reading my book, and are discovering that friction is interesting! I've also been getting lots of emails from researchers (everyone from a contact lens manufacturer to a dolphin biologist) happy to see that someone's written a pop-sci book on the topic.

Less selfishly, I'm excited that the scientific workforce is becoming more diverse (though it's happening very slowly) and more aware of just how important clear, open communication is. The pandemic has highlighted how damaging and dangerous mis- and dis-information can be. Scientists have a central role in challenging that.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Language of Mathematics - Raúl Rojas ***

One of the biggest developments in the history of maths was moving from describing relationships and functions with words to using symbols. This interesting little book traces the origins of a whole range of symbols from those familiar to all, to the more obscure squiggles used in logic and elsewhere. On the whole Raúl Rojas does a good job of filling in some historical detail, if in what is generally a fairly dry fashion. We get to trace what was often a bumpy path as different symbols were employed (particularly, for example, for division and multiplication, where several still remain in use), but usually, gradually, standards were adopted. This feels better as a reference, to dip into if you want to find out about a specific symbol, rather than an interesting end to end read. Rojas tells us the sections are designed to be read in any order, which means that there is some overlap of text - it feels more like a collection of short essays or blog posts that he couldn't be bothered ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...
Post a Comment
Read more