Skip to main content

Alom Shaha - five way interview

Alom Shaha was born in Bangladesh but grew up in London. A science teacher, writer and filmmaker, he has spent most of his professional life sharing his passion for science and education with the public. Alom has produced, directed and appeared in a number of TV programmes for broadcasters such as the BBC, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, and the Nuffield Foundation. Alom has represented his community as an elected politician and has volunteered at a range of charitable organisations. He teaches at a comprehensive school in London and writes for a number of online and print publications. His new book is Why Don't Things Fall Up?

Why science?

Honestly, because I had a couple of great teachers at school who made it make sense and come alive for me and, perhaps more importantly, made me believe it was something I could do.

Why this book? 

It’s the book I’ve been wanting and meaning to write ever since I had my first book published over a decade ago. Teaching and 'communicating' science has been the basis of my working life for 25 years or so and being asked to write this book provided an opportunity to do something which I had always found too intimidating to attempt before – summarise and explain the 'big ideas of science' alongside a discussion of key issues from the history and philosophy of science and science teaching which I consider important.   

Why do you think so many people appear to find science a turn-off?

I think it’s partly down to how much 'science capital' people have to begin with, for example whether they grow up with parents who have a positive attitude towards science and who expose them to science from a young age in the same way most parents expose their children to art, music, literature. Teachers also make a huge difference – surveys consistently show that scientists often credit their science teachers for sparking or fuelling their interest in science and leading them to their subsequent careers. Without good teaching, science, like any other subject studied at school, can be dry and boring, especially to young people who may not be exposed to science in any other context. 

What’s next?

I have two young children, aged 5 and 6, and looking after them is really my main priority. I also teach two days a week at a comprehensive school in London. In the little time I have left after meeting those responsibilities, I hope to continue writing. My first work of fiction, How to Find a Rainbow: A Reena and Rekha Story, will be published in February next year. It’s a picture book for young children about two young red panda sisters who go on adventures in the Himalayan jungle in which they live. I’m hoping it will be the first in a series – each story sees the two sisters to discover something about how the natural world works, for example, in How to Find a Rainbow, they work out how rainbows are formed. 

What’s exciting you at the moment?

My youngest daughter has just started reception in primary school and my eldest is in Year 2. Watching them grow and develop is one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had. Like pretty much everyone I know, I think AI will change the world in ways we cannot even imagine, so I’m excited and fearful of this in probably equal measures…


 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Andrew Jaffe - Five way interview

Andrew Jaffe is professor of astrophysics and cosmology at Imperial College, London and director of the Imperial Centre for Inference and Cosmology. His new book is The Random Universe. Why science? I’ve always been interested in science, in particular in  astronomy, astrophysics, and space. One of my earliest memories - back in nursery school in New Jersey, I think - was watching one of the moon launches. I wanted that excitement to be part of my life! I never got to be an astronaut, but I did get to be part of the Planck Satellite team, and was privileged to be able to travel to the ESA Spaceport in French Guiana to watch the launch.  In between, I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, get a good education, and find inspiring teachers, mentors, and collaborators. They helped me model the universe, and helped me learn how to refine those models in the face of experimental and observational evidence. That is, they taught me to be a scientist. Why this book? The Random...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more