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

Everything is Predictable - Tom Chivers *****

There's a stereotype of computer users: Mac users are creative and cool, while PC users are businesslike and unimaginative. Less well-known is that the world of statistics has an equivalent division. Bayesians are the Mac users of the stats world, where frequentists are the PC people. This book sets out to show why Bayesians are not just cool, but also mostly right. Tom Chivers does an excellent job of giving us some historical background, then dives into two key aspects of the use of statistics. These are in science, where the standard approach is frequentist and Bayes only creeps into a few specific applications, such as the accuracy of medical tests, and in decision theory where Bayes is dominant. If this all sounds very dry and unexciting, it's quite the reverse. I admit, I love probability and statistics, and I am something of a closet Bayesian*), but Chivers' light and entertaining style means that what could have been the mathematical equivalent of debating angels on
Post a Comment
Read more

Roger Highfield - Stephen Hawking: genius at work interview

Roger Highfield OBE is the Science Director of the Science Museum Group. Roger has visiting professorships at the Department of Chemistry, UCL, and at the Dunn School, University of Oxford, is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and a member of the Medical Research Council and Longitude Committee. He has written or co-authored ten popular science books, including two bestsellers. His latest title is Stephen Hawking: genius at work . Why science? There are three answers to this question, depending on context: Apollo; Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, along with the world’s worst nuclear accident at Chernobyl; and, finally, Nullius in verba . Growing up I enjoyed the sciencey side of TV programmes like Thunderbirds and The Avengers but became completely besotted when, in short trousers, I gazed up at the moon knowing that two astronauts had paid it a visit. As the Apollo programme unfolded, I became utterly obsessed. Today, more than half a century later, the moon landings are
Post a Comment
Read more

Deep Utopia - Nick Bostrom ***

This is one of the strangest sort-of popular science (or philosophy, or something or other) books I've ever read. If you can picture the impact of a cross between Douglas Hofstadter's  Gödel Escher Bach and Gaileo's Two New Sciences  (at least, its conversational structure), then thrown in a touch of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest , and you can get a feel for what the experience of reading it is like - bewildering with the feeling that there is something deep that you can never quite extract from it. Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom is probably best known in popular science for his book Superintelligence in which he looked at the implications of having artificial intelligence (AI) that goes beyond human capabilities. In a sense, Deep Utopia is a sequel, picking out one aspect of this speculation: what life would be like for us if technology had solved all our existential problems, while (in the form of superintelligence) it had also taken away much of our appare
Post a Comment
Read more