Skip to main content

Sharon Ann Holgate - five way interview

Former Young Professional Physicist of the Year, Sharon Ann Holgate has a doctorate in experimental physics and has worked for the past twenty-five years as a freelance science writer and broadcaster. She has presented on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service, and written for newspapers and magazines including Science, New Scientist and The Times Higher Education Supplement. She was co-author of The Way Science Works, a children’s popular science book shortlisted for the 2003 Junior Prize in the Aventis Prizes for Science Books, and has written four undergraduate physics textbooks. She also contributed to the popular science books 30-Second Quantum Theory and 30-Second Energy. In 2022 Sharon Ann won the Institute of Physics’ William Thomson, Lord Kelvin Medal and Prize 'for work in communicating science to a wide variety of audiences and for positive representations of scientists from non-traditional backgrounds'. Her latest book is Nuclear Fusion: The Race to Build a Mini-Sun on Earth. 

Why science?

I didn’t realise it at the time, but it was actually watching an episode of Fingerbobs as a 4-year-old child that inspired my interest in science. Crow wanted a drink but couldn’t reach the water in the bottom of a large beaker, so he began dropping in pebbles until the water level rose enough for him to sip it. I can remember dragging my Mum into the garden to collect some stones and then to the kitchen to find a jug so that we could repeat what I had just seen. I was absolutely transfixed by the water rising! 

Why this book? 

The climate emergency is one of the biggest challenges the world has ever faced. So the seeking of new, clean forms of electricity generation that would reduce our reliance on fossil fuels is an important and exciting topic to write about.  The history of fusion research is also fascinating: I particularly enjoyed learning about the 1950s machines such as the quirkily named Perhapsatron and the sci-fi sounding Hydromagnetic Plasma Gun. Discovering more about the ITER project in southern France and the work taking place at the National Ignition Facility in the United States was equally engrossing, as was interviewing scientists and engineers from the private companies currently building and testing a range of different fusion technologies.   

What date would you put on nuclear fusion power stations going live, and why then?

A few years after a commercially viable fusion technology has been perfected. Recent fusion history has shown that there is no point in trying to estimate a specific date. As with any developing area of science, fusion research is a process of discovery so you can’t necessarily achieve a definite aim within a set time frame. 

What’s next? 

Promoting my forthcoming book Communicating Science Clearly: A Self-Help Guide for Students and Researchers. Then, as a follow-on from winning the Lord Kelvin Medal, I am hoping to be able to use my experiences as a person with a physical disability to help encourage students from diverse backgrounds to enter science. 

What’s exciting you at the moment? 

Some of the recent advances in materials science and technology have certainly caught my eye. For instance the next generation of solar cells contain a layer of perovskite which makes them more efficient at converting sunlight into electricity. Also, who would have thought people would be walking around in trainers made from fungi!


 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Govert Schilling - Five Way Interview

Govert Schilling is an acclaimed and prize-winning freelance astronomy writer and broadcaster in the Netherlands. His articles appear in Dutch newspapers and magazines, but he also has written for New Scientist, Science and BBC Sky at Night Magazine, and he is a contributing editor of Sky & Telescope. He wrote dozens of books (including a couple of children’s books) on a wide variety of astronomical topics, many of which have been translated into English, German, Italian, and Chinese, among other languages. In 2007, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) named asteroid 10986 Govert after him, and in 2014, he received the David N. Schramm Award for high-energy astrophysics science journalism from the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.His latest book is Target Earth . Why science? We live in troubling times. Fake news and conspiracy theories abound, and trust in science is diminishing. Many adults don't seem to realize that almost everythi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...
Post a Comment
Read more