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

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

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

Pagans (SF) - James Alistair Henry *****

There's a fascinating sub-genre of science fiction known as alternate history. The idea is that at some point in the past, history diverged from reality, resulting in a different present. Perhaps the most acclaimed of these books is Kingsley Amis's The Alteration , set in a modern England where there had not been a reformation - but James Alistair Henry arguably does even better by giving us a present where Britain is a third world country, still divided between Celts in the west and Saxons in the East. Neither the Normans nor Christianity have any significant impact. In itself this is a clever idea, but what makes it absolutely excellent is mixing in a police procedural murder mystery, where the investigation is being undertaken by a Celtic DI, Drustan, who has to work in London alongside Aedith, a Saxon reeve of equivalent rank, who also happens to be daughter of the Earl of Mercia. While you could argue about a few historical aspects, it's effectively done and has a plot...
Post a Comment
Read more

Amazing Worlds of Science Fiction and Science Fact: Keith Cooper ****

There's something appealing (for a reader like me) about a book that brings together science fiction and science fact. I had assumed that the 'Amazing Worlds' part of the title suggested a general overview of the interaction between the two, but Keith Cooper is being literal. This is an examination of exoplanets (planets that orbit a different star to the Sun) as pictured in science fiction and in our best current science, bearing in mind this is a field that is still in the early phases of development. It becomes obvious early on that Cooper, who is a science journalist in his day job, knows his stuff on the fiction side as well as the current science. Of course he brings in the well-known TV and movie tropes (we get a huge amount on Star Trek ), not to mention the likes of Dune, but his coverage of written science fiction goes into much wider picture. He also has consulted some well-known contemporary SF writers such as Alastair Reynolds and Paul McAuley, not just scient...
Post a Comment
Read more