The Woman Scientific

What is beauty? This is the first of a series of blog entries with the following sub-title: "How do I convince my 12-year old daughter that scientists are not all nerds without any sense of fashion (her words, no offence meant)"? Ever since she made that comment, I have been meaning to write on this topic. Here's my first attempt. Recently I came across a TED talk by Dr Anjan Chatterjee entitled "How your brain decide what is beautiful" . Dr Chatterjee makes a convincing case for a Darwinian theory of beauty (which I will refer from now on as canonical beauty) based on three main cardinal points: averaging, symmetry and level of hormones. According to this theory, features that are attractive are those that are most likely sought and passed on from one generation to the next by natural (sexual) selection. Moreover, the human brain has evolved into paying beauty a lot of attention, even at the unconscious level. According to Dr Chatterjee, when a random set ...

I have been recently asked by a colleague to talk to a young woman who is deciding whether to choose environmental sciences for her university degree. This is what he wrote to me: "Hi Angela I have a favour to ask! My God-daughter is interested in pursuing study (and a career) in some aspects of environmental / climate science and has to make some university course decisions later this year. I am going to bring her to ECMWF on Monday so she can see what we do here, but I would also really like her to meet and have a very quick chat with some inspirational females already working in different aspects of our field (she thinks science is all boys!). Is there any chance you might be available to spend just 10 minutes with her and explain what you do and the path that led you here ?" I accepted very gladly. First of all, he had ingratiated me with calling me "inspirational". Second, I thought this was a great opportunity ...