A life in science: from academia to industry and back.

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• Sir Peter Williams from The Royal Society
• Thursday 25 October 2012, 14:30-15:30
• Part II Room, Department of Genetics.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Caroline Newnham.

In the present era, every young scientist, regardless of discipline, must be wondering how the future will evolve in terms of personal opportunity in the face of austerity and mounting economic stress in the major nations of the world. Research in the UK has in fact fared well in the past decade or so, though concerns remain, especially in view of the likely postponement of the Government’s spending review until after the next general election. But the good news is that there is nothing new in all this – history does indeed repeat itself! My own career spanned the ‘oil shock’ in major economies in the 1970’s, the Thatcherite revolution of the early 1980’s, ‘Black Wednesday’ in 1992 in the Major era, the ‘Dot Com’ bust of 2000 and so forth. All these recessions called into question the affordable level of public funding, but science survived and prospered. However for me, economic austerity prompted a different personal response and I left academia aged 30 in 1975 to put my scientific skills to the altogether different test of industry. From surface science to the birth of the MRI scanner, from Japan to the Antarctic, it has been an interesting journey. It has also taken me full circle back to academia, with excursions advising government along the way.

This talk is part of the Genetics Seminar series.

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