• Question: apart from science, what qualifications do you need to be a qualified scientist?

    Asked by epearson to Damien, Rachael, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @epearson
      It all depends on what kind of science you do. For me, maths and biology were all I needed, but some people don’t need maths, and a physicist wouldn’t need biology, for example. What kind of science are you interested in?

      Hope this helps 🙂

    • Photo: Rachael Ward

      Rachael Ward answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hello,

      Like Suzi says, it depends on what science you want to do. I did Biology, Chemistry and French for my A-levels so no physics or maths and I did neuroscience at university.

      I’d say make sure you do what you like as it makes it a lot easier to study when youre interested in it!

    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 14 Jun 2011:

      Hi @epearson

      I agree with Suzi and Rachael – it depends on what science you want to do. There is no real qualification to be a scientist. A PhD is generally seen as the qualification that most scientists get to show that they can do well designed experiments to answer new questions. During a PhD you have someone with much more experience to supervise your work, but even when you have finished your PhD you never stop learning how to do better research.

      I hope that answers your question.

    • Photo: Damien Hall

      Damien Hall answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      I’m an example of someone who is a scientist but doesn’t really work on things they learnt in science lessons! I’ve never even actually had a biology lesson – not one. I’m a language scientist, so the most important school lessons for me in the kind of science I do were French, English and Maths (because I use a lot of maths to try and prove whether the things I find out are significant discoveries or not – that’s called statistics).

      I reckon that at this stage, the most important thing you need to worry about is doing what you are interested in. The time when you might worry about what qualifications you need for a certain career will come later! The kind of science I do is called linguistics, but I didn’t find out that I wanted to be a language scientist as my career until I was already at University. I had gone to University just to study French and Latin, not linguistics – but luckily I had also studied the maths I needed when I was at school, only because it was compulsory …

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