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A practical guide to a successful scientific career, including creativity and problem-solving techniques to enhance research quality and output.
Understanding the fundamentals of conducting good science, that will have an impact, is the goal of every aspiring scientist. Providing a wealth of tips, How to be a Better Scientist is the book to read if you want to succeed in this competitive field. Helping readers gain an insight into what good science means and how to conduct it, this book is ideal to read cover-to-cover or dip into. It includes easily accessible guidance on topics such as: • What characteristics should a scientist have? • Understanding the hypothesis • Integrity in science • Lack of confidence and the embarrassment factor • Time management • Coping with rejection • Interacting with the science community With its broad focus, this friendly guide will enthuse, inspire and challenge, and is an essential companion for all aspiring scientists.
This unique, practical guide for postdoctoral researchers and graduate students explains how to build and perfect the necessary research tools and working skills to build a career in academia and beyond. It is based on successful training workshops run by the authors: first, it describes the tools needed for independent research, from writing papers to applying for academic jobs; it then introduces skills to thrive in a new job, including managing and interacting with others, designing a taught course and giving a good lecture; and it concludes with a section on managing your career, from how to manage stress to understanding the higher education system. Packed with helpful features encouraging readers to apply the theory to their individual situation, the book is also illustrated throughout with real-world case studies to enable readers to learn from others' experience. It is a vital handbook for everyone seeking to make a successful scientific career.
"So You Want To Be a Scientist? offers the reader a glimpse into the job of being a research scientist."--Page 4 of cover.
What is an effective scientist? One who is successful by quantifiable standards, with many publications, citations, and students supervised? Yes, but there is much more. Truly effective scientists need to have influence beyond academia, usefully applying and marketing their research to non-scientists. This book therefore takes an all-encompassing approach to improving the scientist's career. It begins by focusing on writing and publishing - a scientist's most important weapon in the academic arsenal. Part two covers the numerical and financial aspects of being an effective scientist, and Part three focuses on running a lab effectively. The book concludes by discussing the more entertaining and philosophical aspects of being an effective scientist. Little of this material is taught in university, but developing these skills is vital to maximize the chance of being effective. Written by a scientist for scientists, this practical and entertaining book is a must-read for every early career-scientist, regardless of specialty.
Throughout the history of the Western world, science has possessed an extraordinary amount of authority and prestige. And while its pedestal has been jostled by numerous evolutions and revolutions, science has always managed to maintain its stronghold as the knowing enterprise that explains how the natural world works: we treat such legendary scientists as Galileo, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein with admiration and reverence because they offer profound and sustaining insight into the meaning of the universe. In The Intelligibility of Nature, Peter Dear considers how science as such has evolved and how it has marshaled itself to make sense of the world. His intellectual journey begins with a crucial observation: that the enterprise of science is, and has been, directed toward two distinct but frequently conflated ends—doing and knowing. The ancient Greeks developed this distinction of value between craft on the one hand and understanding on the other, and according to Dear, that distinction has survived to shape attitudes toward science ever since. Teasing out this tension between doing and knowing during key episodes in the history of science—mechanical philosophy and Newtonian gravitation, elective affinities and the chemical revolution, enlightened natural history and taxonomy, evolutionary biology, the dynamical theory of electromagnetism, and quantum theory—Dear reveals how the two principles became formalized into a single enterprise, science, that would be carried out by a new kind of person, the scientist. Finely nuanced and elegantly conceived, The Intelligibility of Nature will be essential reading for aficionados and historians of science alike.
Scientific research requires both innovation and attention to detail, clever breakthroughs and routine procedures. This indispensable guide gives students and researchers across all scientific disciplines practical advice on how to succeed. All types of scientific careers are discussed, from those in industry and academia to consulting, with emphasis on how scientists spend their time and the skills that are needed to be productive. Strategic thinking, creativity and problem-solving, the central keys to success in research, are all explored. The reader is shown how to enhance the creative process in science, how one goes about making discoveries, putting together the solution to a complex problem and then testing the solution obtained. The social dimension of science is also discussed from the development and execution of a scientific research program to publishing papers, as well as issues of ethics and science policy.
Being a Scientist is an innovative text designed to help undergraduate students become members of the scientific community.
To those interested in a life in science, Sir Peter Medawar, Nobel laureate, deflates the myths of invincibility, superiority, and genius; instead, he demonstrates it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the scientist's calling. He deflates the myths surrounding scientists -- invincibility, superiority, and genius; instead, he argues that it is common sense and an inquiring mind that are essential to the makeup of a scientist. He delivers many wry observations on how to choose a research topic, how to get along wih collaborators and older scientists and administrators, how (and how not) to present a scientific paper, and how to cope with culturally "superior" specialists in the arts and humanities.
Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation. Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.
