• Question: Do you think that the money which you invest for your study, would later pay Great Britain back or perhaps the world in powering cars?

    Asked by dsajjad to Will on 13 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: William Eborall

      William Eborall answered on 13 Jun 2011:

      Hi dsajjad. That’s quite a hard question to answer.

      I’ll try and answer it by giving you an example. In 1869 a German man discovered something which would turn out to be the electron. At the time he didn’t know what it was, or what it could do. After his discovery people began to study them in more detail, each person doing their work because it was interesting to them. By 1897 someone had found that if you fire electrons at a screen they would make light. 37 years later the first television was made which relied entirely on what we had found out about televisions in order to work.

      My point is that even if your research does not change the world, or doesn’t solve a problem straight away, it doesn’t mean that it won’t. It isn’t possible to know what your research will lead to in the future or what the value of this is.

      I hope that answers your question.

Comments

  • Photo: James

    James commented on :

    Like most scientists, this is a question I need to answer every time I apply for funds to the UK research council to continue my research. The research council supports fundamental research using tax payers money, so we do need to have an impact. It can be difficult sometimes to describe the path from the research to real impact (i.e. will this research change the world), because many steps and collaborators are involved. But we should still ask ourselves that question.

    A famous scientist (I forget who) once said we “stand on the shoulders of giants”. He meant that many combined efforts are needed to make a real breakthough.

    On a more pragmatic level – if the time a power station is switched off is increased for even one day because of uncertainty in whether a crack might have developed in a component, that costs £100,000’s a day in lost energy generation. The same applies to things like oil rigs too. If my work can affect this by only the slightest bit, then I’m well worth the investment!