Not ‘clever enough’ to be a scientist? Nonsense.

Science isn’t about knowing stuff or learning answers – it’s about finding things out and asking questions. Suze Kundu, a nanochemist and teaching fellow at the University of Surrey, agrees that the message that brains are the only thing that matter for being a successful scientist isn’t true. ‘To be a good scientist you need to be curious and you need to learn from someone that speaks your language. Nothing that we do as scientists is so technical, complicated or advanced that we can’t teach someone else about it using the right analogies. If we think that, we simply can’t teach well enough, and we need to find ways of communicating our work better.’