It’s quite a shame that we don’t know more scientists by name.  However, unlike pop-stars, politicians and even economists, we know very few scientists by name.  The ones we tend to know are the ones that massively changed how we view the world.  Such is the extent of the contribution that must be made by a scientist before we actually get to remember their names.

We know Darwin, Einstein and Marie Curie.  Perhaps we know a few more.  Some might know Linus Pauling (the only person to be awarded two unshared Nobel prizes), but unless they write popular books (ala Dawkins, Hawking and so on), we usually don’t know who discovered what.

Even when we know their names, we often know very little apart from the fact that Darwin *somehow* came up with the theory of evolution and Einstein has a formula about light.  Marie Curie did something with radiation and it killed her.

This is a pity, but not surprising to be honest.  Often scientists find the whole process of science and discovery to be much more interesting than science communication and indeed often they are not the most fluent of communicators.  Often they simply don’t have the connections to get their message out there and nowadays scientists specialise so very much that it is unlikely that somebody will be able to hold an audience for very long with their tales of proteins that stick out of of membrane or whatever.

So, we don’t know a whole lot of scientists.

…and it is a pity ‘cos we are really interesting. ha ha.