John Mather: On Reading and Writing
Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Mather offers advice to scientists about the importance of persuasion.
(Transcript) If you were to ask me how should a principal investigator prepare for life, I’d say, number one, read and write. Study reading and writing and communication because that’s the essence of how we get to do what we want to do. We might think that science and engineering are the essence. Well, they’re pretty important, but if you can’t convince anybody that what you want to do is the right thing, then you’re not going to get to do it. So there’s a certain degree of persuasion that’s required and we have to say what we’re after is really exciting, and even if we don’t know what we’re going to find, we know that it is really important, and this is why. (end)
Recorded at Masters with Masters Unexpected Insights.