Penny Sackett took up her position as Australia’s Chief Scientist in November 2008. Penny is a physicist, having completed her PhD (titled ‘Scale parameters for finite temperature actions of lattice gauge theories coupled to fermions’) at the University of Pittsburgh. Her professional work has been as an astronomer, and her personal research interests include dark matter, galactic structure, and extrasolar planets.
Penny is also an educator and science communicator, and a great advocate of science as a career for secondary school students. Throughout her career she has fostered cross-disciplinary science and in her role as Chief Scientist she is well placed to see where physics fits into the broader community..
She spoke on this at the AIP 2008 Congress, in a talk titled ‘Why physics is important to Australia (and vice versa)’. In this talk she gave us her thoughts on the importance of physics to Australia, its people, and its future - and the role of scientists in an increasingly global society.
Talking to an audience of physicists, Penny felt that she did not need to labour the importance of doing physics, whether it is research driven by curiosity, which might only lead to unanticipated benefits many years later, or research focussed on providing solutions to immediate problems. Also, the areas in which physics is needed today are obvious, including the exhaustion of fossil fuels, climate change and nanotechnology..
Yet, why are scientists becoming in ever more short supply? Why are MBAs rated more highly than PhDs in some quarters?.
Penny’s take home message was that the more physicists interact with the world outside of physics, the more influence physics will have in the broader community (and vice versa). She was pleased to see from the Congress that the physics presented covered a wide range of topics; that physics was interfacing with all questions of how the universe works and why..
Follow the link to read her speech in full.
Penny is also an educator and science communicator, and a great advocate of science as a career for secondary school students. Throughout her career she has fostered cross-disciplinary science and in her role as Chief Scientist she is well placed to see where physics fits into the broader community..
She spoke on this at the AIP 2008 Congress, in a talk titled ‘Why physics is important to Australia (and vice versa)’. In this talk she gave us her thoughts on the importance of physics to Australia, its people, and its future - and the role of scientists in an increasingly global society.
Talking to an audience of physicists, Penny felt that she did not need to labour the importance of doing physics, whether it is research driven by curiosity, which might only lead to unanticipated benefits many years later, or research focussed on providing solutions to immediate problems. Also, the areas in which physics is needed today are obvious, including the exhaustion of fossil fuels, climate change and nanotechnology..
Yet, why are scientists becoming in ever more short supply? Why are MBAs rated more highly than PhDs in some quarters?.
Penny’s take home message was that the more physicists interact with the world outside of physics, the more influence physics will have in the broader community (and vice versa). She was pleased to see from the Congress that the physics presented covered a wide range of topics; that physics was interfacing with all questions of how the universe works and why..
Follow the link to read her speech in full.
