The Australian physicist on why research is an investment, forgotten female scientists, and the impact of the Ukraine war on science
Born in Australia in 1984, Dr Suzie Sheehy is an accelerator physicist who runs research groups at the universities of Oxford and Melbourne, where she is developing new particle accelerators for applications in medicine. As a science communicator, she received the Lord Kelvin award in 2010 for presenting science to school and public audiences. Her first book is The Matter of Everything: Twelve Experiments that Changed Our World.
How did you first become interested in physics?
At university [in Melbourne], when I was studying engineering with science on the side, I started asking questions in my lectures, and I remember one [physics] lecturer saying, “Oh, we don’t know the answer to that.” And I thought, how is it possible that I, aged 19, can ask a question that nobody has ever asked before? Suddenly engineering seemed a little more boring and physics a little more exciting.
