Bringing Science to Life: Athene, Athena, Imposters and a lot of Smarts

Someone says, 'Think of a physicist!' and what comes to mind? What stereotypes come flooding in? Brilliant, yes. Good communicator? Probably not. We're not meant to be a fan of words, us sciencey engineery types (mmm, irony). But it's a good thing that this is not always the case.

Athene Donald, DBE, FRS, Professor of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, is not only a world-renowned physicist, an early adopter of the art of the multidisciplinary (she was a founding chair of the Institute of Physics Biological Physics Group), but is also one of the great scientific communicators. Alongside a fairly stunning academic career she has written for the Guardian and Physics Focus as well as her own extensive and multifaceted blog discussing and ruminating on topics ranging from Neuroscience to Equality. I imagine as a lecturer that she is one of those rare academics who are both proficient at their research and able to teach; each of these skills is wonderfully valuable in their own right but it is unusual for someone to possess them both.

But what I find most inspiring about this incredible penseuse is the refreshing fact that she is as active as she is prolific. Not only is she a Fellow of the Royal Society but she has chaired their Education Committee and is working for an improved scientific education (see for example here and here); not only does she write about public engagement but the list of talks given on her CV is both enormous and diverse including subjects of pure science, outreach and careers, school education and diversity itself; and not only is she a prominent voice for women in science and engineering but she is active in increasing their numbers in her role as the University of Cambridge's Gender Equality Champion and until last year Chair of the Athena Forum and a member of the Equality and Diversity Advisory Network of the Royal Society...the list goes on! And as the first female lecturer in her department and first female professor in physical sciences at the University of Cambridge, it is no wonder she is so active in this field.

So many achievements listed already and we have yet to really get to her actual scientific research. Donald was one of the first to apply condensed matter physics to the 'messy world of food and biology'. As she relates to Prof. Jim Al-Khalili on his inspiring Radio 4 program Life Scientific, when she first postulated combining the two subjects she found it very hard to be taken seriously. Before long, however, she proved it a worthwhile endeavour and contributed to making an entire new field of research 'more respectable for physicists' as well as pushing electron microscopy to new limits. The applications of her work range from food processing and the study of disease to work with the Diamond synchrotron science research facility.

What am I doing here?

And yet, even someone with as many strings to their bow and a list of achievements of value to society longer their arm as Donald, she is a self-confessed sufferer of 'Imposter Syndrome' as described in her blog entry linked above. If you've ever had the feeling that you're not quite good enough to be doing what you are, that you're only there because no-one's yet noticed and it's only a matter of time before they find you out - then you are not alone. Many people in senior and specialised positions, academic or otherwise, admit to experiencing such a phenomenon - and many more, it is most likely, experience it but do not admit it.

It has been suggested that there is a tendency of women towards this attitude of underestimating oneself and one of men towards overestimating, for example in the study described here, and that this tendency is one of the causes for the vast gender gap that exists in senior academic positions. Academia, obsessed, as it often becomes, with metrics, competing for numbers of citations in a world driven by self-promotion, would certainly seem to lean towards such a personality which may be less common in women than in men. However, projects like the Meaning of Success, which celebrates the lives of 26 successful female academics from the University of Cambridge alone, are just one of many such ventures out there to show that it is by no means an insurmountable barrier to women working for a career in science.

The Smart Thing

Creating a society in which such barriers no longer exist is vital to the development of science, technology, engineering and, in one way or another, every single person. More and more studies are showing that gender balance and, of course, statistical representation of all marginalised groups, improves not only the well-being of the individuals but the productivity of the group; more diverse groups are more intelligent groups (see results from work at MIT).

As both Donald and Professor Curt Rice propounded at the annual Campbell lecture at the University of Southampton earlier this year, gender balance is not only the 'right' thing to do (given that 'right' and 'wrong' are highly subjective and can be discussed indefinitely) but it's the smart thing to do, which can be qualified and proven. That's what drove Rice to lead a campaign that increased the number of female full professors at his own University of Tromsø from 4% to nearly 30% in a very impressive program of development. That's right, gender equality being pioneered by (shock! horror!) a man...

However, in order for the embracing of equality and diversity in such a way to become the norm, we must work to conquer the complex and generally unseen problem of implicit or unconscious bias. It affects us all (see how much it affects you here) and mostly without us knowing, as studies such as this employability study from Yale University (also discussed here) shows, but this doesn't make it 'natural' and it is in no way acceptable; the consequences, as we know, are far-reaching and hugely detrimental.

Dame Professor Athene Donald, named after the symbolic personification of wisdom in the society attributed as the birthplace of modern science, not only overcame all these barriers to become a brilliant, pioneering and unstereotypically eloquent physicist; but is now using her many skills and talents to ensure that the barriers are lowered for future generations.