Susan Greenfield was incredibly easy to talk to. From the wide range of topics we covered in fifteen minutes it was obvious she is used to connecting with people effectively to share her ideas – I haven’t even included everything we discussed here.

On the issue of women in science, Greenfield admitted she would inevitably make ‘sweeping generalisations’, but clearly had plenty to say. She said the relative lack of female interest in the physical sciences starts at school-level; ‘school-girls find it hard to relate to the physical sciences’. I asked why she thought this was the case, ‘there aren’t enough role-models for women in science…the stereotypical scientist is the white-haired man with a chalk at the blackboard’. She did also argue that it was as much to do with how women view themselves though, ‘girls often have the idea that they have to be interested in people’, and that there’s no simple solution because our culture is a major cause of these gender-preferences.

When she was explaining about complications for female scientists at the professional level, I asked if juggling family interests and a career was a problem of particular significance in science; ‘Yes it is. With certain professions, you can come back to them more easily…but in science you have to be producing papers regularly to get grants, and the time at which a woman would be having a child is at a time in her career where there is maximal competition’.

I wanted to know where she felt the most responsibility lay on the issue of the communication of scientific ideas to the public. Should scientists make more of an effort to communicate, or should the public be more willing to find out what going on in the laboratories? She recognised the need for science to be ‘central’, saying, ‘increasingly science touches our lives in so many ways…it shouldn’t be the province of the nerdy’, but wasn’t suggesting the public are obliged to be the active ones; ‘not after a hard day’s work!’.

For her, it’s about creating a system through which scientists can branch out. She even detailed the way she’d do it; ‘Take this lecture theatre, it’s probably empty in the evening. It could be used by a local scientist to give a talk to the public’. People would pay for the lectures, so the enterprise would be fiscally neutral. Lecturers may have less time for undergraduate teaching, but ultimately their lecturing style would improve through having to make their subject interesting and understandable to an unspecialised audience.

Scientists are not often thought of as fluid communicators, but Susan Greenfield evidently is. Her policy for improving the abilities of others shows she knows it comes about through practice. Maybe, if we take her advice we’ll all be attending scientific lectures before our evening meal. 

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