What Are Scientists?
A scientist is a professional who conducts and gathers research to further knowledge in a particular area. Scientists may make hypotheses, test them through various means such as statistics and data and formulate conclusions based on the evidence. There are several types of scientists and nearly every industry requires the knowledge and research performed by these professionals.
The word scientist is a general term, used to describe someone who researches and examines various aspects of the physical world in order to attain a better understanding of how things work and function.
There are many specializations of ‘scientists’, and depending on which field of study one chooses to follow, the work can vary greatly. Each scientist, however, follows ‘the scientific method’, which is a strict set of rules that ensure all new discoveries are factual and not just speculation.
How Many Scientists In South Africa?
Aaron Klug
Sir Aaron Klug (11 August 1926 – 20 November 2018) was a Lithuanian-born, South African-educated, British biophysicist, and winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his development of crystallographic electron microscopy and his structural elucidation of biologically important nucleic acid-protein complexes.
- Age: 97
- Birthplace: Lithuania
Abraham Manie Adelstein
Abraham Manie “Abe” Adelstein (28 March 1916 – 18 October 1992) was a South African-born doctor who became the United Kingdom’s Chief Medical Statistician.
Anthony Segal
Anthony Walter Segal FRS FMedSci (born 24 February 1944) is a British physician/scientist.
Basil S. Yamey
Basil S. Yamey, CBE is a South African economist. He was born in Cape Town in South Africa and educated at the University of Cape Town. For many years he was a Professor at the London School of Economics. He was a part-time member of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from 1966 to 1978, and author of many books and articles, including one on the economics of underdeveloped countries co-authored with Peter Thomas Bauer. Yamey’s interest in rational economic decision-making led him to study historical accounting records. Yamey rejected the claim by Werner Sombart that the double-entry bookkeeping system was a pre-condition, or at least an important stimulating factor, for the emergence of modern capitalism. Yamey combined his interest in Accounting History with his love of art in his book Art & Accounting, a richly-illustrated survey of paintings portraying commercial scenes and business people.
Eugène Marais
Eugène Nielen Marais (; 9 January 1871 – 29 March 1936) was a South African lawyer, naturalist, poet, and writer. He has been hailed as an intellectual genius and an Afrikaner hero.
Frank Nabarro
Frank Reginald Nunes Nabarro MBE OMS FRS (7 March 1916 – 20 July 2006) was an English-born South African physicist and one of the pioneers of solid-state physics, which underpins much of 21st-century technology.
Isaac Schapera
Isaac Schapera was a social anthropologist at the London School of Economics specializing in South Africa. He was notable for his contributions to ethnographic and typological studies of the indigenous peoples of Botswana and South Africa. Additionally, he was one of the founders of the group that would develop British social anthropology. Not only did Schapera write numerous publications of his extensive research done in South Africa and Botswana, he published his work throughout his career, and even after he retired. As an anthropologist, he focused on the lives and customs of the indigenous tribesmen of South Africa and was considered to be a specialist in the topic.
Jack Suchet
Jack Suchet Is a South African-born English consultant obstetrician and gynecologist, who carried out research on the use of penicillin in the treatment of venereal disease with Sir Alexander Fleming in London. He was the father of newsreader John Suchet and actor David Suchet.
Lewis Wolpert
Lewis Wolpert CBE FRS FRSL FMedSci Is a South African-born British developmental biologist, author, and broadcaster. Wolpert is recognized for his work on the intracellular positional information that guides cellular development. In addition, he has published several popular science books.
Max Gluckman
Herman Max Gluckman was a South African and British social anthropologist. He is best known as the founder of the Manchester School of Anthropology.
Roland Levinsky
Professor Roland Levinsky was an academic researcher in biomedicine and a university senior manager. His last post, which he held at the time of his death, was as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Plymouth in the United Kingdom. He was born in South Africa to Jewish parents. His father emigrated from the Lithuania/Poland area to South Africa to escape persecution; many of his relatives died in Nazi-German death camps.
Stanley Mandelstam
Stanley Mandelstam was an American theoretical physicist. He introduced the relativistically invariant Mandelstam variables into particle physics in 1958 as a convenient coordinate system for formulating his double dispersion relations. The double dispersion relations were a central tool in the bootstrap program which sought to formulate a consistent theory of infinitely many particle types of increasing spin.
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work on the genetic code, and other areas of molecular biology while working in the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory.
Sydney Cohen
Sydney Cohen was a Professor of Chemical Pathology, at Guy’s Hospital Medical School, and an authority on malaria. He was educated at King Edward VII School, Johannesburg, and at Witwatersrand and London universities. Although of service age, he did not serve in World War II. His son, Roger Cohen, is a columnist for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune.
What Do Scientists Do?
Scientists aim to find measurable data through various analysis and testing methods. The most commonly used method in science is the scientific method. This procedure is used to amass measurable evidence based on a hypothesis.
The steps a scientist may take throughout the scientific method include:
- Making an observation
- Asking questions related to the observation
- Gathering information related to the observation
- Creating a hypothesis that describes assumptions of the observation and makes a prediction
- Testing the hypothesis through a systematic approach that can be recreated
- Analyzing the data drawn from the testing and modifying, accepting or rejecting the original hypothesis
- Replicating the test until the observations and theory align
This process can be completed in nearly every scientific situation. For example, a developer scientist may form a hypothesis related to changing human behavior and continue to test this theory until it is either proven or disproved. The only difference between how the scientific method is used is the means and industry in which it is performed.