Ahead of British Science Week, we were delighted to welcome Andrew Hanson MBE from the National Physical Laboratory to the Senior School on Thursday 6th March. As Head of Outreach, Andrew has dedicated his career to promoting STEM, earning an MBE for services to science education.

His talk, “It’s All Science to Me”, explored how measurement has evolved over time and its critical role in everything we do—from everyday life to groundbreaking scientific advancements. Students from Year 7 to Year 11 attended a lunchtime session, while Sixth Formers enjoyed a dedicated afternoon session, both filled with fascinating insights and real-world applications.

After the talks, he sat down with Head of Science, Mrs Anne Farthing, to talk about embracing change and curiosity, the next frontiers of science and his advice for future scientists.

I am not exactly answering this question, but I will tell you a story about how we changed one direction of investigation into another. A scientist at NPL sent a time signal about 50 miles down a fibre optic. There was a jitter in the readings at pretty much the same time as my colleague received a WhatsApp message from his family in Italy to say that they had just had an earthquake. And from that time onwards this individual stopped being a clock signal specialist, and became an expert in using fibre optic cables all over the world to detect earthquakes and provide early warnings of tsunamis- something that had never been done before.

Science is all about answering questions. It’s not unusual for the answer to be completely different to that expected, and sometimes as scientists we have to swallow our pride and admit we were wrong. It’s bad ethics to report science as what we expect rather than what we observe. In fact most of science could be seen as a series of disproving previous theories. This might feel quite negative but is a continuous exciting voyage which can bring about remarkable benefits to medicine, engineering and quality of life along the way. It is a never ending voyage. We seem to need more scientists than ever before. NPL has almost doubled in size in the last 8 years at a time when you might think that all measurement science is done.

A really interesting question. I feel that a lot of chemistry was ‘done’ in the 19th century. Similarly physics in the 20th century, only now in the 21st century do we have the tools (microscopes, mass spectrometers, computing power…) to  investigate Biology. If Biology is your thing you were born at the right time. That said, there is some really interesting stuff being done in quantum science at the moment. Which, if it comes to fruition, will bring some science fiction into reality. In my lifetime I have seen the incredible (mobile phones) become disposable every-day tech. In your lifetimes I suspect you will be dazzled by whatever your generation develop.

Development of science and engineering is a step by step thing, so you have to have the technology to do the science. So it would be silly for me to say to someone ‘you should make solar panels’, before electricity was used. So I would say I would go back to Ancient Greece and say to Hero, don’t just show people the steam engine, do something with it! They had the technology, they did not use it. Where would we be technologically now if the steam engine was developed by the greeks rather than the victorians?

Think about the things you are passionate about – whether it is music, food, saving the planet or better childcare. And then ask yourself, how can I adapt scientific tools to improve these areas? Use your passions and make the world a better place.