Nobelist Elizabeth Blackburn Talks to High-Schoolers on Her Take on Life as a Scientist. (June 14, 2012)

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 "for the discovery of how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase" Elizabeth Blackburn is in Sydney and today she was talking to high school students at Sydney's Garvan Institute.

She told them: "We sometimes think science education should be all about being very deep and I totally agree with that: that immersion into the depths of something, that's how you can really understand it and make progress in it," but she added you've got to have balance in your life.

She continued: "In high school it was really important for the rest of my life to have had poetry and English, social studies and French; that has been immensely important... The goal isn't to convert every single person into a scientist. It's to promote curiosity and interest, then the educational process will provide much more systematic ways of making sure people develop those abilities." And specific to her life Professor Blackburn sees herself as "an example of somebody who has loved doing science, is happy doing it, and [wants] to convey that it is something that is both interesting in itself and can give you lots of joy as a profession and a career."

But she also told The Australian's Jill Rowbotham: "I look with huge concern at my more junior colleagues who feel very challenged because I think . . . we haven't really been imaginative about finding ways to keep well-trained women in science for the long haul."