In Practice: What ingredients make the best physicists?

In Practice: What ingredients make the best physicists?

CERN’s main restaurant, imaginatively named Restaurant 1, is a vital part of the life of any physicist on the campus.
At any moment — weekends and nights included — you’ll find groups of young, enthusiastic students chattering animatedly about their work, or individuals hunched over laptops, clutching coffee and wearing huge headphones. Sat on the end of one of these high, long tables discussing what makes a successful physicist, Dr Anne- Marie Magnan giggles: “For a while I was interested in philosophy but I think it was just because I had a crush on the teacher… I quickly went back to physics!”
“Opportunities came up, I was interested so I applied and got them.
For me, it was physics from early on.” She explains that being able to change direction, and be open to what life throws at you is, she believes, key to being a good experimental physicist.
“Sometimes the best physicist is one that’s able to take us in a new direction, to see a new way where you might be more successful,” she continues.
Magnan now works for CERN’s CMS experiment and supervises several of the collaboration’s budding young scientists.
“The absolute best physicists I’ve ever seen are people who are very good at building on what they know by seeing a way to change it slightly and finding a new path,” she explains.

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