PhD Inspiration - Simon Singh MBE

Considering a PhD, but wondering what you'll actually get out of it? We've sat down with some of the UK's top academics to hear their experiences and thoughts on postgraduate study. Simon Singh MBE is a popular science writer and author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets. Here he shares some advice for new students.

Video Transcipt

Why did you choose to do a PhD?

From a very young age I wanted to be a scientist and so at school I did Maths, Physics, Chemistry A-Levels and then at university I did a degree in Physics. It felt very natural to then do a PhD in Particle Physics, again. That’s the type of Physics that appealed to me, so it was a really natural decision for me and I didn’t really give it a second thought.

What did you get out of doing a PhD?

I learnt a lot of Physics out of my PhD, but in hindsight I learnt a lot of other things. Gosh, I learnt about developing stamina for big problems, determination. I was working as part of a very large team so again, team working. I learnt about how to motivate myself when I got kind of depressed sometimes about how difficult things were.

I learnt French, part of my PhD involved living in Geneva for a couple of years. We were dealing with budgets, so I learnt a bit about managing the finances of what I was doing. So there are a ton of skills that I learnt during my PhD and that everyone learns during their PhD that go beyond the Physics or the Chemistry or the Biology.

Why should people do a PhD?

I think you should only do a PhD if you genuinely, desperately want to do it. If you are um’ing and ah’ing about it, go do something else. This kind of age, whatever it is that you do, you should do it because you are passionate about it. If you are passionate about doing a PhD, OK: then you need to find the right PhD, with the right supervisor, doing the right sort of research. But those are secondary. The first thing is, do you really want to spend three more years, maybe four more years, of your life actively involved with a particular bit of science that’s going to be your be all and end all?

What is your top PhD tip?

I think when I was doing my PhD, I was convinced I would go on and do a PostDoc and then I would go on and on and on and be a scientist, and for some people that is their best route. For me, about six months before I finished my PhD, I suppose when I was starting to write up, I could see people who were brighter and quicker and sharper than me and they were gonna be the people who would become serious researchers and I was probably gonna be better off finding something else.

So the challenge was, what am I good at? What do I love doing? What have I learnt during my PhD? What can I do to keeps me close to science - because I still loved science? What makes me a bit different? What can I do that other people can’t do? I put all those things together and so I moved from a PhD into working in television, I started making films for the BBC - first short films and then longer films - and then I moved from Television into writing and from writing into all sorts of other things.

I suppose my top tip would be: when you get towards the end of your PhD think about, do you want to pursue this further? If you do, fantastic and that’s great. If you don’t, think about all the amazing things you’ve learned and the other amazing opportunities that are out there because that decision that you’ll make in your final year of writing up will be pivotal and so just think about what you could do with the rest of your life...