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Scientists who are changing the way we understand the world tell 91av CultureLab their favourite places to seek inspiration and reflect

IT MAY be called , but the mixture of the bona fide and fantastical celebrated in the Culver City, California, venue makes it feel more like “a large installation artwork” to Alison Gopnik. “I’ve recently been exploring the links between the kinds of scientific imagination that enable us to construct radically new theories of the world and the kind of fertile fictive imagination that is ubiquitous in very young children’s pretend play. This museum perfectly captures that exploratory human drive we see so clearly in both young children and scientists.” is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley

“The Museum of Jurassic Technology captures the exploratory drive in both children and scientists”

Growing up in Brixton, south London, James Lovelock says the place that most influenced him was the city’s : “I think I learned more science there than anywhere else.” Farther from his childhood home, Lovelock has been hugely impressed by in Tokyo, Japan. When he last visited, “it had within it a most remarkable thing: a 6-metre-diameter sphere that was the surface of a television display”. Otherwise known as the , the huge orb enabled visitors to watch “the whole Earth displayed continuously in real time”. is an environmentalist and independent scientist

For Lisa Randall, the in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is worth visiting not only for the famous, botanically accurate created at the turn of the 20th century, but also because “the evolution and crystal exhibits are remarkable as well”. On the West Coast of the US, she says the in Pasadena, California, can’t be missed: “It’s small, see it all.” is a theoretical physicist at Harvard University

Of all of the cultural spaces the world over, for Tim Hunt one art museum stands apart: in Madrid, Spain. “I was just bowled over when I first went there,” he says. When he first wandered into the room of Diego Velázquez paintings, he says “there were tears welling up in my eyes”. Closer to home, Hunt adores the “wonderful, jiggledy jaggedly, higgledy-piggledy” collection at the at the University of Oxford – notably home to an assortment of shrunken heads. He also recalls how, as a teenager, he worked in the entomology department at the nearby Oxford University . It proved a “very good introduction for a young scientist”, he says – even if, on occasion, he would let a few locusts loose to see how far they could fly across the museum. is a Nobel prizewinning biochemist

Richard Fortey says he has “always loved” in Kew, London. “I remember as a child visiting their tropical house with the huge water lily Victoria amazonica. Recently I revisited, and there it still was, with vast, rimmed leaves like tea trays for giants. The massive buds were about to open. (It wasn’t the same plant, of course.) Nowhere else had quite made me think nature really is wonderful.” Richard Fortey has retired as senior palaeontologist at London’s Natural History Museum

For Freeman Dyson, London’s , “where I was free to wander as a teenager”, is the best of the bunch. He says that over the years, “two exhibits in particular caught my imagination. One was the collection of specimens of the chemical elements. The other was the lovingly constructed collection of models of semi-regular polyhedra and algebraic surfaces. I used to say in those days that I learned more real science at the museum than I ever learned in school.” is emeritus professor of physics at Princeton University

David Colquhoun, too, says his favourite place to go is most definitely London’s : “I vividly remember the childhood excitement of turning handles and pressing buttons just to see what would happen.” As a grown-up he says it has “a double pleasure. It is, of course, a wonderful window onto an evolving world where the borders between science and science fiction are constantly changing. But, in addition, I love spotting some of the very same machines and contraptions that were there when I visited all those years ago.”

David Colquhoun is a pharmacologist at University College London

“My favourite museum is the Oxford University ,” enthuses Alice Roberts. In particular, she is awed by the procession of animal skeletons marching down one side of the main hall. “I’m fascinated by comparative and evolutionary anatomy, and seeing these skeletons together means that you can easily compare bones and see the similarities and differences which reveal common ancestry and divergence. And I love the museum itself – its soaring roof, with steel pillars and girders decorated with wrought-iron foliage, based on real, not imagined, plants.” is director of anatomy for the UK’s NHS Severn Deanery School of Surgery

David Deutsch also cherishes the Oxford University , which he describes as being like a “secular cathedral”. When you walk in and look up, “it’s exactly the same sensation as going into a Gothic cathedral – except that this is a place trying very hard to celebrate something real. Though the Victorians had this reputation for being very uptight, the fact that they created this room and this celebration – which was contrary to the prevailing feelings of the majority of people at the time – is a tribute to their open-mindedness.” He also points out that it’s the building where, one summer Saturday in 1860, “Thomas Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce had their famous exchange about evolution”. is professor of physics at the University of Oxford

Semir Zeki tries never to miss an opportunity to visit an art gallery. Of the many spaces he has visited, he feels most attached to the in London. “I have been frequenting it for years and many of its paintings have now become old and well-loved friends,” he says. Though it’s difficult to pick a favourite part of the gallery, he says one painting he has spent a great deal of time in front of is Diego Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus. “Through a masterly arrangement of form and colour, the beautiful and the erotic, it gives Venus as well as the viewer a glimpse of the ideal – a fleeting moment captured on canvas.” It is one of the many artworks there that “provide rich material for aesthetic enjoyment and contemplation, and rich material, too, for thought about the brain and its workings”. is professor of neuroaesthetics at University College London

John P. Holdren has a long list of favourite venues, including the in London, the in New York, the in Berkeley, California, and the . But at the very top is the Smithsonian in Washington DC. What sets it apart, he says, is “its remarkably eclectic and evocative exhibits covering the co-evolution of the scientific, technological, economic, social and cultural aspects of this country’s story, right up to the present”. is director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

in New York is home to some of Paul Nurse’s cherished cultural corners. He says that he loves the Greek and Roman galleries in particular, “for the combination of beauty and history” they offer. is a Nobel prizewinning geneticist and current president of the UK’s Royal Society

– and especially the – is a favourite cultural haven for Frank Wilczek. Not only is it “physically beautiful”, but “it’s an extraordinary place for physicists because it’s where Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell were”. Another of his beloved spots is the Radiation Laboratory () at the . “Radar was developed and a lot of the ideas which eventually became modern communications technology, the internet and GPS all have their seeds in what was done at the Rad Lab,” he says. Unfortunately though, “MIT is not a very sentimental place and there is very little left”. is a Nobel laureate and physicist at MIT

“My favourite cultural site is any theatre in London’s West End,” says Steven Weinberg. “Whenever I am in one, I feel the way that I imagine religious people feel in church – I and the other members of the audience are participating in something over 400 years old and yet very much alive.” is a Nobel laureate and particle physicist at the University of Austin, Texas

Giving a lengthy list of favourite spots – from the in Chicago to the in Amsterdam, the Netherlands – is an easy task for Stan Williams. But when pressed, he says: “My favourite cultural venue is the National Mall in Washington DC. Of all the places to visit there, I enjoy the balcony at the most after a hectic day – it is quiet, reflective, has a great view over the Sculpture Garden and much of the Mall, and there is never anyone else there to break the mood.” is director of quantum science research at Hewlett-Packard

The point of museums is both to evoke wonder and educate, says V.S. Ramachandran, but too often “modern museums emphasise the latter at the expense of the former”. An exception to that is the “vast and astonishing array of anthropological curiosities from all over the world” at the in Oxford (he, too, finds the shrunken head collection fascinating). In San Francisco, Ramachandran adores the . “Every time I go there I feel like Alice escaping into the magical wonderland of science. The is my favourite. You crawl through this tube that twists and turns its way in 3D through several elevated intermediate chambers, exploring and groping your way around different textures and shapes – all in complete darkness. It allows you to rediscover the subtlety of your tactile senses,” he says. “And you are allowed to take a date.” is a neuroscientist and director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego

“The maze allows you to rediscover the subtlety of your tactile senses – and you can bring a date”

When John Beddington decided to shift his focus from economics to ecology some four decades ago, he made his way to the library at to start reading up. In the years since he has become a regular at the zoo – taking his children and now grandchildren along as well. But it is not only his history that makes it a beloved spot. “My interests are really to do with how we deal with the problems of the 21st century, and one of those is biodiversity,” he says. “Going to the zoo is a wonderful reminder of the enormous diversity of animal life, and that, if we don’t get our act together to address climate change and the depletion of habitats, some of these splendid creatures won’t be around.” is chief scientific adviser to the UK government