What inspires you to learn?

Originally asked

Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017

This exact prompt is one of Vox's nine recurring questions about intellectual habits.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Ada Yonath said elsewhere, not written here
Ultimately, my research was curiosity driven, which kept me active even in low periods.

Yves Petroff, Humans of ESRF source ↗

Others on this question

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David Vélez Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank
I wish I knew more about Clojure, which is the programming language we use most at Nubank. If I did, I could better understand some of the more complex problems we're trying to solve, and I think I could ask better questions when we're setting priorities. I'd like to be able to communicate at that level with the technical side of our team, and I think they would appreciate it, too.
Recorded questionnaire, Sequoia Capital, 15 August 2018 source ↗
Geoffrey Rush Australian actor
I still regularly read New Scientist to try to keep up with quantum theory and cosmological discoveries and so forth. And I read National Geographic—that’s not a plug.
Recorded Patricia Edmonds, National Geographic, 3 February 2017 source ↗
Arthur Ashkin Physicist; Nobel laureate in physics for the invention of optical tweezers
Wonder Why would say, 'Why is the sky blue?'…Then Wonder Why would tell you. I was fascinated, because I wanted to know how things worked ... that was my introduction to science.
Recorded Hilary Brueck, Business Insider interview at Ashkin's home, 26 January 2019 source ↗

More from Ada Yonath

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Question What are you still hoping to finish? Death & what remains
I still don’t understand everything about the ribosome. I must say that the more lectures I give and the more questions that I get, the more thoughts they trigger. And also, we are now interested in the proto-ribosome, how life started. So we are trying to understand this and this really excites me, not just from the point of view of philosophy, we are trying to show it.
Recorded Lorena Guzman, Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings source ↗
Question What problem are you still trying to solve? Craft & work
Try to make better antibiotics. I’m not sure we can cure everything, that we can win the game against bacteria, but we can try to control it, to make the appearance of resistance more controllable. We can look for new antibiotics, not overuse antibiotics, not use antibiotics where they are not needed. If possible, if somebody has an idea for something completely new, I would love that.
Recorded Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 21 June 2015 source ↗
Question When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do? Daily life
Oh ya, I doubted more than expected. I had doubts all the time. The way was extremely, extremely difficult. … At one point I had to describe what I am doing to a person who is a great intellectual but not a scientist, and I told him what we felt is that we are climbing mountains in order to reach the climax – and these mountains are like the Everest, the biggest most difficult to climb – only to find out that there is another mountain waiting behind it to be climbed afterwards. So every climbing was an achievement but there was a bigger problem behind it or above it. I had lots of minutes that I didn't expect, but I thought science in general and this science particularly is worth the effort – even if we would never get the ultimate result.
Recorded Adam Smith, Telephone interview recorded minutes after the prize announcement, Nobel Prize Outreach, 7 October 2009 source ↗

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