• Question: Where would you say was the capital city of science?

    Asked by imctaggart to Adam, Leila on 22 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 22 Mar 2012:

      Ooh a good one.

      If it was in the whole world, I’d say Cambridge/Boston, Massachusetts, USA – because it has some of the best universities in the world, MIT and Harvard…

      In the UK, I would have to grudgingly say Cambridge, because it has the top university for most science subjects.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 23 Mar 2012:

      I would say, just about, and probably not for much longer – London.

      Britain still retains a heritage of being at the heart of scientific advancement for centuries, from the enlightenment to the industrial revolution.

      It’s probably declined since then, but London still has a good number of some of the great universities, it has some of the greatest museums (and associated research) in the world, has some of the greatest scientists in the world and it is well connect to both America and Europe.

      If you asked in 5-10 years I think the answer would be somewhere in Asia. The east is increasingly catching up and will probably overtake everyone else in the world at a lot of stuff fairly soon.

      (found some evidence! http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101020/full/467906a/box/1.html)

      If you asked in 15-20 years I think the statement would probably have no meaning – science has taken to the internet very well and become distributed. Everyone collaborates with everyone else now, no matter if they’re in a different country or a different continent. So I don’t think I’d be able to answer the question in a few years.

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