Dr Ruth Gregory, University of Durham, UK

Dr Ruth Gregory, Reader in the Department of Physics, University of Durham, UK

Q: What led you into your chosen profession?

A: I read a popular science book on relativity when I was 15, and read a paragraph about Einstein having spent most of his life in a search for a unified theory of everything, a switch flicked, and I immediately knew it was the sort of thing I wanted to do.

Q: What projects/research are you involved in at the moment?

A: I am working on what is called the "braneworld scenario". This is where we view our universe as a slice, or surface, in more than three spatial dimensions, rather like flatlanders. It is a pretty intriguing idea and I am interested in seeing if we can get some alternative explanations for cosmological phenomena, such as cosmic acceleration, from these hidden dimensions.

Q: What book are you reading right now?

A: Fact or fiction?! Well, I have been a bit busy to read too much, but am dipping into Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue, I'll definitely be reading the next Harry Potter though!

Q: Who do you admire the most (past or present) and why?

A: Has to be Einstein. The fact that he got to general relativity based on his intuition, and that that was enough to keep him going through learning all that maths, is quite inspiring.

Q: If you could have any career other than your chosen profession, what would you choose?

A: Medicine. I worked in a hospital for a couple of summers helping surgeons with visualization as part of a procedure they were developing for arrythmias, and it was fascinating watching them at work on the heart. Not sure how my bedside manner would be though!

Q: What do you think will be the next significant breakthrough in science?

A: I'd like to think we would crack the problem of dementia, so we could all enjoy life till we dropped. Closer to my own area, finding supersymmetry, while most physicists are expecting it, would be pretty amazing. Not so much in terms of mathematical theory, which is pretty old hat, but in terms of the philosophical implications for what it means the world around us is like. Actually, it would be more significant for theorists if supersymmetry werent found!

Q: If you could have dinner with any 3 people, living or dead, who would they be?

A: Einstein, Mozart, and Churchill.

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