There you go Siv, another London monument to an engineer. This one is Joseph Bazalgette, the man who probably did the most to improve the level of health in London - he built the first effective sewage system in London.
Engineering is a mystery to me.. I was dreadful at physics and maths (calculus and beyond). Now to find the memorial to the unknown bean counter or the mediocre biochemist....
6 comments:
Well, I really really hated biochemistry at med school - so I salute thee, oh Master of Being Able to Learn that Dreadful Science ;)
PS - besides, I'm not only a failed med student (nah, I gave up, that's not really failing... but almost), I am an electrical engineer too, and they are rarely saluted this way.
I want my own statue. Bohooo. You know that first day when the Lord said "let there be light" - well, what happened? The electrical engineers were done and ready, he GOT his light. "The oldest profession in the world", you know :)
Well, I took the long way through thinking I wanted to be an engineer (albeit a chemistry one) and ending up as a biochemist! Well, at least that's what my degrees are in but I feel much more comfortable saying I'm a neuroscientist. Got any neuroscientist statues?
Cool. Sewer systems do indeed contribute to public health in ways typically unnoticed by the public... if everything is working right. We live on a bayou (a medium-sized stream), about a mile from a sewage treatment plant, and only on rare occasions are we aware of the fact, a testament to the high quality of engineering of the plant itself. Of course, we still sometimes call our place "Sewer-Side by the Bayou..."
I never even applied to Med school. I eventually plumped for a degree in Physiology and Biochemistry. Personally I preferred the physiology side, particularly Neurophys and Endocrinology... On the other hand I was not cut out to be a scientist so I ended up drifting into the civil service.
I did try and rekindle my academic interest in science by doing an MSC part time (Microbiology). aLL it did was finally impress on me that I am not cut out to be a scientist!
Ach Cecilia in the perfect world there would be titanic statues to the likes of Katz, Hodgkin and Huxley!
I suppose the difference is that you can drive or take a train over Brunel's legacy, you can't do the same for, say, Ulf von Euler!
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