Creating craters on Earth

Inspiring Scientists is a series of resources to help develop students’ understanding and awareness of science and the diversity of scientists. The video profiles were commissioned by the Royal Society and carried out as an oral history project by National Life Stories at the British Library.

The resources showcase the life stories of British scientists with minority ethnic heritage and cover issues such as being a minority in science, influences in their childhoods and the fun and importance of science both to themselves and to the wider community. The activities that accompany the profiles relate to the area of research that the scientist is involved in.

Sanjeev Gupta is a geologist who uses his understanding of rocks and physical processes such as plate tectonics, mountain building, deposition of sediment and erosion by water to understand how particular landscapes were formed from remote deserts, under the sea in the English Channel and on Mars! He came to the UK from India aged 5 and managed to turn his childhood love of travel into a career - he is currently Professor of Earth Science at Imperial College in London and spends much of his time deciding where NASA’s Curiosity rover (a robotic science lab on wheels) should go next on the surface of Mars, where it takes detailed photographs of the surface and collects data of all kinds.