Meet your Australians - 2025 NSW Senior Australian of the Year Dr Karl Kruszelnicki AM. ACM is proud to be media partner for the 2025 Australian of the Year Awards.
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00:00I want to make the world a better place, specifically to liberate people from what is holding them
00:06back. And amazingly, I found the best tool to do that is science. The thing that inspired
00:11me about science was realising that it's not a bunch of facts because that's an encyclopaedia,
00:16but rather science is a way to try to understand the world and it is also self-correcting.
00:24It picks up its errors and so that's why science is a way to not get fooled.
00:30One major challenge I find in society today is the spread of misinformation, disinformation
00:36or just plain lies. It is so easy to be tricked by so many things in our society. But if you
00:43stick to science, on average, you'll go down a better pathway. I have 16 years of university
00:50education in physics and mathematics and biomedical engineering and medicine and surgery
00:56and I've worked in all those fields as well as several years of computer science, astrophysics,
01:02philosophy and electrical engineering. A few science-y highlights of my career were working
01:08as a physicist, testing steel for bridges and teaching in academic institutions as well
01:14as doing groundbreaking research into belly button fluff and why it's almost always blue
01:19as well as designing and building a machine for Fred Hollows to pick up electrical signals
01:24of the human retina. But more importantly, what I do is I talk about the good science
01:30that other real scientists do and turning it into plain English for other people to
01:34understand. I'm always teaching myself by reading the latest scientific literature.
01:38I then put out the information in the form of stories on various media such as I do over
01:44a dozen radio shows each week and then writing as well.
01:48The main impact I've had on people is to teach them that science is a worthwhile career
01:54and it's good to use your brain. And so I'll be in the supermarket and somebody will say,
01:58hey, I've been listening to you on the radio and as a result I've decided to take up nursing,
02:03finish my high school education, do a PhD or become a carpenter. And I don't know what
02:08it is about me talking science-y stuff on radio that makes them want to have a career
02:13where they're using their brain, but it makes me very happy.
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02:24Microsoft