• Question: What do scientists do after they retire

    Asked by connerlee on 4 Nov 2025.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 4 Nov 2025:

      Many of us don’t really retire… We just keep doing what we were doing but in a slightly different form!

    • Photo: Richard Birch

      Richard Birch answered on 4 Nov 2025:

      Seeing as I’m just a year or two off, I’ve been thinking a lot about this one. The answer is – same as I do professionally, but not driven by economics. Some very interesting areas of research that I’ve been dabbling in have no obvious economic value, but wow! who wouldn’t want to know about the ecology of the sea that covered Wales half a billion years ago? There are specimens sitting in a draw that need description, and a whole marine ecosystem to reconstruct. Then there’s a plant growing near me that is a parasite of other plants, but nobody knows the impact it has on its host (and its now an invasive weed in Australia, so there may be some future economic significance to studying it).
      I’d have to retire to even attempt these!

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