“Kids are born scientists,” said cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson in a speech. Is this true? For one, I could say yes. Kids, after all, are always curious about the world around them, which, I think, makes them scientists in their own way. But it’s an entirely different story when a kid as young as six becomes recognized in the scientific world. Such is the case of Grace Fulton, who co-authored a scientific paper with her father at the young age of six. Yes, her name was included in the paper, and her father states that her name being there isn’t just for show.
Graham Fulton is an ornithologist at the University of Queensland. His research includes how well owls adapt to urban environments. “Grace absolutely adores owls,” Graham said in a statement. “She was only four when she started spending nights with me in the rainforest searching for them, and now she knows all of their calls."
For his most recent research, Graham compared the presence of owls at a Brisbane park with the nearby Mount Glorious rainforest. He told IFLScience that “[Grace] attended fieldwork on all occasions and always [attended] school the next day. She was in Prep at that stage. She could read the data and tell which owl was most common both on the data (excel sheet) and from being at the fieldwork. She could recall the moments I forgot.”
“She asks questions that inspire research, looks at the data, never stops learning, corrects me when I mark down the wrong bird,” Graham added, so when the work was published in Pacific Conservation Biology, both Fultons were listed as authors.
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Grace is also the lead author of a paper currently undergoing review, in which she recorded a bird nesting in a previously unrecorded type of environment. Grace has expressed an intention to eventually become a butterfly researcher, despite her father telling her, “They're just bird food.”
Amazing!
(Image Credit: Graham Fulton/ IFL Science)