How about Rosalind Franklin? The only reason she didn't get the nobel for the discovery of the structure of DNA was because she a)died and b) thought that doing science in the lab was more important than making a big deal about things (oh- and because wilkins showed her results to Watson/Crick).
Not to mention Lise Meitner (overlooked when Otto Hahn got the nobel for nuclear fission), Barbara McClintock ...

Estee Lauder, Elisabeth Arden if you are more into the business side of fame.

How about Body Shop founder Anita Roddick? Which reminds me that I just recently found out that Green & Black's chocolate has been bought by Cadbury/schweppes! or as the BBC put it: "Cadbury gobbles up organic rival".
Margarte Steiff- built up a Teddy bear imperium single handed (and unmarried)whilst being bound to the wheel chair and having the use of only one hand.
For my field: Christiane Nuesslein-Volhard- she won the 1995 nobel prize for medicine for her work in developmental biology- she's the one that called all those genes after german food specialities.

Which reminds me- do you now have a pet, DanB? Still got some Hamster & Mouse cells you could have....

Oh- I thought my replies were counting double now! Another ego bubble burst ....

Hmm, my cells grow too fast- can't get them to bloody stop cycling. Got to split them 1/10 every tree days ...... anyway, I'm at the end of my three years (well, they'll be over on the 6 march) and I'm struggeling to get all that nice data together to make a nice PhD. I've got just about enough to submitt soon, but it's just a bit dissapointing to have not got that much out of the three years.

I like to look at www.stuffonmycat.com or read german (Der Spiegel, Die Zeit) online newspapers.

It is voluntary because you don't have to do teaching, it's not mandatory. If you do decide to do teaching it is well paid. Ok, I'll work on my English, you bloody Brits!

Err- that could be because a PhD is not supposed to be fun?

Hmm, MissSporty is at the bottom price range so they don't have fancy names, just numbers. At the moment we've got pink and violett and an undefinable mix of severall colours thinned with Aceton.

Our French postdoc uses up last sesons colours- she's using black & yellow now, for a Kill Bill look.

A girls got to take care of herself- and seal her cover slips with MissSporty QuickDry nail polish ... no glitter, please- that just looks bright under the microscope.


Now we are devising a devious explanation why we require lip stick (to grease the centrifuge ??) and perfume (to desinfect ??) ...

He he- just to make you envious: We're in a new purpose built building that is now 5 years old. We have loos, we get free nail polish, free copying, free printing, and had free beer and cocktails at last Friday's beer houre.
He he .....

Teaching is voluntary, well paid (but there's not a lot of it to go around) and can be time consuming. Mostly I'm in the lab, we have a lab meeting every Friday on a rotation system. At the moment I have to present my data every 2 months to the lab. This isn't too bad, though because we bring in food and if you bring in the right cookies my supervisor is occupied by munching cookies.

I'd like to emphasize on what Ann said (er, well - wrote): hard work is always good, but much of the things that hold you up are out of your control: i.e. is there a good antibody against your protein, can someone who really knows what they are doing (!) help you trouble shoot, is the strain you need already made or do you have to make it, .... and so on,

anyway- aim for three years, but don't be surprised if it takes longer. Someone in my lab was done after 2,5 years, I'll need another 6-8 months after my funding has ended.

I'm 32 and will finish this year. I found my diploma similar to the phd- it was 9 months full time in the lab with my own project, giving lab chats (in our lab but also infront of the whole department), going to a smaller conference and some teaching.
As verdy said, most people in this forum are stressed out about something and just need someone to moan to. A phd can be alot of fun, if things are going ok. The first year normally seems more relaxed and some people find it quite daunting to get into the field, i.e. reading enough to fully understant their project within the bigger picture (of their field). Second year things make some more sense. Third year is a rush and lots of weekend spent working to get the data, most of which is done in the last half year.

I don't even know how many days holidays I've officially got- if you don't insist on taking two months off like a student you should be fine.
What can make a phd difficult are in my oppinion a) an "evil" supervisor and b) a bad project.
If you do go to a phd interview make sure you get a chance to be able to talk to the other students/post docs alone. This should be no problem, so go and ask. Find out what they think about their supervisor, their project and what the atmosphere in the lab is like. If you don't like the supervisor during the interview things probably won't improve during a phd - so be carefull when accepting a position.