Quote

I was trained as a neurologist, and then I went into the theater, and if you're brought up to think of yourself as a biological scientist of some sort, pretty well everything else seems frivolous by comparison.

Everything I did in high school was focused on microbiology, looking at things like algae under a microscope for hours on end. When I was 13, I saved up $100 to buy a good used microscope. I was obsessed with microorganisms.

I actually wanted to be a forensic scientist for a while. When I was doing my Standard Grades, three of them were science subjects. The interest in science didn't wear off, but I found other interests.

At the time I finished high school, I was determined to study biology, deeply convinced to eventually be a researcher.

But while doing that I'd been following a variety of fields in science and technology, including the work in molecular biology, genetic engineering, and so forth.

I thought I would be an organic chemist. I went off to university, and when I couldn't understand the chemistry lectures I decided that I would be a zoologist, because zoologists seemed like life-loving people.

I would have been a geologist.

I didn't invent forensic science and medicine. I just was one of the first people to recognize how interesting it is.

I would never have been a good scientist - my attention span was too short for that.

I knew I wanted to be a scientist. Which kind of scientist was the question.