As a schoolboy, I put little effort into my homework. But a long night wrestling with Euclidean geometry led to a career in nuclear physics – and a more resilient personality
A teacher changed my life. When I was 15, I was talkative and outgoing, and more interested in being sociable than in working hard. It was 1969, and I was at high school in Amherst, Nova Scotia, in eastern Canada. I never paid much attention, doing the bare minimum and often betting that nobody else would do their homework, so I needn’t either. But I did read a lot. I ignored most of what I was taught but loved reading science fiction and books about people surviving on desert islands.
I did not enjoy geometry, although I liked the philosophical approach of our teacher, Mrs Trenholm. She talked about how geometry was humankind’s ability to work things out, that there are truths, and that clear thinking and logic could solve problems. I couldn’t do the work, but thought that was interesting.
