Introducing Peter

Although my first areas of academic interest were biology, dating from when I was about 12 years old, that gradually changed as I went through high school. In fact, from age 12, mathematics was always something I loved, but initially I just liked it because it was easy for me and I did well in the classes. My first interest was biology. I used to grow trees, read about gardens, flowers, and so on. Now that I think about it, I was more into botany than zoology. Mycology was also another area of interest. I used to read our family encyclopaedia for articles about fungi and mushrooms. I don't why they fascinated me, but they did. Growing up on a farm provided lots of opportunity for indulging these interests, and my parents had lots of books in the house.

I always think of my academic interests as being science based, but that's not exactly right. As I was writing the above, I remembered that when browsing the encyclopaedias at home, I was also interested in the art and history sections, especially the arts and history of classical Greek and other ancient  civilisations, so perhaps there was always at least some interest in the humanities as well as teh sciences. The great thing about the sciences was that as well as being fascinating, they were something that I excelled in at school.

In highschool, my main interests moved from biology, to chemistry, to physics and mathematics. But I also started reading philosophy in high school. Although it wasn't, and still isn't, a subject in Australian schools, philosophy really caught my interest. I began university in the science faculty, majoring in physics and maths, but changed to Arts, with majors in philosophy, mathematics and a couple of dead languages. This was not an obviously strong career move, but I was doing what I loved, and I don't regret the choices I made then.

Today, I am still interested in all of those academic areas, and read in them regularly.