Peter's academic interests

Although my first real academic interest was biology, I've never studied that at university. It began when I was about ten years old, or perhaps a bit younger. I grew up on my family's farm, so there were lots of living things around. I was especially interested in plants. We had cattle, horses and dogs, but the plants interested me more. There river bank that surrounded us on three sides was thick with trees, vines and bushes. My father had also left some large, old trees, which we played under and in, and there was a large area of virgin shrub left. There were also lots of snakes, spiders and bugs, which did interest me. Maybe it was because they were more dangerous than boring cows, chickens and pigs.

I used to grow trees in pots, and to help my efforts, I started reading my mum's magazines, which had gardening sections. From these, I learned about Japanese bonsai, which fascinated me for a while. I started turning my plants in pots into scenes, and using wire to shape the fig trees that were my favourite. By the time I got to high school, I'd started reading more about biology: about how cells worked, and this led to my next serious interest, which was chemistry. But wanting to know why atoms and molecules behaved the way they did led to physics. And all the time, my real, long term interests were developing: early in high school, I fell in love with mathematics. Unlike every other subject we studied, it gave answers that were 100% certain: we could prove that 2 + 2 = 4, and that the sum of the squares on the other two sides of a right angled triangle equalled the square of the hypotenuse. This academic interest carried through to university, but by the end of high school, I had also started philosophy, which become my major at university.