Question: What gave you the interest to be an astronomer?

Paul Roche answered on 13 Jun 2010:

I guess I’ve always been interested in knowing “how stuff worked”, and when I was about 11 or 12 I found a really good little book on astronomy in the school library, and that got me thinking about the big questions, like how stars worked, where planets came from etc. I never planned to be an astronomer, but through school I ended up taking science subjects at A level (even though English was my best subject – poor English teacher was very annoyed that I was dropping the subject at A level to do Physics, Chemistry and Maths!).

I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at university, but I knew it would be something science based – I was really keen on sports (rugby and martial arts), so was very tempted to do the (then) new subject of Sports Science, but a careers adviser said that would be stupid and I’d just end up as a PE teacher. I discovered the subject of geophysics while I was reading a Clive Cussler novel (something about this type of scientist that could discover wrecks underwater or something – anyway, it sounded interesting, and a practical application of science), and ended up at Southampton Uni. The degree was really good, and allowed me to choose about a third of th efinal content – in the 1st year we had intro courses on geology, astronomy and oceaonography, and I really enjoyed the astronomy stuff. So over the 3 years, I took every astro course I could, even though I wasn’t doing anywhere near as many physics courses as the straight Physics students (plus hanging out with geologists was much more fun than Physicists…!). At the end of my first degree, I got an offer to do a PhD with one of the lecturers there, as I’d done really well in his 3rd course. I spent the summer working for Shell up in London, but decided that I’d rather do a PhD than work in the oil industry (looking back, I’d have earnt a huge amount more money with Shell, but I wasn’t a big fan of the oil industry and given recent events, I think I was right to stay clear of it…). So I went back to Southampton and did a PhD in astronomy.

So basically, it was an interest in science in general, and some things that I read in books that led me to become an astronomer – it was nothing I’d ever planned in school, or even at university – it just sort of happened….