Question: your favorite subject in school was maths, why did you become a scientist?

Susan Cartwright answered on 14 Jun 2015:

There are a number of answers to this, all of which are true: it’s not an all-or-nothing issue. The first is that my favourite subject _at school_ was maths, because chemistry and physics weren’t taught very well: I had an excellent maths teacher (thank you if you’re still with us, Mr McArdle), but my physics teacher was rubbish and so was my chemistry teacher. At home, I had a chemist on tap – my father was an industrial chemist – and I read all the physics and astronomy books in the local library (they gave me an adult reader’s ticket when I was 8, because I’d read all the science books in the children’s section).
The second is that maths is one of those subjects, like music, that some people have a true natural talent for, but most don’t: nearly all the kids that take violin lessons are *not* going to be Nicola Benedetti, and nearly all the kids who like maths are *not* going to be David Hilbert. I knew I wasn’t up there with the super-talents – I was always good at maths, I won the maths prizes at my high school, but that’s not the same – and I didn’t like the careers that looked open to mathematics graduates who didn’t have what it took to be “real” mathematicians: insurance and the finance sector, no thank you. [I was probably wrong on that one – maths is a very versatile degree – but I was 17, what did I know?]
The third is that maths is the language of physics: if you study physics, you *are* doing maths, but you are applying it to the real world. (Many advances in 19th century mathematics occurred in the course of developing techniques to analyse planetary orbits.) This appealed to me. Also, I could see that if I didn’t have what it took to be a particle physicist or an astrophysicist – which were the areas of physics that appealed to me, and not coincidentally are some of the more mathematical areas – there were interesting career options open (I turned down a job offer at British Aerospace to do a PhD).