An eye on the sky

AC: How did you come to choose astronomy as a career?

LHS: I never could think of it as ‘a career’ because I did not know of anyone in my world with degrees, let alone scientists. I could not have imagined it in my wildest dreams. My aspirations were to be a police officer because I had seen that on TV. My aspirations were as small as my world, but then when I fell in love with astronomy - just the pure joy of looking up at the sky and not worrying about physics or what it all means - that is when I thought I had to take it further. And that’s when I delved into books, and the world of research, and realised that there were people who were scientists. It was through these media I was able to see what existed outside the little village where I lived.

As a child, I was curious. I was always asking questions. My dad read a lot of philosophy and my mum, a very intelligent woman, ran a school. But I was at home with my dad. He was my major educator because I was with him all day. I just asked questions and, if he did not know the answers, he helped me find them. My education was not being taught; I was not receiving an education, rather I was shooting out ideas and trying to bounce them off any surface I could find and those surfaces were books. My house was full of books. I see life naturally as something exciting and certain areas just grip me - the physical world, the natural world, the