• Question: What made you want to be a scientist why not a professional footballer or a rallycross driver?

    Asked by giles123 to Murray on 23 Mar 2011 in Categories: .
    • Photo: Murray Collins

      Murray Collins answered on 23 Mar 2011:

      Hi

      I wasn’t good enough at football! Frank Lampard went to my school (2 years above me), and he was the standard (obviously) you needed to be to follow this career. He was miles better than anyone else, playing with the 1st XI when he was 15. So I knew this wasn’t an option.

      Rallycross- never tried it. But I did think about becoming a pilot for some time. I joined the RAF cadet force and did training in single seat RAF training aircraft (bulldogs and chipmunks) and got a reasonable amount of aerobatic experience doing that, at least for a student! (barrel rolls; stall turns; loops etc. Stall turn was my favourite!) I have also done a glider training course with the RAF and have completed a solo flight (back when I was 17, before I could drive).

      But then when it came to decision time, I went to university and decided that I would pursue this other path. I still want to do more flying though, maybe incorporate it into rainforest monitoring (doing overflights using lasers to monitor carbon density). That would be cool.

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