Studying chemistry as a Christian

Growing up I was fairly curious about the natural world around me; I was one of those kids who asked my parents a lot of questions. Why is the sky blue? What is that flower, plant or animal called? I also liked dinosaurs, knew many of their long, complicated names (which I have now forgotten) and loved visiting the natural history museum in Oxford where I grew up.

Some of my earliest, specific memoires from school are science projects when I was aged between ten and twelve. The first was looking at growing marigolds in different conditions and measuring which flower grew best. Would the flower grow best in the light or dark? With or without water? In normal soil or wood chip? I knew the answer for the first two options, but I didn’t know if the flower would grow best in normal soil and wood chip, so that was the question I set out to discover.

The second project was a detailed documentation of the plants and wildlife growing around our school. We picked leaves and flowers, dried them out and stuck them in our book. We had a go at drawing the leaves, trees, flowers and birds ourselves. It was fascinating learning their names and really looking at these plants in such detail which had been surrounding us this whole time.

With this small amount of information, you may not be surprised to learn that I went on to study and work in a scientific area later in life. This curiosity (plus a lot of hard work and support from people around me) lead me to study chemistry for my undergraduate degree, followed by a two-year graduate scheme at a pharmaceutical company. Now I am approaching the end of a chemistry PhD.