Varinder Aggarwal: You should see my downward dog now!

I wish I had a plan. I think life can be much easier if you know where you’re going. If I knew I was going to be an academic, I might have studied a bit more physical chemistry and inorganic chemistry when I was an undergraduate, as I wish I was better in those areas. But then I may not have enjoyed my undergraduate days as much.

Physics was my favourite subject at school. There was one particular occasion I was doing a physics question on the Doppler effect to determine the speed at which stars were moving away from us. To an impressionable 18-year-old, this just blew my mind, as I had not known that the universe was expanding, and it raised the obvious philosophical question of what it was expanding into. Some big questions there that I wanted to explore further.

I went to university to do physics. I was fortunate to go to Cambridge, where they had a broad-based natural science course. I was taught by some of the best teachers in chemistry –Ian Fleming and Dudley Williams taught organic in the first year. I quickly found that chemistry made much more sense than abstract physics! I hoisted the sails, and threw myself in to the organic landscape and have thoroughly enjoyed it ever since. It also made me realise how important good teaching is and how it can influence the careers of students, and so this is an area I put effort in too.