Ewine van Dishoeck: ‘Take a steep trajectory early in your career’

On the birth card that my parents made for me you see a little baby crawling towards a university building. So my parents clearly had an academic career in mind for me. I also like very much the quote that they gave me: ‘Vires aequiret eundo’, she will gather her strength on route. I think that’s a very important message. You don’t go from being a PhD student to being a star in one shot, you have to gather strengths to make it work.

When I was 13 years old, my father retired and he went on a sabbatical in San Diego. We went along for six months, and I enrolled in a public high school. In Holland, I was in the Dutch Grammar School, which was very thorough – lots of Latin and Greek. And here in this high school I could choose the topics that I wanted. That was my first exposure to science. My teacher was very inspiring. Teachers are incredibly important.

Dare to look elsewhere. Your research career never goes from A to B to C to D – be prepared to make an interdisciplinary jump. I wanted to do a quantum chemistry PhD in Leiden, but the professor had just died. My boyfriend (now husband) Tim had just had a lecture from a professor in astronomy about interstellar molecules, which had just been discovered. He said to me, ‘Well, there’s molecules between the stars, isn’t that something for you?’ I’m extremely fortunate to have ended up in this field.