What was your first job?
What do you value most in life?
My first job was rowing up and down a creek in Wollongong, measuring toxicity of the water that turned from bright orange to bright green.
Not being dead, health and happiness and being a father and husband.
What are your career highlights? Being a doctor at Camperdown Childrens’ Hospital was a great job. I remember a time when two distraught parents brought in their 3 year old boy to hospital suffering with rolling fevers, difficulty in breathing and he wasn’t growing. I suspected pneumonia but gave him an extended and full medical examination because when diagnosing children’s illnesses you need to work with the whole family. After the full medical examination the parents asked if I knew what was wrong to which I replied an x-ray would confirm my diagnoses. I then told them the good news, that it was pneumonia and that it was curable. This liberated the parents from what was holding them back. I also love working in the media as I help people to find out about our amazing Universe. I can do more good for society working in the media, than I can on a one-to-one basis in a kids’ Hospital.
What is your favourite Australian destination? My favorite destinations are the deserts of the Australian Outback including the Simpson Desert and Gibson Desert. When we tour the deserts using a 4WD, we have an early dinner then lie in our swags for hours counting the satellites and meteors. What is your favourite overseas experience? The Antarctic was wondrous. I am taking my 11 year old daughter to see Mount Fuji, Japan. Which science story has received the most comments? That it is safer for a cat to fall 32 storeys from a building, than from 7 storeys. What are some of the most outrageous science questions you have been asked? • Do cells renew every 7 years? • Does curly hair tangle more than straight hair? • Was Velcro invented by NASA? • Do women talk more than men?
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Get Ahead Kids® Jul/Aug 10
• Does Aluminum cause Alzheimer’s? • Does underarm deodorant cause Cancer? Which science story has shocked you the most? That 90% of the cells in your body do not belong to you. They belong to tiny bacteria in your gut. The bacteria are very small, so they don’t weigh much (about 1.5kgs), but they do make up 90% of the cells you carry around. What is your newest project? Writing my 29th book titled ‘Dinosaurs Aren’t Dead’. What is the most outrageous question you have been asked? Are farts contagious? Can farts spread germs? To these questions I answer “usually no” because undergarments act as filters. What are you currently researching? I am researching how spontaneous human combustion is explained by ‘brown fat’, which is very different from ‘white fat’. ‘White fat’ stores energy, ‘but brown’ fat turns energy into heat. I am also exploring body mass, weight loss and gain during the day.