About the Author

My background is in chemistry. After working as a research assistant at Fisheries and Oceans Canada and as a lab technician in the food industry, I completed a second degree. While teaching math and chemistry for over 3 decades, I moonlighted as a writer. Some of my work has been published in University of Waterloo’s Chem13 News, in Chemical Institute of Canada’s Magazine, in Molecule of the Month (University of Bristol) and in Accenti. I am currently an invited contributor to McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.   

In my undergraduate years I was originally attracted to my major because of environmental chemistry, and after being somewhat detracted from its principles for a while, I’ve been drawn to ecology again. Yet equally captivating are the aesthetic aspects of all sciences and branches of mathematics. For example, although there are innumerable applications of integral calculus,  the whole endeavor would be worth it if it was nothing more than an intellectual diversion. I love the way Newton constructed a special triangle within an arc, finding its remaining area using the equation of a circle, a binomial expansion and integral calculus to then arrive at an approximation for Pi. And of course finding one’s own way of approximating Pi or deriving binomial expansions is a pure pleasure of life, even if the methods pale in comparison to those of exceptional minds.

If you walk through Þingvellir, Iceland without knowing its geology, you won’t realise that your feet can touch two continents within minutes.  Existentially, to me arriving at such knowledge is as important as enjoying the surreal late evening light on one of the island’s peninsulas.