I’d read some of the things that Don Glaser wrote, for example, and they’re imaginative physics, they’re not quite such good biology. There was a consensus that said you had to be able to reach out from physics and get to some of these things you’d like to, but then you have to know enough about the biology that the whole thing makes sense. And you really have to present things in such a way that a community develops. I didn’t realize that at the time, but certainly one of the important things of what I did had to do with enabling people who came from physics, or who came from biology, become a community, working on not just one little problem or piece, but somehow collectively working together toward trying to get an understanding.

One of the biggest challenges that the game must respond to today, I believe, is charting out a clear road map for the three formats. We now realise that the sport's three formats cannot be played in equal numbers - that will only throw scheduling and the true development of players completely off gear.

Now according to me, and this is my cosmology scheme, which I'm having trouble persuading the cosmologists about, is that when the universe is rid of pretty well all its matter, it in a certain sense forgets how big it is. Now that's a crazy idea, but you see if you don't have any mass around you don't have any way of scaling the size of the universe, and so it in effect becomes the big bang of the next aeon as I'm calling it – A E O N. So according to my scheme, the universe as we currently understand it, which is from big bang, and then there's this inflationary phase which I don't believe in, which is supposed to take place very, very early on, and then the universe has this more sedate expansion, and then it has another exponential expansion, and that's it. According to me, that's not it. It morphs into the next big bang.

To the extent that we ignore this, forget about it, become complacent, or believe that it is so infinite that it can take care of itself, we are in trouble.

I did. As a kid, I liked music. I still like it a lot of course. I used to play the violin. I did contemplate, well, maybe that’s an option. I could become a musician. Somehow my parents got some advice that unless I was willing to spend eight or 10 hours a day just playing the violin that I should just give it up. To me, that was very bad advice because you could of course, get very involved in music without being a musician. Fortunately, even though I gave up eventually playing the violin myself, I never gave up my fondness for music. But if I had a chance again, I would not give it up. I would just do it as a hobby. I think that was just because I did not get the correct advice.

I had a number of very good teachers in high school, in fact. Some mathematics teachers that perhaps allowed me the freedom to go beyond the normal routine of the class and to explore some more advanced areas. The same thing happened in college. I was able to communicate with a few of my teachers and professors, and go beyond the normal expectations. And then, as I mentioned before, Professor Pimentel, my mentor for graduate studies, was really influential in terms of the influence that he had for me.

So achievement, to me, is something that just comes with this attitude of doing your work the best you can in a passionate way. It’s not something that you have to expect. It’s something that’s a consequence of what you do, but it’s certainly important.

For me, it was just a thrill. I just remember thinking at that time, this is the sort of thing I would like to do, if I could. I did not come from a family of scientists. My father was a lawyer, my older brother was a lawyer.

At first the research did not seem to be particularly interesting – I carried out a systematic search for processes that might destroy the CFCs in the lower atmosphere, but nothing appeared to affect them. We knew, however, that they would eventually drift to sufficiently high altitudes to be destroyed by solar radiation. The question was not only what destroys them, but more importantly, what the consequences are.

Although my years at Irvine were very productive, I missed not doing experiments myself because of the many responsibilities associated with a faculty position: teaching courses, supervising graduate students, meetings, etc. After spending seven years at Irvine as Assistant and then Associate Professor, I decided to move to a non-academic position. I joined the Molecular Physics and Chemistry Section at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1982. I had a smaller group – only a few postdoctoral fellows – but I also had the luxury of conducting experiments with my own hands, which I enjoyed very much.