Question: what was it that intrigued you in science?

Chris Carlton answered on 10 Mar 2020:

I worked for many years in social science, having studied politics at University. I was fascinated in how things got decided and how people thought about things.

After a while in the same field you see some of the same issues again and again, I felt like I wanted a change and so got a job working in physics. This was something that brought that intellectual challenge back for me but it also helped that I feel like I work with scientists who are genuinely the best in the world. Some of the physics we fund is asking questions relating to the very nature of how things are formed – you can’t get more interesting or valuable than that!