Cosmologist and best-selling author Simon Singh MBE

My parents came to Britain from India in order for me to have a good education, but the sad fact is that since then science education in Britain seems to have gone downhill, whereas India’s reputation has soared. Obviously I am delighted to see India progressing so rapidly, but it is awful that the country of Newton, Darwin and Brunel is neglecting science education.

If I were a student today then it would be quite possible that my physics teacher would be a geographer and my maths teacher would be a linguist, which would mean that my interest in science would be zero. I accept that you do not need to be a PhD physicist to teach physics, but you do need a confidence with the subject. The result of the teacher shortage in science is that only half as many people do A-level physics today as when I sat my A-levels 25 years ago.

I think it is hard to generalise about any type of school. Some of the science specialist state schools are brilliant. Others are appalling and do not deserve to keep their label. Independent schools are on average stronger academically, but the range is so broad that there is a healthy overlap with the better state schools.

I went to a direct grant grammar school, Wellington School in Somerset. My only real interests were science, maths and chess, and I was lukewarm about most other things.

I suppose my maths teacher had the biggest influence on me – Mr Stephens taught me for seven years in a row and gave me a love of numbers. He introduced us to Fermat’s Last Theorem* before we were teenagers. I suspect that a significant fraction of today’s secondary school maths teachers would not be able to quote it, let alone teach it.

I cannot see how anybody would not be drawn to science – what is the universe made of, how did it originate, how did life evolve, why does the sun shine? Such questions are intriguing and the amazing thing is that human minds have been able to answer them.

My BSc in physics was at Imperial College, London, and then I completed a PhD in particle physics at Cambridge University and CERN. Throughout these years I dabbled in various things, such as the student union, writing, radio and television, which all helped when I switched from research to journalism.

My dream was always to be a physics professor. I cannot imagine anything more wonderful than making a great discovery. But towards the end of my PhD I could see that some of my fellow graduate students were quicker and sharper than me, and it was obvious that I was not really in their league.

So I decided not to pursue a postdoctorate position and instead I decided to be a science journalist, which seemed to be the next best thing to being a scientist. It was one of the best decisions that I have ever made and I have thoroughly enjoyed writing and broadcasting about science for the last 20 years.

I spent a term teaching AS level physics at a school in north-west London, just to get a feel for how schools operate today and what is in the curriculum. I have also taught in South Africa and India, and given guest lectures in over 100 British schools. However, rather than teaching or lecturing, I have focused on developing a couple of projects. One is the Undergraduate Ambassadors Scheme (UAS), which encourages undergraduates in maths, science and engineering to work in schools as part of their degree course. I think we now have over 100 university departments sending almost 1,000 students into schools.

Another project is now run by the Millennium Maths Project. The Enigma Project runs code-breaking workshops in schools using a genuine Enigma cipher machine. The goal is to show the application of maths and how mathematical thinking can change the world.

It is another depressing aspect of education in Britain. Compared to America we have not been so embroiled in this nonsensical debate, but nevertheless it is a shame that we are still discussing creationism in a scientific context in the 21st century. Creationism, if anywhere, needs to be in the RE classroom, not the science laboratory.

Over the last five years I have certainly moved from writing about pure science, such as maths and cosmology, to talking about science and society, such as alternative medicine.

In keeping with this trend, I am becoming increasingly interested in global warming and why there are still some sceptics.

In particular, it baffles me how tabloid columnists have the audacity to disagree with the world’s best scientific minds, who have come to the compelling consensus that global warming is largely manmade and will be seriously detrimental to our planet. One of my ambitions would be to teach some basic science to those columnists who still think that creationism is a valid scientific theory, that MMR causes autism and that global warming is just a minor blip.