Question: What inspired you to become a scientist

Laurence Perreault Levasseur answered on 14 Jun 2014:

From as far back as I can remember, I’ve always like to ask everyone (actually, to bug everyone) with questions like ‘why?’, ‘How does it work?’, ‘How do you know??’. I’ve always been fascinated by things I don’t understand, and more generally by the world around me and how it works. Surprisingly, it took me quite a while to realize that physics was the way to find (or at least try to find) answers to my questions. I remember very clearly being 15 in my first physical sciences course, and finally understanding how electricity works after being extremely frustrated for months because the whole thing just didn’t make any sense. That was the most amazing feeling, like a light shining in my head and suddenly everything was crystal clear.

At that point, I still didn’t know that I wanted to be a theoretical physicist – I didn’t know such a thing even existed! My first contact with advanced physics happened a year later, in 2004, at the International Summer School ISSYP (held at the Perimeter Institute, in Canada). My mind was completely blown by how fun and fascinating relativity and quantum mechanics are. Over there, I learnt that trying to figure out how the Universe works is actually a job, and that you can get paid to do it. I decided that’s what I wanted to do in life.