Graham Colman

At school I was the ‘clever but naughty’ one; exactly the type of kid that now, as a teacher, I find most irritating of all.   I could have done much better in my subjects had I not been so keen to mess about.

I think I’ve always had a natural ability in Maths. I like the logicalness of it, how the ‘rules’ of maths always hold and if you follow those rules, then the answer usually follows too. In my Sixth Form I did maths, physics and media studies at A-level, with varying degrees of success. At university I did maths with management, because I was good at it and because maths is a very general subject.   I still had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do as a career.   A year after leaving university I was back again, doing  teacher training.   I became a High School Maths teacher aged 22.

I’ve always had a small interest in space and astronomy for as long as I can remember, but nothing more than looking upwards and wondering.    I also remember being amazed when I looked through someone's telescope.

My ‘lucky break’ came in the form of a letter from a group called the Norfolk Education Business Exchange (and a sponsor of this project) asking for volunteers to go to the Kennedy Space Centre on a teacher training placement. I’d always dreamt of seeing the Space Centre and here was a chance in a lifetime, which of course I jumped at.

Since then I’ve never looked back, except  when I look up at the sky at night - because then I’m looking back in time.    Its things like this that have amazed me in the past couple of years as I learn more.   I think I like space for the same reason that I like algebra – the infinity of it all.  Space is concerned with immense distances and periods of time, and the rules of space hold throughout all of it just as algebra does in Mathematics.

We take for granted a lot of what we know about space. Mike and I hope that 'Space Observatories in School' gives you an insight into how scientists find out about the Universe.  The scientists  who work for ESA and NASA are  people just like you and me. Some of them were even naughty at school and many didn’t know what career they wanted.  As the space programmes go forward, they need a new generation of scientists, engineers and mathematicians.  Just who could these people be?