HE hesitates on the phone from California, before revealing an explosive fact about his exploration of science as a child: “At one point I nearly blew myself up after I started to experiment with gunpowder, TNT and nitroglycerine, which I made on a very small scale. It’s best not to go into that too much, though, as I wouldn’t want to encourage youngsters to do likewise.”

Some successful EU-funded Irish female scientists: