Aubrey de Grey Interview

From In-Sight:

Dr-aubrey-de-grey1. How was your youth? How did you come to this point?

Pretty normal, but rather short on social life: I had no brothers or sisters (or indeed any family other than my mother), and I wasn’t particularly outgoing until I was about 15. I was always reasonably high-achieving academically and I immersed myself in that. When I discovered programming, and found I was fairly good at it, I decided to study computer science, and pretty quickly I decided to pursue a career in artificial intelligence research because I felt it was where I could make the most humanitarian difference to the world. At around 30, I started to realise that aging was a criminally neglected problem and that, maybe, I could make even more of a difference there. So I switched fields.

2. Where did you acquire your education? What education do you currently pursue?

I went to school at Harrow, a top UK boarding school, and then university at Cambridge. These days my education comes from my colleagues, via their papers and my interactions at conferences.

More here.