Tapio Schneider, a professor of Environmental Science at the California Institute of Technology, came to Los Angeles in 2002, after living in Seattle and on the East Coast. The German-born Schneider told us a little more about himself before speaking on a panel on climate change.
Q. What is your favorite word?
A. Stretto. It’s the final part of a fugue. Throughout the fugue there are themes introduced, and in the end, they’re put together in compacted form. I like this compacting of things – a conclusion of a paper should be like the stretto in a fugue.
Q. What inspires you?
A. I like to understand nature and how the world works. It gets me out of bed in the morning.
Q. What is your favorite way to procrastinate?
A. I don’t know if being outdoors and running counts as procrastination, but that’s what I do in my spare time. And playing and listening to music.
Q. If you could live in any time – past, present, or future – when would it be?
A. I’m quite happy now.
Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. I have many friends in Europe, and I visit them once a year. It’s extravagant in many ways, certainly environmentally, to fly across oceans.
Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. To visit friends and family in Finland and Germany.
Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I’m quite happy to be a scientist. But for my next life, I do like literature a lot, and for a while I was wondering whether I could ever be a writer. I’m definitely a better scientist than a writer.
Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Sailing on lakes in Finland – being outdoors and being with friends.
Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. I’d like to think there is none, but I have some art I really like.
Q. What teacher or professor changed your life?
A. I don’t think there was an individual person. It was an accumulation of people, of many inspiring advisors, and the cumulative effect certainly made me to a degree what I am now.
Q. Who is the one person living or dead you would most like to meet for dinner?
A. My fiancée.
To read about Schneider’s panel on climate change in Los Angeles, click here.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.