If there was ever an ideal career role model for a room full of teenaged boys, Dr Karl Kruszelnicki would be it.
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Although he has degrees in mathematics, biomedical engineering, medicine and surgery, and is well-versed in astrophysics, computer science and philosophy, the eccentric scientist is at no risk of being thought of as nerdy or uncool.
Yesterday, in a speech to hundreds of boys at Edmund Rice College - where he was a student from 1960-64 - he proved as much within the first 30 seconds.
"When I was doing biomedical engineering I decided to build a machine for Fred Hollows to pick up electrical signals off the human retina, and I helped him smuggle half a ton of drugs into the Northern Territory," Dr Kruszelnicki said.
"[They were] antibiotics and the Northern Territory government spent more money trying to stop us doing that than they did in delivering health care to Aborigines in that calendar year.
"From there I learnt a very important lesson, which is always park your car with you nose outwards so you can make a quick getaway from the cops."
From this beginning, Dr Kruszelnicki's speech veered at breakneck speed through topics such as the Mayan calendar conspiracy, the small planet which bears his name, a 60-second explanation of the Higgs-Boson particle and some of his less illustrious careers.
"In 10 years as a taxi driver I ran over three people, which I think is the maximum allowable under the Geneva Convention, I've been a TV weatherman and I test-drive four-wheel-drives, so I do a lot of different stuff."
This jam-packed career was due to a natural curiosity and he advised Edmund Rice boys to find what they loved in order to have a fulfilling life.
"All I've done is follow the path of curiosity and science is just asking questions," he said.
"Following the path of what you love is the most important thing, science is important but there is no point doing it if your real passion is hairdressing or plumbing or anything else ... and without plumbing there is no civilisation anyway."