After finishing the gymnasium in Muenchen with 9 years of Latin and 6 years of ancient Greek, history and philosophy, I decided to become a physicist. The great theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, an university colleague of my late father, advised me to begin with an apprenticeship in precision mechanics.

I grew up in Muenchen where my father has been a professor for pharmaceutic chemistry at the university. He had studied chemistry and medicine, having been a research student in Leipzig with Wilhelm Ostwald, the Nobel Laureate 1909. So I became familiar with the life of a scientist in a chemical laboratory quite early.

I just always really wanted to swim. It was always a family thing: dad obviously swam, and my sister did, too. And mum used to come along to meets. They had to drag me out of the pool - so there was never any pressure on me to swim. It was just something I loved doing.

It's definitely important to have your mom and family there to back you up and cheering from the stands. You'd love them to come to every big dance and every big game, but sometimes that's not possible.

My mother brought up nine children, in Hackney, and none of us are criminals, none of us in jail. Her strength made me who I am today.

I was born in a family with a strong military background, so I chose to be a soldier.