My name is Christopher Benson. I was born in Wales in 1956, but I was raised in England (Northamptonshire, Lincolnshire, and Cornwall). I went to Manchester University for six years, where I earned the degrees of B.Sc. and M.Sc. in the joint honours / double major field of "Mathematics and Computer Sciemce", as well as a Ph.D. in "just Mathematics".

 

After that I worked as a mathematician for the European Space Agency at Noordwijk-aan-zee in The Netherlands before returning to England for a mathematics research post at Kingston Polytechnic in London. In 1982, I moved to America, working initially for the University of California at Berkeley, before moving into the telecommunications industry in Berkeley.

 

Then a rather wonderful thing happened to me. Her name was Teresa, and I love her. Before long, three more very tiny little things happened, and I love them too. Their names are Rhiannon, Tristan, and Liam, and they're not so tiny now that they're in their early twenties.

 

Some 30 years onwards, I now live in the quaint little town of Martinez, California, USA. A double cancer survivor, my hobbies include collecting stories and following my football team Swansea City. These days, my two main interests are local history and space research -- Those are pretty much exactly diametric opposites, now that I think about it.