A professor living with passion

BEREND METS: SCIENTIST, ACADEMIC, AUTHOR - 'IT'S ABOUT BEING CURIOUS'

- Hein Kaiser

It's not every day you meet someone who is not only engaging but can hold his own on a wide range of topics with ease, and is remarkably accomplished, too.

Prof Berend Mets is one of those people. Author, celebrated academic and health care professional, his company is as stimulating as his list of achievements is extraordinary.

Mets said his first love is medicine, his second is his wife, Ulane, and his third is anaesthesia.

He completed a master's of fine arts in creative writing at Carlow University in Pittsburgh simply because, he said: "If I was going to write books, I wanted to do it properly."

This was while working as professor and chair of anaesthesiology and perioperative medicine at Pennsylvania State University. When Mets was not writing, teaching or in the operating theatre, he swam, cycled and ran. A life lived to the full.

His academic career spawned his authorship. "As an academic you have to write," he said. "If you do not publish, you perish."

Writing research papers taught him clarity and structure, it also showed him that storytelling had a place, even in science. "You need a hook. You need to tell a story even in technical writing."