Professor Hans Bachor has some passions: the value of science in a world of fake news and dangerous nonsense; Volkswagen - and the strengths of concrete.
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He won't say that he loves concrete - too strong a word - but he is very enthusiastic about it.
"You can shape it at will," he said - by which he means it is very easy to use for a building and create the shape the architect wants. Stone is not so malleable. "It's the architect turning his or her vision into a shape at one stroke."
The snag with this unloved material is it uses a lot energy in the making so we waste it if we don't use it for a long time.
Which he thinks we don't in Canberra. He thinks too many concrete buildings are being pulled down and with it a sense of Canberra's past.
It's true concrete is still being used in the replacement glossy and glassy structures being put up - but it's invisible, hidden behind the facade - and that is a loss according to the former professor of physics at the Australian National University.
It's an Australian attitude. "If you build a concrete building and pull it down 20 years later as we do in Australia, that's a lot of waste."
He bemoans what he thinks is a wider common trait in contemporary Australia - a lack of thinking ahead. "If you don't look at history and just focus on the now, that's a concern I have about Australia.
"There's little that's being done which looks beyond one or two generations."
He sees it in political attitudes to global warming, though he thinks the younger generation is changing that way of thinking.
Professor Bachor is playing his part in the education of people. After spending from 1981 to 2011 researching and teaching at the ANU, he is now a professor emeritus there. At the Australian Academy of Science across the way, he has the grand title of Secretary for Education and the Public Awareness of Science.
In our era of all sorts of false - and fatal - notions about science, from anti-vaccination to the denial of climate change, putting the scientific view out there to counter the wrong-headed nostrums is important.
On the false belief that vaccinations don't protect and may actually harm, he said, "There are facts where the science is absolutely clear."
There's little that's being done which looks beyond one or two generations.
- Professor Hans Bachor
The Academy has produced pamphlets setting out the indisputable scientific view on this and on global warming and on genetically modified crops. Videos are produced laying out what the science says.
Professor Bachor says these are done after a lot of consultation between the top scientists in the relevant field.
He says the right style to convince is not to be patronising - no talking down to people - but to be accessible to those seeking information and who might have got a false view from an anecdote. "They might have read something but we are optimistic that by getting the the message clearly they will change their attitude."
Professor Bachor works a lot with teachers, providing materials for classrooms. And he is involved with the production of videos. The Academy is one of the biggest providers of scientific videos in the country - its Facebook Page has 1.5 million followers.
He was born and bred in Germany and, in a sense, saw his future outside the window of their home in Hannover.
It was opposite a huge Volkswagen plant turning out 1200 Kombis a day and he could see the steel, the rubber and the chemicals going in at one end and the finished vehicles coming out at the other. It enthused him and pointed him towards science.
And pointed him towards Australia, though he didn't know it at the time. He was witnessing the production of the iconic vehicle that became a byword for surfing culture.
After graduating in Germany, he came to the ANU. After 10 years, he found that when he went back to Germany, he was looking at it as an Australian - so he became an Australian citizen (which meant renouncing the citizenship of his native country).
As the Professor of Physics at the ANU, he pioneered quantum optics and technology. He worked on the physics of lasers. The people he taught are now in top research institutes of Europe and the rest of Australia, often as their directors.
He came to Canberra nearly 40 years ago and has never left. "Being the national capital keeps me here because the people who think big - who think forward - are here, and that's a good environment."
He is not, though, a city person. He lives with his wife, Connie, who is a judge at equestrian events, on a 40-acre property between Sutton and Bungendore.
"Living in the country is a way of experiencing the bigger part of Australia," he said.
He grew up next to one of the biggest factories in the world but likes the silence of the bush.
And concrete.