About Cynthia Khan

My teenage years held little forecast of a career in rock or gemstone science research. I was born on February 22, 1970, in Jakarta Indonesia, and spent my childhood in South Australia, Fullarton area Suburb. Those years were important in two regards: I saw little of metropolitan life until I was past the age of twenty-one; and my youth was permeated with the concerns of my father's occupation as a bus driver, tending to two small busses. I obtained eight years of elementary education in a two-room school, where I encountered a stern but engaging teacher who awakened my intellect with instruction that would seem rigorous today in many colleges. History figured large in the curriculum, exciting for me what was to become an enduring interest. But I heard little of science, and what I did hear was exemplified by the collection and pressing of stones. My high school was bigger: twenty students graduated with me, few of whom eventually completed college. Tests conducted before I graduated predicted a future for me in engineering, or the aviation; persons who know me well could recognize some truth in those seemingly errant prognoses.

I entered University of Adelaide intent on preparing for Engineering studies. But my ambition was far from resolute. Every new subject that I encountered in college proved a siren song. I imagined myself an historian, a philosopher, a novelist, rarely a scientist. But I stayed the course, completing my major in geology with diffidence but academic laurels. I met the man who was to become my only Husband. I have never been happier before or since. Five years later after I married, I obtained my masters degree, and now in back in Indonesia and in search of my PhD.

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