Space tool inventor dentist on his ultimate quest – the one for alien life. Europa, Jupiter’s moon, is his best bet
Dentistry was always just a job for Hongkonger Dr Ng Tze-chuen, who invented precision space tools and discovered ancient secrets in Egypt’s Great Pyramid
Just like Leonardo: I was born in Hong Kong in 1952, exactly 500 years after da Vinci – I think I have a similar mind to him, I enjoy solving puzzles and making designs. My father was a building contractor and my mother was a housewife. I was the fifth of six children.
We were a traditional family and my father expected his children to be successful, which meant becoming a doctor or a lawyer. All my brothers have PhDs except for me, but I never liked studying and wasn’t successful in exams.
I felt like the forgotten child in the family. No one saw a future in me, I failed in everything. When I was 17, I went to school in Devon (southern England). I didn’t apply myself, although I did make an effort in my final year and got the grades to study at the Royal London Dental Hospital, in 1971.
Baring teeth: I never enjoyed dentistry and spent my time daydreaming. I’ve got a phobia about dental hospitals – the staff, the teachers, I hated it. I lived in my own world. If I hadn’t won the Parris Prize for Invention for two consecutive years, I would have been kicked out of dental school.
I won the first prize for my proposal to make a dental impression in one hour using a scanner that relied on wavelength reflections. I went to the Holborn Patent Office and paid £1 for a temporary patent. I was so naive, I thought I would make billions. It was my first nightmare. I still haven’t made a penny from my inventions. My second prize was for an automatic injection machine – you sit on a “bum adaptor” and it gives you an injection in your backside.