Bennett’s curiosity about every aspect of science is one of the most remarkable things about his personality. He says he knew at the age of three that he wanted to be a scientist, and his childhood enthusiasm for the subject was not lost on his mother. One day she returned home to find a pan containing a weird stew bubbling on the cooker. Fortunately she was not tempted to taste it, as it turned out to be the remains of a turtle that the young Bennett was boiling in alkali in order to strip the flesh from the bones, thereby obtaining a perfect specimen of a turtle skeleton.