Yeah, I had a slightly odd introduction to these things as I studied joint honours maths and physics. That meant both that I had a bit more mathematical maturity than most of the physics students and that I was being taught the more rigorous underpinnings of the maths while it was being (ab)used in all sorts of cavalier ways in physics. I liked the subject matter of physics more, but I greatly preferred the intellectual rigour of the maths.

Eric Gourgoulhon is a product of the French education system, and I often think I would have done better studying there than in the UK.

Mine was similar actually, just in Ireland.

I had started in a theoretical physics degree which was jointly taught by the maths and physics department. By my final year I had changed into an ostensibly pure maths degree, although I did it mainly to take more advanced theoretical/mathematical physics courses (which were taught by the maths department), and avoid having to do any lab work—a torsion pendulum experiment was my final straw on that one, I don't know what caused it to fuck up, but fuck that.

In the end I took on more TP courses than the TP students, nearly burnt out by the end of the year, and... didn't exactly come out with the best exam results.