Surfers have a bit of a stereotype, thanks to Jeff Spicoli. But not all surfers are burnouts — in fact, we’d wager that the healthier portion of them aren’t. It’s a strange thing, too, that there can be a feeling that a surfer can ONLY be a surfer. It’s as though once someone is a surfer, there is no room for anything else in life. But in reality, surfing is just something we do to pass time. It’s one of the best things to pass the time that exists on this earth, but it’s just a pastime. Enter Max Weston, a man who proves two things: not all surfers are burnouts, and a surfer doesn’t fit inside any kind of mold. Max is a surfer. He’s also a chemical and biomolecular engineer.
He grew up on the southern Australian coastline, surfing on all manner of surfboards. Eventually, though, he grew to love longboarding a little more than the rest, and despite a few relentless hasslers on shorter boards, he stuck to it. He looked up to the people who did what they enjoyed, “coolness” be damned. “I looked up to those guys because their perspective on surfing was and is, unique and unwavering to pop culture,” he says. “They were riding beautiful single fin longboards throughout the early 2000s, in a period when it was probably the least cool thing you could do.”
While surfing is everything to him, he’s also got some other (way more important) things going on. In his work as a chemical and biomolecular engineer, he’s delving into things like finding an enzyme in body fluids that’s a biomarker for cancer or developing ways to stop wasting so much food. Like we said, Max Weston is a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a Spicoli.
