From upper-secondary school, Juha Henriksson headed for Otaniemi and Helsinki University of Technology. Not only was he interested in mathematics and physics, he felt HUT would also offer interesting challenges in putting theory into practice.

“HUT was a nice enough place, but I didn't really fit the default tech student mould. I was maybe a little different: everybody else carried a briefcase and dressed more or less the same, while I sported a backpack and colourful clothes.”

Already during his studies, Juha Henriksson landed a job at Nixdorf, where he designed manufacturing execution systems for industry. The systems he designed have since been used in the manufacture of buses and construction cranes, among others.

“The work was interesting and oriented to problem solving, which is something I have always enjoyed. However, I have always been in favour of soft values and the environment, which was in conflict with improving the production efficiency of big business.”

In the end Juha Henriksson gave up his secure job to study musicology at the University of Helsinki. He had always been interested in music, but he had left it on the back burner during his technology studies.

“Straight off the bat it felt as if I'd come to my spiritual home. In engineering there are only right answers and wrong answers, but in the humanities things aren't so clear cut. That was a pleasant revelation!”

Musicological studies went fast. It took three years to finish his Masters, and only another three years before he could call himself Dr Henriksson.

“I was strongly motivated and I dived straight in to my studies. That must be why I finished so fast.”

After his dissertation Dr Henriksson considered research as a career, but he soon discovered pure academic research wasn't what he wanted to do with his life.

“What I want to do is popularise music research. All my publications after my dissertation are aimed at music fans among the general public rather than at other researchers.”

Dr Henriksson finds it convenient that his current post as Director of the Music Archive JAPA has a built-in flexibility that has enabled him to write his books.

“Writing requires a fair amount of independence and long-term thinking. A certain logical thinking that I have as a legacy of my engineering days is well suited to formulating the structure of a non-fiction book.”