My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.

Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it.

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English.

Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read.

Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

My head was always bubbling over with facts and it seems to me this had little to do with my paying close attention in school and more to do with my voracious and omnivorous reading habits.

There are relatively few experiments in atomic physics these days that don't involve the use of a laser.