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

The postdoc explained to me how to distinguish different sorts of particles on the basis of the amounts of energy they deposited in various sorts of detectors, spark chambers, calorimeters, what have you.

I was born in Palo Alto, California in 1961.

After a semester or so, my infatuation with computers burnt out as quickly as it had begun.

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 fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well.

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