I learned quickly, as I tell my graduate students now, there are no answers in the back of the book when the equipment doesn't work or the measurements look strange.

About 1900 my parents came to the United States as children from what was then the Polish area of Russia.

My parents regarded school teachers as higher beings, as did many immigrants.

My parents were determined to move into the middle class.

It was good fortune to be a child during the Depression years and a youth during the war years.

They wanted me to play more sports because they were acutely sensitive to their children being one hundred percent American, and they believed that all Americans played sports and loved sports.

The experimenter dealing with nature faces an outside and often hard world. Natures' curriculum cannot be changed.