Their educations ended with high school - my father going to work as a clerk and then salesman in a company dealing in printing and stationary, and my mother working as a secretary and then bookkeeper in a firm of wool merchants.

I read everything: fiction, history, science, mathematics, biography, travel.

I was also interested in chemistry, but my parents were not willing to buy me a chemistry set.

The remoteness of my parents from the schools, so unfashionable today, was often painful for me, but I learned early to deal with an outside and sometimes hard world.

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.

There were two free public libraries within walking distance of my home; I remember taking six books home from every visit, the limit set by the library.

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