Going to school and working for good marks, indeed working for very good marks, was a serious business.

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

A parent being called to the school because their child had misbehaved was as serious as a parent being called to the police station because their child had robbed a bank.

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.

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

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

Whatever the course, whether the course was boring or interesting to me, whether I was talented in mathematics or not talented in languages, my parents expected A's.