The long, cold Minnesota winters instilled in me a fascination for exotic far off places; I aspired toward a career in tropical diseases and world health problems.

I grew up in Minnesota. Four generations of my father's people are buried there.

Often times the public school teachers are ridiculed or they are made to feel inferior but this is really undeserved.

Now a cholera epidemic was sweeping through Southeast Asia and south Asia in the early 1970s, so I started medical school and I joined a laboratory to work on this.

The Department of Cell Biology at Johns Hopkins was founded and directed by Tom Pollard, an engaging young scientist with remarkable energy and enthusiasm.

We always had lutefisk for Christmas dinner, after which Dad read from the Norwegian Bible.

Johns Hopkins introduced me to two defining events in my life: commitment to biomedical research and meeting my future wife, Mary.