By the time I reached high school my father's grocery store had made our life adequately comfortable and I was able to choose, without any practical encumbrances, the subjects that I wanted to pursue in college.

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

I spent eighteen months as a graduate student in physics at Columbia University, waiting unhappily for an opportunity to work in a laboratory and wondering if I should continue in physics.

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.

The RNA World referred to an hypothetical stage in the origin of life on Earth.

My intention was to enroll at McGill University but an unexpected series of events led me to study physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.