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I was going to engineering school but fell in love with physics.

In 1948 I entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, undecided between studies of chemistry and physics, but my first year convinced me that physics was more interesting to me.

My first degree came years before my second. I had wanted to be a physicist, but I flunked calculus.

In the late '30's when I was in college, physics - and in particular, nuclear physics - was the most exciting field in the world.

When I was a college student at Yale, I was studying physics and mathematics and was absolutely intent on becoming a theoretical physicist.

I went to college because my father thought that I should learn engineering, because he wanted to go into the heating business with me. There, I realized I wanted to be a physicist. I had to tell him, which was a somewhat traumatic experience.

I chose to pursue a career in physics because there the truth isn't so easily bent.

Ever since I was a kid, I've had an enormous interest in the sciences - everything from quantum physics to anthropology.

I was not an especially diligent student but nevertheless obtained a reasonable education in physics.

Soon after my degree, in 1958 I went to the United States to enlarge my experience and to familiarize myself with particle accelerators. I spent about one and a half years at Columbia University.