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My childhood and adolescence were filled with visiting scientists from both India and abroad, many of whom would stay with us. A life of science struck me as being both interesting and particularly international in its character.

When I was 28 years old, I found myself in Schenectady, New York, where I discovered that it was possible for some people to make a good living as physicists.

When I was in elementary school, I was very interested in science already. I must have been ten or eleven years old. I started experiments with chemistry sets at my home in Mexico. I was able to borrow a bathroom and convert it to a laboratory. My parents supported it. They were pleased. My friends just tolerated it.

I was a terrible science student, so I could never be a scientist; my mind doesn't work that way. But I've learned to love the stories around science, and I have so much respect and fascination for the people who can make discoveries and find applications. There's a lot of drama there.

We didn't really have television when I was a kid. Around 30, I discovered films and started systematically catching up. I collect interesting documentaries and films, and watch a few nights a week.

When I was a child, it was cool to be a scientist.

I spent my adult life as a scientist, and science is, essentially, the most successful approach we have to try and understand the vast mysteries around.

I think I was a born scientist.

My youth held little forecast of a career in biomedical research. I was born on February 22, 1936, in York, Pennsylvania, and spent my childhood in a rural area on the west bank of the Susquehanna River.

I've had a very unusual background in science - not the usual route of planning on being a scientist from age 3. I think my story shows that success is more about personal motivation and determination than it is about where you were born or what your economic status was.