In high school and college, I gathered a number of medals for marksmanship, but I have long since abandoned this activity, having concluded that the world would be a better place with fewer sharpshooters.

I was educated in the Washington public schools and attended the University of Maryland as a day student, graduating in 1938 with a degree in chemistry. After working for the Dow Chemical Company in Midland, Michigan, for a year, I returned to the University of Maryland to take a Master's degree before going on to Yale to pursue a doctorate.

In the spring of 1948, I was able to join the newly created Brookhaven National Laboratory, which was dedicated to finding peaceful uses for atomic energy.

Every time four protons are turned into a helium nucleus, two neutrinos are produced. These neutrinos take only two seconds to reach the surface of the Sun and another eight minutes or so to reach the Earth. Thus, neutrinos tell us what happened in the center of the Sun eight minutes ago.

Effective use of Braille is as important to the blind as independent mobility, knowledge in the use of adaptive technology, and the core belief that equality, opportunity and security are truly possible for all people who are blind.

We thought that the Internet was going to connect us all together. As a young geek in rural Maine, I got excited about the Internet because it seemed that I could be connected to the world. What it's looking like increasingly is that the Web is connecting us back to ourselves.

I grew up doing certain little things in the musical theatre realm, but I didn't really understand that you could... make a career out of it.

Scientists are not these guys in lab coats deep in the inner bowels of universities and hospitals with their Bunsen burners. They're the people molding the culture that we live in, the future of our culture, and the technology we rely on every day. These are the rock stars of our time right now.