The mystique associated with the bomb, the role that scientists played in it, and its general importance could not fail to impress even a six-year old.

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

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

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.

And finally, no matter how good the science gets, there are problems that inevitably depend on judgement, on art, on a feel for financial markets.

The fact that the underlying laws of physics are deterministic and impersonal does not mean that at the human level we can't talk about ideas about reasons and goals and purposes and free will.

The Heartland Institute, which people mostly only know in terms of the fact that it hosts these annual conferences of climate change skeptics or deniers, it's important to know that the Heartland Institute is first and foremost a free market think tank. It's not a scientific organization.

My history is pretty different from the history of most professors. I was a high school dropout. I dropped out and became a science fiction writer.