Eric Allin Cornell

The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture. ”

Travel provided many interesting experiences, but perhaps the most useful lesson I learned was that I really had no proficiency for learning the thousands of characters of the written Chinese language. ”

I certainly remember building model rockets. It was fun to watch the rocket blast into the air, suspenseful to wonder if the parachute would open to bring the rocket safely back. ”

My father was a professor of civil engineering at MIT, and my mother taught high school English. ”

Most of my teachers probably found I made less trouble if they let me read. ”

The postdoc explained to me how to distinguish different sorts of particles on the basis of the amounts of energy they deposited in various sorts of detectors, spark chambers, calorimeters, what have you. ”

Conversely, I came to realize that being good at something is hardly a reason to avoid doing it. ”

As it was, I realized choosing the study of Chinese literature as my life's work was probably a mistake. ”

I was partly old-fashioned and partly modern. ”

My fellow students there were very smart, but the really novel thing was that they actually seemed to put a lot of effort into their school work. By the end of my first semester there, I began to get into that habit as well. ”