I graduated from Harvard with a degree in mathematics in 1951 and got my PhD in physics in 1955. I needed a job and a friend made a suggestion: on the Harvard campus there was a relatively modest cyclotron, simple enough for graduate students to operate. There was a position open for a ‘house theorist’. My friend recommended me and I got the job. My only formal duties were to try to answer questions put by the experimenters; otherwise I could do my own work. My main interest then was interpreting the recent findings at Stanford, where electrons were being scattered from protons, and from deuterons and other nuclei. I had written my thesis on the deuteron. But after two years my appointment was over and I had to look for a new job. I applied to the Institute for Advanced Study of Princeton and was accepted for autumn 1957. This left the summer.

LRB 20 December 2012 | PDF Download