Nico M. Nibbering was born in Zaandam, the Netherlands, one of eight children. When school resumed after World War II, Nibbering did well and tested into high school, where he chose the science and mathematics track and…

Helen Donis-Keller was born in Madison, Wisconsin, but grew up in Elkhart, Indiana. As a child, she loved art, so she pursued a degree in graphic design and photography at The University of Cincinnati. She spent two…

Paul Kebarle was born in Bulgaria, where his father was a business man and his mother a housewife. Kebarle escaped to Czechoslovakia, ostensibly for treatment for scoliosis, thence to Switzerland, where he studied…

Erik De Clercq was born in Dendermonde, Belgium in 1941. Some of his earliest memories as a child involve World War II and the festivities when Belgium was liberated. His mother was a tailor and his father worked as a…

A.R. Ravishankara was born in Shimoga, India, and grew up mostly in Mysore and Bangalore, India. His father was a farmer who died when A.R. was ten years old. Ravishankara attended a private school and graduated from…

Mario Molina grew up Mexico City, Mexico, one of eight children. His father was a lawyer and judge, his stepmother a teacher and housewife. Molina liked music and played the violin seriously. He also loved science,…

Steve Duzan was born in Oregon in 1941, though he and his family moved to Seattle, Washington when he was ten years old. He was raised by a single mother after the death of his father. His mother worked as the assistant…

Joseph DeSimone began his childhood in Norristown, Pennsylvania, one of three children. His father, an Italian immigrant, was a tailor; his mother was an accountant; there was a large Italian extended family. DeSimone…

George M. Wyman was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1921. Wyman attended the Lutheran Gimnázium in Budapest until World War II threatened, leaving for the United States to become a chemist. Wyman entered Cornell…

Christie G. Enke was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1933. While attending high school, he worked as a stage manager and took electronics classes at Dunwoody Industrial Institute (now Dunwoody College of Technology).…

Peter DeCarlo grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, the second of three children. His father is a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University, and his mother is a kindergarten teacher. Both sisters also have…

Annette Campbell-White was born and raised in New Zealand, but due to her father’s job as a mining engineer, she attended university in South Africa. She studied engineering, but not seeing a career path in the…

Thomas Kiley discusses his involvement as legal counsel for Genentech, including his role in legal matters related to the successful expression of somatostatin in 1977, human insulin in 1979, and the human growth…

Robert Carpenter was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He moved to South Bend, Indiana, where his father started a family bakery when he was an infant. When Carpenter was in elementary school, the family moved to…

Alison Taunton-Rigby was born and educated in Great Britain. Her father was a scientist for the British government, and her mother was a physiotherapist. She attended the University of Bristol for her undergraduate and…

Franklin Pass was born in Duluth, Minnesota. His father, a lawyer, died when Pass was twelve years old, after which his family moved to Minneapolis. He attended the University of Minnesota and graduated from medical…

Peter Drake was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father was the head of manufacturing for Beech Aircraft before he became one of the founders of McDonnell Aircraft. Drake attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine,…

Jean H. Futrell was born in Grant Parish, Louisiana. He majored in chemical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, and also enrolled in the Air Force ROTC. Futrell attended the University of California at Berkeley…

Rolf Dessauer (1926-2024) was born in Nuremberg, Germany, one of two sons of a physician and a housewife. His family fled to the United States after Kristallnacht, eventually settling in Flushing, New York. After…

Garren Bohlin was a partner at Arthur Anderson LLP in 1980, where he did general business consulting. He was contacted by Mirza Mehdi of the Genetics Institute, who worked with Gabriel Schmergel. Mehdi asked Bohlin if…

Gabriel Schmergel was born in 1940 in Budapest, Hungary. He immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen shortly after the Soviet Union defeated the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His parents worked manual labor…

Esther Takeuchi grew up in Akron, Ohio, the youngest of three children. After escaping Soviet Latvia, her father became an electrical engineer for Goodyear Aerospace and her mother a home health worker who also had an…

Franz Hillenkamp was born in Essen, Germany. Having chosen the science and math track in the Gymnasium Hillenkamp went on to major in electrical engineering at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM). He interrupted his…

Constantine E. Anagnostopoulos was born in Turkey in 1922 to parents of Greek descent. Due to Turkish expulsion of the Greeks when he was three months old, the family left for the Greek mainland. Because his father was…

John Crowley was born and raised in northern New Jersey. His father was a police officer who died on duty when Crowley was seven years old. Later in his life, Crowley attended business school and became a consultant,…