Norman Li begins the interview with a description of his family and childhood years in Fuzhou, China. After World War II, Li's family moved to Taiwan, where Li completed high school. Li then attended National Taiwan…

Gustavo Leone was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, and lived there until he was twelve—he was the second of three children. His parents owned a deli, in which Leone worked too. Not being able to get ahead, the family moved…

Uma Chowdhry grew up in Bombay (later Mumbai), India, one of three children. She attended British missionary schools, which taught in English, and became interested in science in high school. Having obtained a…

Joseph Labovsky opens the interview with a discussion of his childhood in Ukraine and his family experiences there after his father emigrated to the United States in 1914. Labovsky moved with his mother and siblings to…

Shi Huang was born in Dalian, in the north of China. His mother was a doctor assigned to a military base there, but his father, also a doctor, had been assigned to another base in Beijing. Because this was during the…

Rolf Dessauer 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 service in the US…

Andrew C. Chan was born in Hong Kong, the eldest of four children. His father was an engineer, his mother a teacher. When Chan was seven the family emigrated to the United States. His father was able to continue his…

Makoto Kuro-o grew up in Tokyo, the younger of two children. His father was an engineer, providing air conditioning systems for large structures like the Tokyo train stations. His mother went to college but did not work…

Lubert Stryer was born in Tientsin (now Tianjin), China. He and his family lived in Shanghai until he was about ten. Lubert’s father had come to China from Germany, his mother from Russia, in order to escape the…

In this interview Professor Izaak Kolthoff begins by discussing his early life in Holland, his family, and his education. Kolthoff continues with the factors influencing his decision to become an analytical chemist, and…

Charles Tobias begins this interview with a description of his extended family in Hungary and their interest in engineering. He remembers his early childhood and education in Hungary and the influence of his family and…

J. Throck Watson was born in 1939 and grew up in small towns in Iowa. His father worked at the local school, and his mother stayed at home. Watson spent much of his childhood outdoors, playing with his brother and his…

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).…

Carolyn Bertozzi grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the second of three girls. Her father was a nuclear physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her mother a secretary in MIT's physics department.…

Lilianna Solnica-Krezel was born in Cieplice-Sląskie, a small village in the mountains in the southwestern part of Poland, but grew up in Sandomierz, Poland, at a time when the country was still under the communist…

Yixian Zheng was born and raised in Chongqing, the Sichuan province of China, the elder (by about nine years) of the family's two daughters. Both of her parents were professors at Chongqing University—her mother in…

In this interview Carl Djerassi begins with his early years in Vienna and Bulgaria, including his schooling at the American College in Sofia. This is followed by his immigration to the United States, with special…

Robert M. Hayes begins the interview with a discussion of his father's and his stepfather's affect on his life. He describes how he traveled frequently because of his stepfather's acting career, attending over sixteen…

Roy G. Neville comments on his family and his childhood in Bournemouth, England during the start of World War II, while admitting that he was not very intrigued by his first chemistry lesson but enjoyed performing…

This oral history is part of a series supported by the Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS), University of California, Santa Barbara, under the National Science Foundation Grant No. SES 0531184. Researchers using…

Peter B. Lederman, an only child, was born in Weimar, Germany. His father was an accountant who spent a week in a concentration camp but was recalled in order to help the state collect taxes. When Peter was seven the…

L. Louis Hegedus grew up in Szolnok, Hungary. After completing the chemical engineering program of the Technical University of Budapest, he was recruited to work at the Research Institute for the Organic Chemical…

Roald Hoffmann was born Roald Safran in Złoczów, Poland, in 1937. When the Nazi Wehrmacht reached Złoczów in 1941, Roald’s family went into hiding, then into a labor camp. His father bribed the guards to allow Roald,…

Kenneth Standing grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, the oldest of four children. His father was an accountant, his mother a primary school teacher and housewife. Standing says he ended up in science by process of…

Enrique Iglesia was born in Havana, Cuba, one of two children. The family lived in Havana until Enrique was about fourteen years old; he was then approaching military age, at which time he would not be allowed to leave…