Timothy L. Manser grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, one of two children. His father was a lawyer and his mother mostly a housewife. He liked school; though he says the schools were not very good, he did have a good biology…

Caroline F. Kisker grew up in West Berlin, West Germany, where she attended the John F. Kennedy German-American grammar school. After completing her Abitur, Kisker planned to study medicine, but due to the complicated…

Marjorie A. Oettinger grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, the younger of two children. Her father was a professor at Harvard University; her mother taught biology at Harvard University; and her brother went to Harvard…

Ellen Puré grew up in Queens, New York, the youngest of three children. Her parents were Polish survivors of concentration camps. Her father was a carpenter who designed and built store interiors. Always interested in…

Karin M. Reinisch grew up in Massachusetts, one of two daughters. Her father was a physicist, a professor at University of Massachusetts; her mother was a housewife. Her parents were immigrants from Germany, and…

Yolanda Sanchez was born in El Paso, Texas, but grew up in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. She was one of five children whose father was an architect, now a teacher, and a housewife. Sanchez spent a year in New Zealand,…

Jonathan D. Goldberg was born and raised in Hertfordshire, England, one of two children. From the outset, it was clear to his parents that Goldberg was talented academically and so they encouraged him from a young age…

Michael A. Farrar was born in Washington, DC, where his father was a chemist for the Bureau of Standards. Farrar's mother, a housewife, was German, and Farrar and his younger brother and sister grew up bilingual. As his…

Jason G. Cyster was born and raised in Western Australia, the younger of two brothers. Cyster lived and worked on a farm for much of his early life. His father worked as a hired laborer on others' farms before buying…

A joint interview with Charles N. Cole and Inder Verma.

Charles N. Cole begins his interview by discussing the reasons behind his decision to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Cole's interest in…

David Baltimore begins the series of interviews describing his interest in biology as a high-school student and throughout his college years at Swarthmore. During college, he spent a summer at Cold Spring Harbor where…

Kathleen L. Collins grew up in Norwell, Massachusetts, a small town near Boston, the second of four children. Her father was a teacher and an assistant principal. Her mother was a nurse until she stayed home with her…

Chavela M. Carr grew up near Indianapolis, Indiana in a large family. From early childhood she was interested in school, finding the math-based sciences interesting. Due to a high school human genetics course, Carr…

Frances M. Brodsky grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Her father worked at ETS (Educational Testing Service), a job he began shortly after the company was founded. Her mother, an artist, was a professor at Rutgers and…

William Braell grew up in Palmyra, a small town in New York, the oldest of five children. His father was a general practitioner, his mother a housewife. He was always interested in science and always had chemistry sets.…

William A. Muller was born in Manhattan but grew up on Long Island; he is the oldest of three brothers, among whom might be found typical sibling rivalry. He is of Jewish ancestry, but his parents and his extended…

Thomas W. Muir grew up in Stranraer, Scotland—a major port city about two-hundred miles south of Glasgow—the oldest of three brothers. His father was a telephone engineer technician and his mother a housewife, both of…

Markus D. Meister was born in Siegsdorf, Germany, a small town in Swabian Germany, in the foothills of the Alps. His father completed a PhD in physics, and when Markus was a young boy the family moved to the village of…

Timothy J. McDonnell spent his first six years in Indiana and Spain; then the family moved to San Diego, California. His father was a mechanical engineer in the Navy and then the Air Force. His mother had been a weather…

Roderick MacKinnon was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, and grew up in Burlington, an outer suburb of Boston. He is the fourth of seven children. His father had not gone to college, but he picked up…

Carolyn E. Machamer was born and grew up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, the oldest of three sisters. Her extended family, mother's in California and father's in Pennsylvania, remains close. Her father was a…

Kun Ping Lu was born in Pinghe County, a rural area of Fujian Province in southern China, one of six children. His father had been born into a poor farming family who adopted him out to a wealthy family who had one…

Emma Parmee grew up in Keynsham, England, the youngest of four children. Her father was a banker, her mother a housewife. She had always liked math and science, but she also liked languages. She attended all-girls…

Roy M. Long grew up in Lebanon, a small town near Hershey, Pennsylvania. His father worked at the Hershey factory, his mother in a department store. Because his father worked afternoons and evenings, Long spent most of…

Fenyong Liu was born and raised in Guangzhou, China during the Cultural Revolution. Early on in life he knew that he wanted to pursue science as his career, learning English during junior high school and having…