"In the material sciences these are and have been, and are most surely likely to continue to be heroi..." — J. Robert Oppenheimer

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

In the spring of 1929, I returned to the United States. I was homesick for this country. I had learned in my student days a great deal about the new physics. I wanted to pursue this myself, to explain it, and to foster its cultivation.

My mother was born in Baltimore, and before her marriage, she was an artist and teacher of art.

I was born in New York in 1904.