Judith Summers-Gates was born in Hazelton, Pennsylvania in 1958 and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother was a registered nurse. Her father was a hardwood floor installer. She had a younger sister and…

Rory Cooper was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1959 and grew up in San Luis Obispo, California. His father was a model maker, in the United States Army Reserve, and later, a professor of biology and agriculture at…

Robert Robson begins the interview with a discussion about growing up in South Dakota. He discusses his education, his involvement with the Army, and his early interest in electronics. He also details his move to…

Stephanie Kwolek starts this interview by describing her family background. Her father's early death meant that her mother had to work to support Kwolek and her brother, who later became a chemical engineer. At the…

Collin R. Diedrich was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1983. His parents were originally from Kansas, and they settled in St. Louis to help Diedrich’s grandfather with his wholesale business. Diedrich grew up in a…

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…

Allison A. Aldridge calls Ottawa, Kansas her home town. Her father was in the Air Force, her mother worked in industry and she has three brothers. When she was young Aldridge wanted to be a veterinarian, but working…

Robert D. Nicholls was born in a small town near Melbourne, Australia, one of four children. His father was in the Forests Commission, so the family moved fairly often until Robert's parents divorced when he was a…

James R. Lupski was born and raised on Long Island, New York, one of eight children. He attended a Roman Catholic elementary school but a public high school. Lupski and three of his siblings manifested, at different…

Jennie R. Patrick grew up in Gadsden, a small, typically Southern, town in Alabama, the fourth of five children. Her parents were laborers whose formal education stopped in junior high school. As a child, she had no…

W. Ian Lipkin was born in Chicago, Illinois, one of three children. His parents, of Russian Jewish background, met at the New School in New York City, New York, but moved to Chicago to study at the University of…

Erin M. Schuman was born in San Gabriel, California, though spent most of her childhood in Huntington Beach, the oldest of three siblings; her mother was a teacher at a Catholic school. She was a "serial hobbyist" with…

Theodore S. Jardetzky was raised in Boston, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto, California, the middle of three brothers. Both of his parents were scientists: his father emigrated from Austria to attend Macalester College,…

Carol W. Greider was born in San Diego, California. Her father was a physicist; her mother was a biologist who died when Carol was young. Her father had a position at Yale University when Carol was a child, and they…

Andrew D. Ellington was born in 1956 in Missouri; the elder of two siblings. His father was a title lawyer, and his mother was a high school mathematics and computer science teacher. From a very young age Ellington's…

Stephen J. Elledge was born in Paris, Illinois. He had two older sisters and an older half sister. He attended Roman Catholic elementary school but rebelled against the religious teaching and switched to public schools.…

Edwin R. Chapman grew up in Bellingham, Washington, the youngest of four children. His father taught drafting and shop in high school, and his mother stayed at home to raise the children. From an early age Chapman was…

Ann M. Pullen was born in Eastbourne, a small town on the south coast of England, though was raised in Sutton Coldfield just outside of Birmingham, the elder of two sisters. Both of her parents were university-educated…

Herbert Tabor begins this interview with a discussion of his family and childhood. He grew up during the Depression in Manhattan, New York, and attended local public schools before becoming a student at City College in…

Emil Smith begins his oral history interview by discussing his undergraduate study of biology at Columbia University. He received a Guggenheim fellowship to Cambridge University until the outbreak of World War II. Smith…

In this interview John Schaefgen begins with his family history and early life in Gross Point, Illinois. He then discusses the development of his interest in science, and describes his education, including his…

James A. McCloskey, Jr., grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He entered Trinity University in San Antonio, where he majored in chemistry; he earned a PhD in analytical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…

Raymond March was born in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. March’s childhood was shaped by World War II, and by a mysterious polio-like paralysis which caused him to miss a great deal of school. He took an apprenticeship…

Marvin Margoshes grew up in New York City, New York, one of three children. His parents had left the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his father from Galicia and his mother from Hungary, and had met as members of a Zionist…

Gordon M. Kline begins the interview by discussing his work at the National Bureau of Standards during the 1930s, where he focussed on applications of organic resins to aviation. This is followed by a general discussion…