For the past two decades, I have studied the molecules that convey our sense of touch. I entered this field pursuing the allure of basic biology research, never anticipating the many directions these findings would take. Indeed, my life has been full of directions I never imagined. As an 18-year-old refugee from Lebanon, I had…

B y now, I have lived in Northern California for more than half my life, but I remain a native New Yorker in temperament and humor. Born in 1955, I grew up in a seaside Brooklyn neighborhood − immortalized by Neil Simon’s play ‘Brighton Beach Memoirs’ – that’s been a landing pad for Eastern European…

The Early Years: Birth to High School I was born in a small suburb of Copenhagen, Denmark, on 16th January 1954. I was the first of three children born to my parents, Hanne and Thorkil Meldal. My mother was from the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea and was the daughter of Niels…

Iwas born December 13, 1953, in Augusta, Georgia, but spent my childhood and teenage years in Dillon, South Carolina. Dillon, a town of about 6,000 people, lies just west of the Little Pee Dee River, in the northeastern part of the state. When I lived there, the area was mostly dependent on agriculture – cotton…

Introduction In this biographical sketch I will discuss part of my personal and academic journey, how I originally got interested in econometrics, and how I continued in this area as it changed from a field where causal inference was almost non-existent to one where causality is now explicitly a major part. During the same time…

Syukuro (Suki) Manabe (真鍋 淑郎) S uki Manabe was born 21 September 1931. He is a Japanese-educated American meteorologist and climatologist who pioneered the use of computers to simulate global climate change and natural climate variations. Suki was born in Shingu Village, Uma District, Ehime Prefecture, Japan. He enjoyed his childhood growing up in the Shikoku…

I was born January 11th 1968 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. I am a chemist and currently one of the directors at the Max Planck Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr. I also serve as professor of organic chemistry at the Universities of Cologne and Hokkaido. I wanted to become a chemist since…

I’m fortunate to be the son and grandson of enterprising and resilient people who aspired to build strong families and meaningful lives even when uprooted. My academic success is a tribute to my parents’ and grandparents’ hard work and readiness to try new things, to the value they placed on learning, and to their desire…

Childhood I was born on July 12, 1956 in Flushing, which is a neighborhood in the Borough of Queens, in New York City. My mother’s family was of German-English-Irish descent and lived in Queens, whereas my father’s family was of Italian descent and lived in the Bronx. I was the first born of five children,…

I was born in Suita City, Osaka Prefecture, in 1948. My father, Sojiro, was an electrical engineer who worked at a power company. My mother worked at a bank until she married, after which she became a housewife. Suita is located about 10 km north of the center of Osaka City. My home was surrounded by…