English Mario Vargas Llosa was born in 1936 in Arequipa, Peru’s second largest city. During his childhood in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Piura, a city in the north of Peru, he believed that his father had died. However, this was a lie told by his mother to conceal their tortuous separation. The truth emerged when, in…

Spanish Mario Vargas Llosa, nacido en 1936 en Arequipa, la segunda ciudad más grande del Peru, pasó su niñez en Cochabamba, Bolivia, y en Piura, una ciudad al norte del país, creyendo que su padre había muerto. En realidad, se trataba de una mentira urdida por su madre para encubrir una tormentosa separación, que estalló…

I was born on December 18, 1951 in the New York City borough of Queens. My parents, Ernest and Lillian, were both public high school teachers of a subject that is probably no longer taught, called Secretarial Studies, which focused on typing and taking dictation via two methods of shorthand stenography, Pitman and Gregg. Their…

Family Background John Bertrand Gurdon (JBG), born 2 October 1933, was brought up in a comfortable home by his parents (fig.1) on the Surrey/Hampshire border in a village, Frensham in South England, endowed with a large amount of National Trust heathland and ponds. His mother, Marjorie Byass, was from an East Yorkshire farming family. Brought…

I was born in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin – just outside Milwaukee – in February 1944, two years after my sister Judy. My parents were born in the U.S. in 1903 and 1905; they both had independent careers until my sister was born; then my mother stayed at home to be with my sister and me. My…

Peter Higgs was born on 29 May 1929 in the Elswick district of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. He graduated with First Class Honours in Physics from King’s College, University of London, in 1950. A year later, he was awarded an MSc and started research, initially under the supervision of Charles Coulson and, subsequently, Christopher Longuet-Higgins.…

I was born in Akron, Ohio on June 6, 1943, one year to the day before D-Day, the allied invasion at Normandy. The youngest of four children, I was brought up in a wonderfully stable, loving family of strong Midwestern values. When I was three my family moved to Kansas City, Missouri where we lived…

This autobiographical sketch of a life in science mainly focuses on a question I am now often asked – when and how did you know you wanted to be a scientist, and how did you become one? I am also asked by young scientists for advice I could impart from my own experiences and observations.…

I was born on November 20, 1940 in Kibbutz Sde Nahum in the Beit She’an Valley, in what was back then the pre-independent Israel. I grew up in a relatively happy environment at the so-called “kids house,” where the kids from the same class slept together. The idea was for kids to have quality time…

John Boyd Orr (September 23, 1880-June 25, 1971) was born in Kilmaurs, Ayrshire, Scotland. His father, R.C. Orr, was a pious and intelligent man whose sudden enthusiasms led to frequent reversals of fortune, but, although his finances were often depleted, he and his wife and their seven children enjoyed a pleasant life in their rural…