“And what have kings that privates have not too,Save ceremony, save general ceremony?” William Shakespeare, in Henry the Fifth, IV. 1, 243-244 My youth held little forecast of a career in biomedical research. I was born on February 22, 1936, in York, Pennsylvania, and spent my childhood in a rural area on the west bank…

The Name The name Thouless is very rare. Fewer than 150 people with the name live in Britain, almost all of whom are connected to Norwich. This is because it is a relatively new spelling of an old name spelt variously Thules, Thewless, Thewlis etc. Five generations before David, his ancestor John was born Thules.…

Asked to reflect on my background, I realise that the conditions under which I grew up were very different from those that young scholars encounter today. I was raised and educated in post-war Stockholm, Sweden, where I was born on 28 January 1938. My parents lived on one of the large islands in central Stockholm…

I was born on March 9, 1959, in Higashi-Matsuyama, a small city located about an hour’s train ride north of Tokyo. My house was located in the countryside, surrounded by rice fields on the north, east, and south. I grew up in such a peaceful environment. I went to Kawagoe High School, a rather typical…

Yuan Tseh Lee was born on November 19, 1936 in Hsinchu, Taiwan. His father is an accomplished artist and his mother a school teacher. He started his early education while Taiwan was under Japanese occupation – a result of a war between China and Japan in 1894. His elementary education was disrupted soon after it…

I was born during the war, on October 20, 1942, as the second of five children. My father, Rolf Volhard, was an architect. He was the eighth of ten children of Franz Volhard, a professor of medicine in Frankfurt, and specialist for heart and kidney. My mother’s mother, Lies Haas-Möllmann, was a painter but had…

I was born on September 11th 1944 in Casablanca, Morocco, in a Jewish family with mixed Sephardic and Ashkenazi origins. My father’s parents were teachers at the Alliance Israëlite universelle (AIU), which operated a network of schools dedicated to the dissemination of French language and culture throughout Jewish communities in North African and Mid-Eastern countries.…

Early Years I was born in November 1939 in Harlem, New York to Irish immigrant parents and grew up in the South Bronx. My parents had landed in New York on the eve of the depression; my father’s hope was that I would never have to live through one myself. My mother’s passage was funded…

Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman was born at Tiruchirappalli in Southern India on November 7th, 1888. His father was a lecturer in mathematics and physics so that from the first he was immersed in an academic atmosphere. He entered Presidency College, Madras, in 1902, and in 1904 passed his B.A. examination, winning the first place and the…

Martin Luther King, Jr., (January 15, 1929-April 4, 1968) was born Michael Luther King, Jr., but later had his name changed to Martin. His grandfather began the family’s long tenure as pastors of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, serving from 1914 to 1931; his father has served from then until the present, and from…