From an early age, I knew I would become a scientist. It may have been my brother Sam's doing. He interested me in the laws of falling bodies when I was ten and helped my father equip a basement chemistry lab for me when I was fifteen. I became skilled in the synthesis of selenium halides.

I've always hated authority from an early age. And authority have always hated me.

I came to graduate school at Harvard University in 1954. My thesis supervisor, Julian Schwinger, had about a dozen doctoral students at a time. Getting his ear was as difficult as it was rewarding. I called my thesis 'The Vector Meson in Elementary Particle Decays', and it showed an early commitment to an electroweak synthesis.

My father was from the South and turned me into a news junkie at a very early age. I would sit and watch TV with him.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

Jazz is a constant theme in my life. My father is a jazz pianist, and from an early age I have been surrounded by it.