Eric Allin Cornell

The 1970s, the decade of my teenage years, was a transitional period in American youth culture.

Between rounds of speed chess I read enough of a programming manual to teach myself to write programs on the school's DEC mainframe in the language Basic.

There are relatively few experiments in atomic physics these days that don't involve the use of a laser.

They said I couldn't play anything but an English boy. I knew I could. So I went to New York.

In early 1993, when I was 12, I was separated from my family as the Sierra Leone civil war, which began two years earlier, came into my life.

Color is a very critical thing. I've found that architects don't like colors. Engineers too. And so somebody has to stand in. Because this is the finish of it. It is the emotional part of a structure.