In my schooling through high school, I excelled mainly in chemistry, physics and mathematics.

The Maria Mayer shell model suggestion in 1949 was a great triumph and fitted my belief that a nuclear shell model should represent a proper approach to understanding nuclear structure.

My father, who had previously been a civil engineer, died in the great influenza epidemic of 1918.

The research included neutron resonance spectroscopy, the angular distribution of pion elastic and inelastic scattering on nuclei with optical model fitting.

Due mainly to my record on an open chemistry competition given by Cal Tech, I was admitted, graduating in 1939 as a physics major.