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

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.

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

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