Sidney Altman Inspirational Quotes (7)

For our immediate family and relatives, Canada was a land of opportunity.

About seven years later I was given a book about the periodic table of the elements. For the first time I saw the elegance of scientific theory and its predictive power.

I was born in Montreal in 1939, the second son of poor immigrants.

Indeed, we are privileged to have been afforded the opportunity to study Nature and to follow our own thoughts and inspirations in a time of relative tranquillity and in a land with a generous and forward-looking government.

Eight months later, having left Columbia, I was studying physics in a summer program and working in Colorado when I decided to enroll as a graduate student in biophysics.

Nevertheless, as is a frequent occurrence in science, a general hypothesis was constructed from a few specific instances of a phenomenon.

I should mention that while I was growing up, Einstein was presented as a worthy role model for a young boy who was good at his studies.