"Other than the fact that I was a curious child, I did not…I cannot say I had a lot of early experiences with science. My basic personality made me very curious. Just wanted to understand why things were, and how things operated. Living in a rural setting allowed me to be very close to nature. The wonders of nature seemed to have fueled my desire even more so, to understand why things happened in a certain way. I realized very early in life that science would probably provide some of [the] answers to my many questions."