ScienceMakers Toolkit Manual - The History Makers

Physics
that, I guess you would call it that spark in the eye, that asks questions that are fundamental to our entire existence,
you don’t need to actually do any of the work, but just support that person because they will do all the
work for you. And it turns out, I believe that we’re just not identifying those individuals and we’re not making
the kind of effort that we need to do that. We believe, I certainly believe, that children are inherently interested,
and inherently curious. And that’s all it takes. If we don’t beat that interest out of them, if we don’t say, you
shouldn’t do this, you shouldn’t study physics, you should maybe study basketball or something, we could have
as many scientists as we want. We could probably have more scientists than we could ever want. But we tend
to make heroes and we tend to put things in a way that people believe that the best defi nition of success are the
defi nitions that we see on TV and in the entertainment industry. And that’s not to denigrate the entertainment
industry. I think it’s great for people to actually use and expose their talent and develop that talent. My history,
as you’ve just heard in fact, comes from basically a signifi cant number of people over a very long number of
decades that have said, “Oh, you want to study nuclear physics? You want to study nuclear engineering? You
want to study accelerators? You want to study particle physics? You’re interested in a lot of things? Well, fi ne.
We’ll help you.” And that’s, in my personal opinion, all it takes.
Clip 7 - Refl ections on Legacy: I think I would like people to know, or to think that perhaps I was an innovator.
That I didn’t do things the way everyone else did. That I was a trailblazer, basically. And I think when I
look back, I really did pioneer a lot of things. I did some things that, from conducting orchestras to learning
neutrino physics in a way that was special on some level, teaching students, creating lecture series, writing, being
in movies, that the things that I did were somewhat pioneering and I would like that to be thought of as not
only important, but also as being a reasonable way to pursue things, to make your contribution. Good citizen’s
contribution sort of thing. My nieces, you know, always thought I was a fairly unusual person because I was
different than most of the people that they interacted with as they grew up. And the whole concept of smashing
atoms for a living makes you a little bit different than perhaps the people around you, but if you didn’t know I
smashed atoms for a living, you might just think I was the regular guy who just sat down and watched the Bears
game.
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