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Leon Lederman
Nobel Prize in Physics
Leon Lederman: (My brother) liked to do experiments. He would collect all kinds of equipment -- electricity, chemicals from the drug store. Occasionally, somehow he'd get hold of a chemistry set, and we had a flash of opulence. And he loved to do things, and he'd make things work, and I loved to watch him, and I think that was a strong influence on me. It sort of introduced me to things and how they work, and that was impressive. So I think that he probably disposed me toward chemistry, and in high school the chemistry teachers were more fun. So there I was a chemist.
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Leon Lederman
Nobel Prize in Physics
Leon Lederman: Suddenly it became clear that there was a way of testing this parity idea. And so, we went to the laboratory and dashed in on this poor, confused steward, and started rearranging the apparatus and telling him do this, do that, do the other thing, and he saw his thesis flying out the window. "What are you doing to my apparatus?" And someone said, "Don't worry about it, it's going to be great." And we worked on the weekend, preparing this experiment. And it turned out that we started collecting data Monday evening, and by three o'clock Tuesday morning we knew something that nobody else in the world knew. That this symmetry idea that we had been working on was not a perfect symmetry, that there was an imperfection in the symmetry, a very important imperfection in the symmetry. That was the key discovery.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
I heard about Rosa Parks, and I heard Martin Luther King, Jr.'s voice on an old radio, and the words of Dr. King and the action of Rosa Parks inspired me. I followed the drama of the Montgomery bus boycott. We were too poor to have a subscription to the local newspaper -- it was called The Montgomery Advertiser -- so my grandfather had a subscription, and when he would finish reading his paper we would get his paper and read about what was going on in Montgomery and listen to the radio. We didn't have a television then. And Dr. King was so inspiring, so inspiring. I wanted to find a way to get involved in the Civil Rights Movement and become part of it. I would hear him speak. I just felt that he was speaking to me. Like he was saying, "John Lewis, you can do it. You can get involved. You must get involved." And when I got the chance, I got involved.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
John Lewis: Well, I was very moved by stories, the history, knowing what happened, how it happened. As a child I would ask a lot of questions of my mother, my father, my grandparents, my great-grandparents, my aunts, the grand-aunts, and they accused me of being nosy, but I was inquisitive. I was eavesdropping a great deal as a child. When my mother's aunt, my grand-aunt would come and visit us, I would go in another room and I would listen. I would listen, and the moment they left the house I would say, "What was that all about? What did y'all mean? What did that word mean? What was it all about?" And sometimes my mother and my grand-aunt, and sometimes my grand-uncles, they would walk the road, down a long road to see them off to their home, and I would walk with them, and I would ask questions on the way back and we had these discussions. And when I was growing up, I was somewhat shy but I grew out of it, because I wanted to know. I had to - if you want to know something you have to ask.
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John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
When Rosa Parks said, "No," it changed my life forever, and I've never been the same since. I wanted somehow -- in some way -- to make it to Montgomery. I just wanted to be a part of it. It created a great sense of pride. I felt things were about to change. I knew it was very dangerous because I read about it, I heard about the bombings of the churches, the homes, people being arrested. I had witnessed through news accounts the lynching of Emmett Till. This young teenager from Chicago -- visiting relatives in Mississippi, going to the store -- was accused of whistling or saying something to a white woman, and then later that night, someone coming and grabbing him out of his uncle's house, out of bed, taking him, beating him and throwing him in the river. That all had an impact on me.
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Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
I loved logic, math, computer programming. I loved systems and logic approaches. And so I just figured architecture is this perfect combination. Then it takes me seven years of architecture school to realize that I think like an artist. And even though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I will hire firms or cause firms to be hired to work with me. I don't want to be an architectural firm ever. I want to remain as an artist building either sculptures or architectural works. And in a way what I disliked about architecture was probably the profession. I still am an artist. And basically what does that mean? It's much more individual. It's much more about who you are and what you need to make, what you need to say for you. Whether someone's going to look at it or not, you're still going to do it.
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Maya Lin
Artist and Architect
I think art is very tricky because it's what you do for yourself. It's much harder for me to make those works than, in a way, the monuments or the architecture because those have functions. Architecture, the monuments, it's a symbolic function, but it's still you're solving a problem. The architecture, you're definitely making art, but it's surrounded by a problem solving. It's like math. It's a puzzle to me. I love figuring out puzzles. The art work, on the other hand, is, "Go into a room and make whatever you want to make." And it's very, very hard.
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