Alan Lightman

Astrophysicist and author of the bestseller "Einstein's Dreams" (1993). Professor in the 1970s at Harvard, where he studied such phenomena as black holes and distant galaxies; staff scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysics Observatory in the 1980s. In 1989 he he became a professor of both physics and writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1990 Lightman and Roberta Brawer published "Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists," which won the Most Outstanding Science Book in Physical Science Award from the Association of American Publishers.

By age seven, I had a chemistry set and burned a hole in the rug. I built something like a tesla coil. . . . When I turned it on, it knocked out every TV in the neighborhood. The neighbors became very wary of me. I used to fire off rockets that came down in their backyards or through their windows, so they gave me a wide berth.