Certainly to me it has been valuable to have to think through the basics of physics in order to present them in a halfway coherent form for a course. That has led me to ideas in research. Even freshman physics leads to thoughts that lead to other thoughts that are stimulating.
I think that my research is valuable to my teaching. I think that the two complement each other and I'm able to present somewhat more stimulating lectures because of what's happening in research, so it's a good complement.
It's stimulating to teach a new course. To teach a course three times in a row is, I think, about the maximum for me. On the second year - you know, the saying is that first year you learn how to teach the course, the second year you do it right, and the third year you're coasting and you had better move on to something else.
I have taught a mixture of undergraduate and graduate courses, and found them both stimulating.
I've always been interested in mechanical things. I think I must have been heavily influenced by my father, who is also very good with his hands. He liked to build things. I always loved to watch him do it, and I loved to build things on my own.
I was never exposed as a kid to any real science. I read the occasional popular science book, and I loved Mechanics Illustrated, which had a lot of pseudo-science in it: It wasn't until I got to college that I began to appreciate what physics is all about, and that was really an accident also.
I came from a very small high school in which there was no guidance and not any appreciable amount of physics taught, nor much mathematics. So I didn't know what academia was all about until I got to college.
As a kid I did enjoy building things; learned quickly how to make gun powder. I built sleighs, forts, houses in the back yards of houses.
I didn't do much in things mechanical in high school, except learn to square dance and other such activities.
I had good time in high school, but I don't think I learned a lot.
It is so easy for us theorists who build wonderful castles, beautiful ideas. Sometimes, it is remarkable, sometimes these beautiful ideas prove to be close to what the observations tell us. But often and also they turn out to be wrong.
Research in the natural sciences operates in successive approximations. We are glad to be able to offer many good problems for research by generations to come.
I loved teaching. In addition to that, I love physics. And so what could be better than to talk physics to bright young students?
Sciences evolve.
I've been working in cosmology since 1964.
One thing that sticks in my mind is when I was a kid, and I had just learned to read, I came across one of my older sister's textbooks that explained compound pulley. I thought that was really neat, and I still do.
I've always, since I was a kid, been interested in how things work.
Clocks around our house were in danger because I loved to take things apart, and failed to put them back together.
The excitement lies in the exploration of the world around us.
Let the universe show us what it is.
