I suspect that my background is rather atypical for an academic. While I was growing up, my parents not only did not support my scientific interests, but did everything in their power to prevent me from becoming successful as a scientist.
I first became interested in the connection between physics and computer science in elementary school, when I read about Richard Feynman’s idea of a quantum mechanical simulator. In high school, I obtained a University of Toronto library card with the help of Dr. John R. Percy, and spent a lot of time at the Erindale College library. (The Mississauga campus of the University of Toronto was called Erindale College at the time.) Through my association with the library, I was introduced to the arXiv, and also learned about the black hole information loss problem. The problem fascinated me, and I therefore set about studying what I could of quantum computation and quantum information. The arXiv also inspired me to think about how electronic publishing would affect scientific communication in the future… » [Expand post] [Permalink]