Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
12-19-2016
Abstract
This is the 100th column of this series. During
the two years during which this column has been
published uninterruptedly on a weekly basis, a
common question I received is why do I defend
higher education?
I remember when I decided to become a scientist.
The day was October 5, 1957. I was a 6-year-old kid
living in Venezuela. The big headline in the newspaper
that day was that the Soviets had launched
an artificial satellite named Sputnik. I was amazed.
I asked my father all kinds of questions about it,
but he could not tell me much more than what
was in the newspaper. After all, that technological
achievement had caught everyone by surprise.
Comments
This work was originally published in The Edwardsville Intelligencer.