A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars by Hakeem Oluseyi and Joshua Horwitz
This memoir illustrates vividly what he had to go through since childhood to earn a Ph.D. degree at Stanford University, physics department in around 2000. This book begins with a story of his mother and father’s physical fight at night and clearing out with mama and older sister to somewhere the next morning. As his mother always had to work and was not a caring or devoted type of person, his sister nearly took care of him. He was a sort of neglected, poor black kid. Even with a genius IQ and talent for physics, he could not get a real chance to pursue an academic career in physics until he reenrolled at Tougaloo college. At Tougaloo, he met two white professors, Dr. Teal and Dr. McGinnis, both of whom recognized his talent and tried to help him learn science in-depth, get research experience, furthermore dream an academic path in a prestigious graduate school. At Stanford, compared with other graduate students, he was least academically prepared and had to take two years of undergrad...