Charles Mann

He went to Japan shortly after the war to help physics recover.

And he even went to the length of learning Japanese to a pretty decent level.

You know, I think that was part of atoning.

He became very interested in Japanese culture and Buddhism and would quote philosophy.

From a Buddhist priest who said, you know, to every man is given the keys to the gates of heaven.

The same keys open the gates to hell.

He was very depressed after the war and he's starting off at Cornell and he can't get back to work.

He thinks there's no point in building anything.

Everything is going to blow up.

Russia's now got the bomb.

And so he just couldn't get started working.

So I was really in a kind of depressive condition.

They expected me to be wonderful to offer me a job like this, and I wasn't wonderful.

And I thought to myself, I haven't done anything important.

Well, I'm never going to do anything important.

But I used to enjoy physics and mathematical things, and because I used to play with it, it was never very important.

But I used to do things for the fun of it.

So I decided I'm going to do things only for the fun of it.

And only that afternoon when I was eating lunch, some kid threw up a plate in the cafeteria which has a blue medallion on the plate, the Cornell sign.

he noticed the medallion on the bottom of the plate seemed to turn around at a different rate than the plate wobbled.