Memoirs and Personal Stories'

How does a boy transform his early fascination with how the world works into a career as a notable physicist? Follow Keith’s Boyer’s stories of working with explosives in the mines as a teen, through offbeat jobs to pay for college, and on to a doctorate from MIT. This story is a journey of discovery. Keith’s life’s labors ranged from work on early radar, high energy physics, nuclear engines for interplanetary travel, and thermonuclear fusion research, to lasers capable of crushing matter to create temperatures similar to the sun’s core. After a career at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, Keith worked into his nineties to pursue new objectives such as X-ray lasers and holographic methods capable of imaging molecules and atoms. With a mixture of personal stories and approachable accounts of adventures with complex technologies, discover Big Physics and engineering that helped shape twentieth century technology, seen through the eyes of an inquisitive pioneer.