I was born in Seoul, two years before the outbreak of the Korean War. My first memories were of living in Busan, a southern port city to which we fled during the war; our family returned to Seoul when the war ended in 1953. Both my parents are graduates of Seoul National University (SNU), which is rare because it was difficult for Koreans to get a college education during Korea's years of Japanese occupation. My parents were devoted to providing their children with a good education and enrolled me in a special elementary school, SNU Elementary School. Entry into this school was very competitive; the school usually received 20-30 times the number of applications it could accept and gave entrance exams to selected students. I still remember questions asked by the examiners: ''You have 8 apples and if you and your brother eat one apple per day, for how many days can you eat?'' They also asked me to memorize the order of a sequence of about 10 animals. Thanks to a good memory inherited from my father, I did quite well, scoring first place in the exam and receiving flowers from the school principal at the entrance ceremony on behalf of my classmates.
I went on to receive a secondary education at Kyung-gi Middle/High School. Having grown up in a strong Catholic family, I joined Regio Mariae as an extracurricular activity. I made various friends in the group, including one of my best friends, Jung Hun Kim, who sadly died during a mountain climbing accident while studying theology at Collegium Canisianum, a seminary in Innsbruck, Austria. Because of our family environment, many of my cousins chose to attend the Catholic University Medical School and become doctors, but I was not so interested in medical training. During my high school years, I wanted the answers to more fundamental questions and was interested in life phenomena: What is life, how did it originate? What is a soul? What makes a human soul different from that of animals? Is a human soul evolved from animals or given by God as described in the Bible? For me, the Bible explanations or those symbolically expressed in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo seemed too simple. In pursuit of answers, I discussed my questions with Rev. Tobias Kim, a Jesuit Father and long-time family friend. It was he who suggested that I study biology at Sogang University.
Sogang is a small private university run by Jesuits from the United States. They had adapted United States university systems and curricula, and the level of education was comparable to that of average United States universities at the time. I received a good education from dedicated professors and am proud that Sogang is my alma mater. My most respected professor was Joseph Chang, a neurophysiologist who received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Princeton, spent many years at Brown University, MBL (Woods Hole), and the Max-Planck Institute. Professor Chang emphasized the importance of neighboring disciplines, encouraging me to take many chemistry and physics courses. He not only taught me biology, but also modeled for me how a future teacher-scholar should be; he was my strongest influence during my career. In my senior year, the natural choice was to apply to graduate schools in the United States. I had good college records and test scores (GREs) and a few schools, including MIT, granted me admission. I accepted a place at MIT.
The first year at MIT was challenging. A few weeks into the semester, there was a ''mixer'' for new graduate students in the