Myrtle McGraw was my first science teacher. In high school, I had a biology teacher and a physics teacher. They stifled what interest I brought to their subjects. My experience was not and is not today uncommon in American education. Those teachers taught their subjects from books and as closed books; biology and physics were of interest for their utility and essential to the training of a physician or electrical engineer. Already committed to a higher ambition, I managed to avoid any such further distraction at college. My A.B. in history was a certificate of illiteracy in science.