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Isidor Isaac Rabi, 59, shy, good-humored Columbia University professor of physics is chairman of the President's Scientific Advisory Committee. The Austrian-born son of a tailor, he was brought to the U.S. as an infant. In 1944 he won the Nobel Prize for discovering a new method of measuring and studying the magnetic properties of the atomic nucleus. "Some people," he says, "turn to science as a career to make a living, others because somebody they admire tremendously is a scientist. And then there are those who just can't help it—like me. I knocked around for a long time before finding my niche." Growing up in Manhattan and Brooklyn, Rabi was "always making things." After studying chemistry at Cornell (B. Chem., 1919), he got a job with a chemical firm "analyzing furniture polish and mother's milk," tried running an abortive weekly newspaper ("a nonprofit organization") and even a private banking concern. "And then came the vision." Rabi returned to graduate school "and found physics and myself."
Julian Seymour Schwinger, 39, son of a Manhattan dress manufacturer, became a full professor of physics at Harvard when he was 29, is now rated, with Richard Phillips Feynman (see above), as among the top theoreticians in the U.S. Science-fiction pulp magazines infected him with the science bug. "I soon discovered," he explains, "that it was scientific fact that I was interested in, and not fiction." He won a fellowship at Columbia, took his Ph.D. there at 21. In 1951 he won the Albert Einstein Award for achievement in the natural sciences for his work on the interaction of light and matter and the properties of electrons and light, is now involved with studies on general principles of quantum mechanics. Like many other scientists, he is a music lover, once tried teaching himself to play the piano ("I could teach myself physics, but it didn't work in music"). In his colleagues' estimate, he is the "heir apparent to the mantle of Einstein."
Glenn Theodore Seaborg, 45, director of chemical research at the University of California's Radiation Laboratory, explains with disarming simplicity: "I discover new elements." Born in the mining town of Ishpeming, Mich., he found his calling in a Los Angeles high-'school science class, pursued it at the University of California (Ph.D., chemistry, 1937), became a key developer of the atomic bomb. In 1951, with Colleague Edwin M. McMillan, he won the Nobel Prize for his discovery (in 1940) of element 94 (plutonium), has since played a heavy role in finding subsequent elements (through No. 101). Although he finds little time nowadays for following football very closely (he is faculty representative to the Pacific Coast Conference), Seaborg does play golf (low 90s), swims in his backyard pool. One current project: search for the next synthetic element (No. 103). "The inner rewards," says he, "are very great. Science is the new frontier, and we all like adventure."