More about Myself

I love to travel. In this photo, I am on an Italian train from Naples to Rome (1999).

• I have a strong Korean background, since I was born and raised there. I came to the United States 1954 to become a Freshman at the Carnegie Institute of Techonology in Pittsburgh. In 1958, I went to Princeton as a graduate student and received a PhD degree in Physics in 1961. I moved to the Washington area to become an assistant professor of physics at the University of Marylan.

  I am now an emeritues professor of physics at the University of Maryland. I maintain my office at one of the physics building there and publish my papers and books with the University address.

  Even though I spent most of my life in the United States, I am still a Korean. However, it is difficult for Americans to accept that I came to the USA with strong backgrounds.

• Americans think I am a Budhist because I came from an Asian country, but my Christian background is much stronger than my American colleagues. With my Christian background, I constructed the following webpages.

  The church I attended during my childhood years.

  1. Click here for the church I attended during my childhood years.

  2. Story of Nicodemus. I met Paul A. M. Dirac (Nobel 1933). I was like Nicodemus who met Jesus (Story in the Gospel of John). who was Nicodemus? Click here.

  3. Moses talked to God. I talked to Einstein. How?

  4. Herod complex. Psychology among Academicians.

• Until 1970, Korean boys and girls had to pass tough entrance exams to enter the high shools they choose. There were a small number of elite high schools.

  General Taylor visited Korea's best high shcool in 1954. I am shaking hands with him.

  I studied at one of those schools, and I was good in mathematics. While studying in USA, my American friends asked me whether I studied mathematics in English or Korean. When I told them I learned mathematics in my own language. They could not understand how I could study math in Korean.

  1. Let us listen to this video from the Marquis Who's Who
     This video tells I used the my high-school math to fill in the empty spot in Einstein's theory.

  2. Click here for I learned during my high school years.

  3. Click here for my high school diary.

• In 1958, I was one of the students accepted to the physics graduate school at Princeton University. Even though Einstein died there in 1955, going to Princeton was working with Einstein, and it was life-or-death issue for all ambitious students in America.

  Princeton had to turn down many excellent students. I had to work with some of those who got down from Princeton after I joined the faculty of the Univ. of Maryland in 1962. They had their complex toward me and gave me some serious troubles. Click here for a story.

  Physics faculty photo of 1963. I am the youngest person in this photo.

• In 1962, I became an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, and I had to work hard to establish myself.

  In 1965, Princeton's Institute of Advanced Study (Einstein's Institute) made a serous misjudgment. They hired Roger Dashen (3 years younger than me) as a full professor, but I pointed out the mistake in his paper. I published my reasoning in the Physical Review. However, the average physicists did not have brains to understand the technical details of my reasoning. Their reaction was

  Dashen is a genius, but you are only a Korean. Go back to Korea.

  I was able to overcome this crisis. The United States has been very nice to me. Click here for a detailed story.

  Photo with Brooke Shields (1987). Brooke was our son's classmate at Princeton. She was regarded as the most beautiful American girl at that time.

• In 1963, I married a girl who was in my freshman class in 1954. In Korea, the school year starts in March. Thus, I spent one semester at a college in Korea before becoming a a freshman at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh.

  1. Click here for the webpage for my wife. She likes to have photos with those more famous than I am.

  2. We produced one son in 1965. He went to Princeton (undergraduate) and then to Harvard (graduate).

• Our son married a medical doctor in 2005, and they now have one son and one daughter. We thus have one grandson and one granddaughter. They are growing up and they want to go to Princeton.

  Their parents are making enough money for their college expenses, but they are asking me to pay.