Steven Chu — American Scientist born on February 28, 1948,

Steven Chu is an American physicist who is known for his research at Bell Labs and Stanford University in cooling and trapping of atoms with laser light, which won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997, along with his scientific colleagues Claude Cohen-Tannoudji and William Daniel Phillips... (wikipedia)

I performed adequately at school, but in comparison to my older brother, who set the record for the highest cumulative average for our high school, my performance was decidedly mediocre.
The atoms become like a moth, seeking out the region of higher laser intensity.
Education in my family was not merely emphasized, it was our raison d'etre.
Geometry was the first exciting course I remember.
I approached the bulk of my schoolwork as a chore rather than an intellectual adventure.