Leonard Susskind — American Physicist born on January 01, 1940,

Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the US, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study... (wikipedia)

A lot of my research time is spent daydreaming - telling an imaginary admiring audience of laymen how to understand some difficult scientific idea.
I often feel a discomfort, a kind of embarrassment, when I explain elementary-particle physics to laypeople. It all seems so arbitrary - the ridiculous collection of fundamental particles, the lack of pattern to their masses.
Unforeseen surprises are the rule in science, not the exception. Remember: Stuff happens.
Science to me is sufficiently weird and interesting, and stranger than fiction.
I was going to engineering school but fell in love with physics.