Parenting & Family Quote by Sidney Altman

A scientist doesn’t open with a discovery; he opens with a birthplace, a year, a birth order, and a class marker. Altman’s line reads like a stripped-down origin story that quietly argues for the legitimacy of his voice before he ever mentions science. “Montreal in 1939” situates him at the edge of catastrophe and migration: the world on the brink of war, North America absorbing new arrivals, Jewish families (Altman’s own background) navigating both opportunity and exclusion. The date is doing more work than it seems, hinting at the historical pressure that shaped why “immigrants” left and what they arrived to.

“Second son” is a small phrase with a big social subtext. It gestures toward hierarchy inside the home: attention and resources aren’t evenly distributed, ambition isn’t just chosen but negotiated. In the economy of memoir, that detail signals drive without bragging. It’s a way of saying: I didn’t start as the obvious heir to anything.

“Poor immigrants” is the hard edge of the sentence, the credential and the wound. In a scientific culture that likes to pretend it runs purely on merit, Altman foregrounds the non-merit factors that define who even gets a shot at the lab: money, language, networks, the patience of institutions. The intent isn’t self-pity; it’s calibration. By anchoring his life in scarcity and displacement, Altman frames later achievement as a rebuttal to gatekeeping and a reminder that genius isn’t born in a vacuum. It’s produced in the friction between talent and circumstance.