My name is Dick Bond. I'm at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics,

which is based at the University of Toronto, but it is flung across all of Canada under the guise of CETA,

Canadian Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics. I'm a theoretical astrophysicist, a cosmologist, first and foremost, the theoretical physicists.

I've been thinking about these universal matters throughout my entire working career,

and you could say, well, even before, because that's what people do. You think about matters universal.

When did you become first interested in physics and astronomy?

Probably birth.

No.

I would say something that had an impact on me was a book that emerged in the early 50s,

not that I was reading in the early 50s, but it was called, I think,

one, two, three, infinity, which is a nice, by George Gamoff, who was sort of Mr. Big Bang, although Hoyle named it.

And what was so compelling about it is that he was trying to take the information they had then on the universe and on formation of earth geology and all of that

and life for that matter and he tried to make a synthesis of going from basically the beginning

through to the evolution of life on earth. This is one book.

And it was amazing, amazing that human thought could try and capture this.

Of course, we have gone a large distance from the information he had back then.

But on the other hand, he was a very smart guy, and this was

pretty compelling, and I'm not the only one. I was talking to somebody at NYU, great

professor there, and it seems that she, of the same era as me had the same revelation from Gamma's

1,23 infinity. Then it's just understanding the universe became the thing to be done,

which is what every single person on the planet is trying to do. So I'm just part of that

process. Do you consider Gamov to be not only a salient influence on your life, but on your

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