[Richard P. Feynman]

"When I was an undergraduate at MIT I loved it. I thought it was a great place, and I wanted to go to graduate school there too, of course. But when I went to Professor Slater and told him of my intentions, he said, "We won't let you in here."

(Richard P. Feynman, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!", p. 71.)

Feynman's thesis advisor at MIT, John Slater, pushed him to expand his horizons beyond MIT. In this letter to his mother written only weeks after beginning graduate school at Princeton in 1939, Feynman discusses his new and exciting work:

"There is an especially important problem to be worked out on the project, and its a lot of fun so I am working quite hard on it. I get up at about 10:30 A.M. after a good night's rest + go to work until about 12:30 or 1 A.M. the next morning when I go back to bed."

He also inquires as to why his cousin Frances (Lewine, to whom lot 34 is inscribed), is allowed to stay up until 4 a.m. while in his mother's care, whereas he was "bawled out" for doing such things at home.