Where Do Science Talent Search Winners Go When They Grow Up?

A new series of weekly articles from Scientific American profiles past winners of the Westinghouse/Intel Science Talent Search. Since 1942, the competition has honored some 2,500 high school students for their science projects. Where are they now?

What have these brilliant young people done with their lives? Roald Hoffmann, the subject of the first profile, is a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, and there are other Nobelists, as well as MacArthur fellows. But in the series overview, author Laura Vanderkam drops a hint that some of the profiles will be about people who lead interesting and creative lives in fields other than science. It turns out that for some, science is a temporary stop on the road to somewhere else. The first profile, of Roald Hoffman, who shared the 1981 Nobel Prize for chemistry with Kenichi Fukui, also suggests that the career paths of the winners don’t necessarily run in a straight line. Chemistry wasn’t the first career choice for Hoffmann, who won his Westinghouse prize in 1955 for a study of cosmic ray particles. His parents wanted him to become a doctor. Inspiring college courses almost turned him into an art historian, but he had to compromise with his parents’ ambition for him. "I had enough courage to tell my parents I wasn't going to be a doctor, but not enough courage to tell them I wanted to go into the history of art. So I went to graduate school in chemistry," he says. "I fell into it, but I love it." Hoffmann is also a poet with five published collections, and appearances in prestigious literary journals. Since 1998, the Talent Search has been sponsored by Intel, which was originally a co-sponsor with Westinghouse. The awards are often referred to as “Baby Nobels, and the winners of the annual competition have earned over $3.8 million in scholarships.