Prize Recipient

David Allen Algoso

Background:

I attended a Catholic school from kindergarten through 8th grade, but I felt that most of the learning I did was either through things I read on my own or from my parents. My mother used to read to us on a nightly basis, and she started to teach me algebra years before the school got around to it. Probably because of my parents influence, I spent my high school years at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, a local magnet school. Though most of my time outside the classroom was taken up by technical theater, marching band, jazz band, or ultimate frisbee, I managed to keep somewhat with the habit of reading books not assigned for class. My sophomore year I read The God Particle, by Leon Lederman and Dick Teresi; it was a non-technical history of physics, all the way back to the ancients. That book placed physics at the top of my list of academic interests, the other major ones being philosophy, math, psychology, and logic. I took a few physics classes that my school offered and set out the only plan I've even had for the rest of my life. So I'm at the University of Virginia, majoring in physics. I don't know what I want to do with the major; I hardly know what I can do with that major. Grad school, I guess. And then who knows? Right now I just want to learn about it and do my best to understand.