He was fascinated by astronomy, and at age twelve he ground his own glass for telescopes; he also "nearly blew himself up brewing hydrogen in the pantry," writes Anthony Liversidge in
Omni. As a senior at Sidwell Friends High School, Gillbert would go to the Library of Congress to expand his knowledge of nuclear physics.
In 1949, Gilbert entered Harvard University, where he majored in chemistry and physics, earning his B.A. summa cum laude in 953. Gilbert remained at Harvard for a master's degree in physics, which he received in 1954. He went to Cambridge University for doctoral work in theoretical physics, studying under the physicist Abdus Salam. Gilbert's doctoral dissertation focused on mathematical formulae that could predict the behavior of elementary particles in so-called "scattering" experiments. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics in 1957. Gilbert returned to Harvard as a National Science postdoctoral fellow in physics, and he gained an appointment as assistant professor in 1959.
While at Cambridge, Gilbert had met biologists James Watson and Francis Crick ; just a few years before, these two men had established the structure of DNA and constructed a three-dimensional model of it. Their work had launched a new field of science called molecular biology, and when Watson moved to Harvard in 1960 he and Gilbert met again.
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