The Making of a Scientist is Calvin Fuller’s story of his youth, education, and scientific career in the greatest research laboratory of the postwar era. When, after his death, his sons discovered their father’s memoir among his papers, they decided to share its rich cultural history of early 20th-century Chicago and its documentation of the creation of the solar cell at Bell Telephone Laboratories.

Dr. Fuller’s achievement is all the more remarkable because he grew up in a family beset with financial instability. The Making of a Scientist is, above all, an inspiring story of making it in America.