John Charles Polanyi
At about eight o’clock on a Thursday night in 1956, John Polanyi walks into the janitorial closet he calls a laboratory. The young University of Toronto lecturer can’t expect much more; he isn’t even an assistant professor yet. Polanyi’s graduate student, Ken Cashion, who is wearing one of his many short-sleeved Hawaiian shirts, says, “Well, I think we’re ready...