“What happened next was I was nominated for a Presidential Award [1983 given by President Reagan]. There was one student and one teacher in the State of Colorado, who were nominated and accepted. You had to go through a difficult thing. Part of the prize, besides being nominated, was hearing the Vice President of IBM talk about how important math and physics was and listening to the President of the United States talk in the Green Room, spending five days in Washington, DC, with our rent paid and our meals paid.
A cocktail party at the Smithsonian; a dinner at the State Department. It was amazing. Jacquie talked to the IBM Vice President, who was in charge of scientific innovation, which is a big deal at IBM and his assistant, Dr. Wrist[?]. Wrist said he ‘went to Harvard and I got a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, got my doctorate in mathematics out of Oxford and my mathematics training at Harvard. I never ever had a computer course at Harvard or Oxford.’
“He said, ‘Everything I know about computers, I learned from one of the teachers here right now.’ The guy looked at him and said, ‘How could he teach you what you know?’ He said, ‘He didn’t teach me. He left me alone to learn.’ He was one of the guys who would go and study at the University of Denver and come and teach my class on what he learned. He was an interesting guy. I ran into him again in Boulder. He retired. Everybody is retired. This guy couldn’t believe that this Dr. Wrist taught himself computers with the books I had given him. I’d get him these books. I’d say, ‘What are you interested in?’ ‘How is this designed?’ So I’d go to the computer lab, and say ‘I’ve got a student who wants to know how this was designed,’ and so I got the books and it was fun.’ ”