Prof. Young-Kee Kim saw her life change enormously, beginning as a country girl in South Korea, and now is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Science, and a Louis Block Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Chicago. In "My way to become a Scientist", she shared her life experiences and key decisions that made her who she is now, a scientist part of a global effort to answer questions such as 'What is the universe made of?', and 'Where did we come from?'.
In a special lecture entitled "An Atom as an Onion", Prof. Young-Kee Kim compared the development of subatomic particle research as peeling back a many-layered onion, as we discovered ever smaller entities that make up what were once thought to be indivisible particles. But a fundamental question remains - how many layers can we peel back before reaching the final layer?