When Thomas Searles was assigned a book report in the first grade, he initially had trouble choosing a topic. He really didn’t like fiction books. After a bit of indecision, he chose to write his report on a book about Black astronauts. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, his journey to becoming a physicist at MIT had just begun. “I looked in the book, and there was Ronald E. McNair, who happens to be an MIT alum, randomly; he got his PhD here,” Searles says. “And it said…
