Born in Duluth, Minnesota

Duluth is a port city at the western tip of Lake Superior, and his parents belonged to its small Jewish community; his father Abram worked for Standard Oil there. The boy spent only his first few years in the city before the family moved inland to the Iron Range, so most of what later shaped him came from Hibbing rather than the harbor town. Duluth still turns up in his story. In his Nobel lecture he recalled seeing Buddy Holly play the Duluth Armory in early 1959, just days before Holly died, and described that show as a turning point for him. Decades later the city began marking its connection to him, and the house where he spent his earliest years still stands on a hillside above the lake.