Around and Around: Recollections of a NASA Bioengineer from the Bronx

Around and Around
Recollections of a NASA Bioengineer from the Bronx

Before Larry Young became a back-up astronaut for NASA’s Space Shuttle, he was just a Jewish kid from the Bronx. In an easy, conversational style, Young tells the stories of how his unique mixture of play and hard work (and luck!) brought him from a childhood in New York City in the 1930s to MIT in the 1950s and 60s, and onward to the founding the new field of bioengineering and a career studying human factors in space. Around and Around spans his remarkable life, from family and sports, to his research on how astronauts adapt to weight- lessness and his astronaut training in Houston, to reflections on continuing play and hard work at any age. Through it all, Young shows his amazement and gratitude for a life well lived, through the humor and lightness with which he describes even the weightiest subjects.

The work will appeal to those interested in the beginnings of bioengineering, the history of spaceflight and human factors, and the changing face of MIT over seven decades.