Originally posted by PonderableI once emailed Kip Thorne about 10 years back after reading Black Holes and Time Warps. I was teaching middle school science at the time and that book helped me immeasurably. It's not like I was teaching 11 year olds about Planck's length and wormholes; but it helped a lot with interesting tangents and out of class discussions.
who is this?:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~kip/
I just basically emailed him to relay my experience and to tell him what a nice impact his book had on lay people.
He sent me a very nice response, thanking me for writing and saying essentially that he's gratified that the book had that impact, etc. He also "cc"ed his wife (I recognized the name from the book) which I thought was funny.
From all of his books and articles and that interaction, he seems like a class act and a great role model for aspiring scientists.