Dr. Kent Cullers is a manager of SETI's Project Phoenix. He has been blind since shortly after birth.
Cullers was born 1949 in El Reno, Oklahoma, the son of an oil field engineer. His birth was premature and to save his life he was placed in an incubator filled with pure oxygen. The excess oxygen damaged his retinas, leaving him totally blind. (This condition is Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), previously known as retrolental fibroplasia (RLF))....
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Dr. Kent Cullers is a manager of SETI's Project Phoenix. He has been blind since shortly after birth.
Cullers was born 1949 in El Reno, Oklahoma, the son of an oil field engineer. His birth was premature and to save his life he was placed in an incubator filled with pure oxygen. The excess oxygen damaged his retinas, leaving him totally blind. (This condition is Retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), previously known as retrolental fibroplasia (RLF)). His father, a physicist, read astronomy books to Cullers as a child, influencing the boy's later aspirations. He grew up in Temple City, California, where he was a highly ranked student. He first studied psychology at nearby Pomona College, but against great resistance changed his major to physics midway through college. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980. He is the first totally blind physicist in the United States, and is believed to be the first astronomer who was blind from birth (although...
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