The man who reinvented the hammer

“I just can’t stop doing it,” he says, with a chuckle and a tiny trace of southern Indiana twang. “I invent all the time. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’m always doing experiments.” Schroder grew up on a farm but always knew his future wasn’t in agriculture. With his heart set on studying physics, he applied only to MIT—ignorant, he says, of just how academically rigorous it would be. Once enrolled, he watched as his “super genius” classmates appeared to sail through their classes, while he worked harder than they did but earned only Bs. Everything changed when he made his way through the notorious gauntlet of Course 8 Junior Lab, considered one of the most demanding two-term lab classes at the Institute. While tinkering during that advanced experimental physics class, he found his path. “It eliminates a lot of people, but for some reason it was the easiest class for me,” he remembers now. “I would not only fix the machines and get them working but actually get better measurements ... Read full article.