he was about nine years old, and he had become interested in nuclear energy and nuclear bombs. we re constantly being bombarded by cosmic radiation which is gamma rays, rays from the sun. so taylor wanted to go visit with this professor. he was going to visit for five minutes. three hours later we re still in the department, and when we re getting ready to leave, he says, taylor, when you get ready to go to college, i ve got a scholarship for you. he s nine years old and he s got his first scholarship. i was sitting there in awe. i didn t know he knew any knowledge, or very little, of nuclear energy. but after that day, i knew he was something special. my holy grail is fusion energy, and nuclear fusion has little to no radioactive waste. it s clean and very abundant. the fuels for it are everywhere. it s easy to make a fusion
now, and i have never met anyone like taylor. i think he is the smartest person i met in my life. and i ve met a lot of really smart people. i have been privileged to meet nobel laureates, ask taylor is right up there with them. i m passionate about changing human technology, and i think my work can do that. i want to change lives and i want to save lives, and i think my technologies can do that. i ve got a bucket list, and one of the only things i haven t crossed out on my bucket list is going to be the nobel prize. so we ll see. there s no question that taylor wilson and bjorka engles bring passion, energy and drive to their work. we put them on the next list because both wilson and engles are using vision and intellect to reimagine the world as it
what do we have here? i discovered a system to address nuclear threats. it uses water instead of what it s presently using. of course, taylor has the president rolling. let s see how it works. they wouldn t let me turn it on. the secret service wouldn t let me bring my nuclear reactor in here. good to see you. you may be working for me soon. maybe. one of his advantages is that he thinks outside the box. taylor was essentially se self-educated in nuclear physics, so he could see things that maybe other people were blind to. i started looking at some medical technologies, having a grandmother that died of cancer recently, and that was something that was on my mind. nuclear medicine really is the doctor s best tool for
in that detector. that was an incredible experience. there was lots of laughing and high fives and calling parents. i really don t know where taylor got this from. i m a fourth generation coca-cola bottler. we have no science in our family at all. kid people all our lives say, how did you end up with these kids? i say, it s health food i fed them growing up. teasing. they started out shy, took everything in and just blossomed. any interest taylor had, he just went crazy with it. he started out with construction and learned every name of every tractor, and from that went to rockets and learned all the rockets. when it breaks through that zone, in just about one second after it does, the main external fuel tank falls off.