Growing up in the small city of Viseu in central Portugal, Nuno Loureiro knew he wanted to be a scientist, even in the early years of primary school when `everyone else wanted to be a policeman or a fireman,` he recalls. His mother, now retired, taught Portuguese and French at the local high school, and his father was a lawyer. But by the time Loureiro finished high school, his interest in science had crystallized, and `I realized that physics was what I liked best,` he says. During his undergraduate studies at the Technical University of Lisbon, he began to focus on fusion, which `seemed like a very appealing field,` where major developments were likely during his lifetime, he says. Fusion,...
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