In the winter of 1997, as I was assembling a team of editors and writers to relaunch Technology Review as "MIT's Magazine of Innovation," one application caught my eye. We had advertised in the New York Times, and the candidates weren't all that impressive. But one stood out. The letter and résumé had a dry, understated style combined with what looked like good knowledge of chemistry and materials science.

Now, I already knew chemistry and materials science were going to be close to the heart of the magazine we were inventing, and so I took a chance and invited the sender of the résumé, whose name happened to be David Rotman, up from New York.