Matthew Gore's all-time favorite UI course had more to do with the unique man who taught it than the actual subject matter.
"Philosophy of Physics: Space, Time and Matter, with Professor Michael Weissman, in 2004," says Gore, now Uber's general manager for self-driving operations.
"I was an electrical engineering student, and while I'd taken and enjoyed liberal arts classes, this one was so fascinating because it really straddled two worlds that I thought were so far apart.
"I also really remember being lectured about Einstein by a guy who looked like Einstein — he had such crazy hair — but was also so engaging. I'd never looked forward to a class as much as this one, and I left each session in a fog as I tried to process what he'd just coached us to discover.
"He was also funny. One comment he left on my final term paper always stuck with me. I must have gone a little crazy with some flowery language, because he returned a draft with the comment 'This sentence written backward was.' I could almost hear him channeling Yoda."
