Ron Birke Bio (Continued)
Because my parents moved to Charlotte , N. C. at the end of 1956, I ended up going to the University of
North Carolina , where I majored in chemistry , at its beautiful campus in Chapel Hill. I lived with my
grandparents near the Loop in order to finish the last semester at U. City. After UNC, I did my graduate
work at MIT getting a Ph. D. in chemistry in 1965. In 1962 I married Yanina Shimanski who was studying
comparative literature at Harvard and we lived in Brookline , Mass. After MIT I received a Belgian-American
Advanced Fellowship and did a year of postdoctoral studies at the Free University of Brussels. Returning to
the States , we moved back to Brookline and I was appointed an Instructor in the Chemistry Department of
Harvard University. During this time we had two girls, Susan (b. 1965) and Mimi (b. 1967). Also I was
becoming more religious and ended up a shomer shabbas ( observant) Jew.