DAVID MEDVED, Michael Medved's father, was a physicist, entrepreneur, and trained astronaut. He was born to elderly Jewish Ukrainian-American immigrants who never went to school and never spoke English. His interest in science was initiated upon receiving a chemistry set as a Bar Mitzvah present. After obtaining a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania, he worked for Convair/General Dynamics in San Diego where he developed systems to destroy intercontinental missiles during flight. During his work with NASA's Gemini space program as chief designer of a ion wake experiment, astronaut Neil Armstrong encouraged him to try out the new Scientist Astronaut program which was to include a planned two-year mission to Mars. He made the cut of the final twenty candidates, but he was rejected following an extensive dental examine, receiving the word personally from Alan Shepard. After teaching physics at UCLA and working as a research director for Xerox, he built two electro-optics companies including MERET (MEdved REsearch and Technology) with hundreds of employees with was sold to Amoco in 1990. In 1990, he moved to Israel where he founded Jerusalem Optical Link Technologies which was sold to MRV Communications in 2000. After the age of 50, he perfected his Hebrew and memorized the Five Books of Moses. In 2008, he published the book Hidden Light: Science Secrets of the Bible.