 Seaborg kept a daily journal from 1927 until he suffered a stroke in 1998 . As a youth , Seaborg was both a devoted sports fan and an avid movie buff . His mother encouraged him to become a bookkeeper as she felt his literary interests were impractical . He did not take an interest in science until his junior year when he was inspired by Dwight Logan Reid , a chemistry and physics teacher at David Starr Jordan High School in Watts . 
