In the thick heat of a 1980 Mississippi summer, 13-year-old James Plummer jnr cleans the freshly picked marijuana in front of him. When he has a good-sized pile, he measures it out with a matchbox into nickel and dime bags.

In his memoir A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from The Streets to the Stars, esteemed US astrophysicist-cosmologist-inventor-humanitarian Hakeem Oluseyi (he changed his name, but more on that later) reveals how he lived in the poor, rural community of Heidelberg, Mississippi, shooting armadillo for dinner and helping his father run the local weed operation.