My father was a scientist - specifically, a biophysicist. He and his research partner, Dr. Ernest McCulloch, were best-known for demonstrating the existence of stem cells. They received many honours later in their lives, including having their faces put on a Canadian postage stamp.
If someone were to ask me what it was like to grow up the son of a well-known scientist, my answer would be that I do not know, as I didn't. Almost all of the honours that my father received happened later in his life. The only honour he received when my sisters and I were younger was to become the co-winner, with Dr. McCulloch, of the Gairdner Foundation award in 1969.
My first exposure to my father's work was in the form of poker chips. At about the time he became the Gairdner co-winner, my father went on television somewhere to explain how stem cells worked. He used three different colours of poker chips as an analogy. Afterwards, he brought the poker chips home; we had an unfinished basement at the time, so my friends and I built forts in the basement and threw the poker chips at each other.
Later in the 1970s, my father would be invited onto Canada AM, a morning CBC radio show, every now and again to talk about something related to stem cells. Whenever he was invited onto the show, they gave him a Canada AM mug. We eventually had three of them. My mother used them to store buttons and other sewing stuff.
My father didn't talk about his research much at home, so I didn't realize until the early 1990s of his stature in his field. For a while, I was playing duplicate bridge; once, I wound up playing against one of his former graduate students. She recognized my last name, asked whether I was Jim Till's son, and suggested that I must be finding it hard to live up to his accomplishments. I had never been interested in science, so the thought hadn't occurred to me before then.
At about this time, my father started receiving more honours, including becoming a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 2000. All Fellows of the Royal Society sign their name in a book; these have included Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, among others. Apparently, the signing process is a bit stressful, as you have to use an old-fashioned ink pen to sign in the book (no ballpoint for the Royal Society!). Most honourees are older and not used to this sort of pen, so there's the fear of blotting your signature. My father was given a bit of paper to practice signing on before going in and writing in the book; the practice bit of paper was in with my father's papers, and I found it after he passed away.
My father and Dr. McCulloch were also honoured by having a sculpture made of them. Two copies of it exist - one in front of Science World in Vancouver and one in front of the MaRS building in Toronto. We had relatives in Vancouver as well as in Toronto, so my father gave strict instructions: he wanted to be notified as soon as a pigeon had pooped on his statue. I believe that the Vancouver statue was the first to win this honour.
I do not know for sure whether my father was nominated for a Nobel Prize (people keep asking me this, or asserting that he was). Nominations are performed in secret and are not revealed until something like 70 years after the nominee's death, so I will not live long enough to know whether he was nominated. My father and Dr. McCulloch won the Albert Lasker Award in 2005 and it is estimated that about 50% of Lasker winners go on to win the Nobel, so it was a real possibility. It was real enough that somebody prepared a publicity package in case he was honoured, and our family considered the possibility of having to travel to Sweden in November. Anyway, it didn't happen and it won't now, as Nobels are only given to living scientists.
After a while, I got used to the idea that my father was an eminent scientist. I know virtually nothing about his work - I am a retired technical writer - but I am proud to be his son. If you want to learn more about my father and Dr. McCulloch's work, I recommend Dreams and Due Diligence, written by former Toronto Star science writer Joe Sornberger. When last I checked, the Toronto Public Library had it available for loan.