Interview (Transcription of Tapes) (Redacted)

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Data of Interview: 17 December 1979 your family lackground: maybe start with your grandparents and tell me their names and where they came from? . . Per, I'm from Mz on d originally, and my grandparents were Arizona, and worked for the Phcfe-,-Dodge copper mines. no longe rope4it ' s just a ghost town there. boyhood very much with them, I war around rtil I was about six Years old. &:hey lived right on a stre:t.called Brewery Gulch, which was loaded with second pd stores g)d -Ehey'd built the Saint Georga Hotel, which still stands on the land chat they had. The original home war completely remove%it was burned out o r romething. Fabruae the16th in 1909. d I had aome schooling i n New Muico, t!jy father was operating a steam shovel. He was sort of 0 a locomotive engineer. @I went t o the first grade ,Neu Mexico, and I found it a very in terer ting plac v I was born i n Douglas, Arircna&?-'L-. to call thcmg "grearers." @$om there v e moved back tomy .original place of birth, Douglar, $d Ivent through two grader ere continuourly fighting and ' I got a little Eed during the latter part of veip well. @Ehe vas taking a udid anything with her couriea.

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She -Apart-of her mother's fortune, which came around inthe Deprearion. An ahe was back f n ' a eau ty school, but she gradually frittered away everything. l@ left home a t that point; I was going t o school a t U.C. Berkeley. &wI should mention that all of my undergraduate school and high By that time had your mother and father split permanently? They never did, except periodically. So your father was always around t o support the Well, you could call it that. #e waa quite a drinker,and Ce would disappear vfth 'dlof the money that he had and stay ava? '$a@iIkt it pretty rough on your growing up years? Well, t>ey vere very limited as t o what we could get. V$&y -. answer to that was t o go geta succession of jobs. as you may how, is near Shasta Springs. &I first got rune rti a e money by establishing a vegetable 2+.L. orders fat fresh vegetable ad and then deliver them I I I ' d go around and get I would sell them from door t o door and take orders in advance and then go prepare them. Wtre you beginning to be interested in science i n high school' Not real la1was so busy working i n high school thatI didn': ever get to take ' alot of courses. And it w k ' t much of a school we had in DuasmmsT: i t was a I liked thaf&and I liked animals. I took the required rnat?e-.a:icr. most ,out of people vhea I was employed by one of the local

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more a5out dealing vith peuple and general problems h anyone Mostly BY e ~ ampl ~pe was a father figure to me. Saturday, every other Sunday. do a great des; wasn't performing physically like I thought I should, gradually got away from that. Did €ie Rave any part in your going on t o Ber$cley? But I worked every afternoon, every So Ididn ' t have the time t o I wasn't really a good sportsman anyway;; @I guess about half of my hiqh . school career I worked fora wb-erdashery shop called the IXL elo thing Store, whic? was run by W , Welch, who later became postmaster of Duns---- ran t Mr RaE erd as bator e and we sold really fine clothing.7 - e high rcrtool, and T spent a not hsr year preparing myself for :&e College of Hurl ness Admin irt ration ~ f twas mostly economfcr iWas i t yuur idea t o go on to college ?/ d @ tFier of pur parents had had college educationa. Well, not really too mu-' mp parents were really out of f:.

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waa a very revere Ba pti at ctype, who my mother didn ' tlike, and they had thir battles up and dm.W J hey lived in New Mexico) \Bed her husband, my father ' s father, died early c a t the age of about 47. @'$e married again,to a retired engineer, and waa quite concerned vith usa a children@ecaure she could see what ma happening.' @I refused to go to Sunday Schoo*(laugh) didn ' t want to give them that nickel. @ then she died, iier property was given t o my father e all of iBf here were some country homes and some very dice vaca tic : placer up in the mountains d in Nev Mexico. ssx: Was that wu nec ted vith the copper mine? No, &she didn ' t have anything to do with the copper mines. Waac. that where the . . &eDodge company in at all ed an ore rawer and a copper refiner in Douglar) \so the good ore went down there on the train.It ' a a mPtter of 15, 20 miler. So my dayr a t Douglas vere r.ea11y uneven tud. by there a fw years a gd and doern't round as though you vere in an environment where that Wnd of thing wag wry conanon. had the desire t o never really gave that omire t o do romething he next. Be was in the

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But you originally bad the idea of going into business. Why Kusiners rather than a pre-med course? Well, mort of the people thatI admired vue sale & and people of tRat sort,tht came Ky with &UZ9 suitcases worth of samples and atuff,tt imu late d me intaa buainess career. @T took extra couraea i n mathematics atdhigh school# A d 7Mnd of a fifth year student. Our principal there was aMr.SsJer. &>he school board was down on hip, and as student1we held a march and an uprising against an old lady who war the head of thesc ~ o ol Ko ard,a.dm,IL ~ : 1. rt*j, on that. @zhea Idid go t o Cal he was very careful about my grades? h e gave me excellent grade^ I think he wen changed to Be rEd ey in those days? So you were aort of apr lz e student. Well, not really. (SSH laughs) Ivar lousy i n everything, i n of unusual teachers ood in d advanced algebra. in all atha other subjects,

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Part favor r,I think. SSH: dzbt happened when you got there? Was i t rough € o r Well, 6 1 entered inthe clars of 1928. d f had a cousin, who ir retired no e andr till lives in Bis& I haven't had any contact with him for years. But he was f~ the 6conomics @&e got me enrolled,4thir was a very confusing thing t o meJ bec aur r it was 80 much bigger even then than anything thatI ' d witncrrcd. @Ihad a devil of at img zhe fir at semester Ijust worked my tail off trying to get somewhere, but I always had you saved money from your jobs? No, a11 I bad when r arrived in BerkcPey a t U.C. was What did pou do t o rupplement the $ Sod to get you through the year? well,Igota room job, waiting on table a at ar or or it y. I don% ranemh.epthe yearn all flow into each other g but I had a lot of joB ~ 1rrred to roll dm the course in a golf She did art think I did anything, Hou'dM you do a r an undergraduate?

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4$is he g in i my real a cie nti fic career. I took a course in physiology, and ifI could devote all the time that was necessary that artu dent would devote, Idid very -11, exceedingly well. ssx: Who taught the courae, do you remember? She rh rne CooWdwhose name fs rca tte red all through track o&y the name of -.,-391Simpao hay were ' in stm ctor s in the depart men my id &&f.tlton gore, 'k later took up psy&bar%& I ran into him quite a few times when I war giving courses on nuclear medicine. Theme people were all instructor a at that stage ? They used to play with each other, sending fake emergency out and ao forth.ULS It%,quite a nice place. This was a t the departmaat on the campus. @st waa a bee uti ful redwood building, probably designed by Maybeck. oAAn i t housed the / a Bora to Ip, which 1s very close to the Hen's Faculty Club. that's where I came from. What was. It about t h e courre-that caught your at tent ioa ? 0 (&sa) Well,it was very rti mula ting intellectually to me. And the p:ace

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. had a beautiful library and I ured to rat fr fy my CUriO lit Y by going down there and reading books. of Sherburne Cook? Or war it a cmb i nation ? Well, It was mostly the laboratory, which I found very good and interesting and.stimulating. kd! did the uaual physiology things, like the frog and the turtle and later on the dog c and so Were you maWng any decision rp at thin at age about what you wanted t o do later in life ? Wel1,f had a bulletin from every medical schppl i n the United Stater. (Laughter) @I was always looking ata course tha: would cut the academic time down t o zero. Was that for economic reaaons? what year wai thir ? ' 2 9 : I k e p t hopping ba5k and forth.. You wera a 8Oph0~1Oreo ra junior @;as that course enough t o switch your direction towar68 this muat have been '30 o r Well,I really took all the courses that were required, like zoology, .and we suffered through the shark, 1.&' Did you have any personal relationships with any of these pe3t : c in physiolog&o; in any of the other science courses you = ere

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Yes, I lived at Cook's home for some time, and they were always verp nice to me. 'They had three rons who were young children at that point. 2 1 used to en joT - 2 I eventually away t o Loa Angeles, which made him very angry. CLaugh) Men was this now, after youi- i n school?. This was right in the middle of the Depresmfon,fddtopped out of school, and I realized sooner o r later I was just going t o Rave t o go back there and get through. An among the papers I have around here fa my dipl-I got out of there Fn '36. Bachelor ,+-in phyriology, yes. SSB: 0.A n what were you thinking at that stage, when you finally got your bachclor'm degree, about what your career would be? I d1dn;t even go t o graduation: I was doing some experiment tRe deal was: I was i n many fields. SSK:. .. Ware doing this don your own time, without an official m'yes. TRey gave m 0 adp smount of apace I needed,$md a little money. very little, $300 ayear. single you out, do you think?

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But it soundr as though hewas encouraging you r cie nti fic ally, = mY.dft ' s unusual for an undergraduate tobe given research space and a little bit of money. Well, hedi @ & went away for one rummem$is family was all A b was very in terer ted in termites. @I wasn't terribly interested in tenn lter,butI found out chat no matter what I was working on, i t became very interesting inthe end. @2e told me t o work out the nutritional requirements of the termite, fiere vas avery popular theory going around that warAmostly by a man named Cleveland, that ten niter could affix atmorpheric n, r> h and thereby create their own r ource of protein. Wel1,we found out they couldn ' m a big gut filled with microorganism@uhich digest cell u lore and rebuce protein in the end. oxygenHunder pressure, you can der tro pall there organisms. I f you treat the termite vith -1 did that to termites and cook careful tt udi er on their body weigh d and that'r published among the early publications. I got interested in nutrition, and I ured to circulate around the people on the Berkeley campur. We had Evans, who itdid me alot of go ow because ran an institute which var on the top floor of the Life Sciences yel fit worked out that termites needed almost everything but vitamin C, as I remember there rul ts,tor wive ara population. later did some work on the water control or ' vater

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('! 0 NTA INS PRIVACY tedte,can% survive in avery dry place. But there ' s one dry areas. We dida paper on tRat. from the people i n the institute. .... Very early in the ck4a46a. alreadygaa%(I couldn't in tere it him i n it very much, but we eventually published it. Was that your first publication ? One of the first, ye QI did some phot&&adcs rtudies&: ' intha department. @;e were able to nake the roots of Barley & ants bend 3light rourcer. (@* I found that very interesting,butI was no match for Harold B1oom)and L. mathematics were j u s t way beyond me.

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That was in the phyriology department. I had the jobof running the issue and preparing all the animals and other necessary laboratory thing8for the students, who pabe both * the medic d clarr and physiology. < y -. . j At that rt age had you ever thought of going on toa higher No, not really.I waa naturally thinking of an M.D. degree c 4 (background noise)I was never really e able to Rive that df tion up completely. Were you worWng with the idea of accumulating some rnoneyFr I went out and spent ent i1it was all gone@' jnd then suffered t R e rest of the month. rho. line. @I was very poor. All the time, yes. I had a continuous series of projects.zs Were you still working vith Cook? Yes, he was there,avawa 11 the way through until Ig0C Ididn ' t have any way of keepinp; Fly rocks used t o end a t about :\e Tell we"re just about coming to thaw21 went toa beer parcv to talking vith them about :\e

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cyclotron. @I was interested in blood aid -JCZ:::- Do you remember what year this was? Butpu6li cations took a long tfine. Now uathe phosphorous study in chickens tba: - -or;. Now, who Is h e can't defend himself, but my impression o f !I,. . I - was forever smoking cigarettes. Evening P E about three feet high, and his '-e--- right-nand entrance to the Life Scienc ui ui ldi - i a couple of labs there and v e had sane other …