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We're going to have this is supposed to be three hours and if we need more time or another one next week if we haven't finished. Okay, just confirming the schedule. Yes. So I'm just going to do a quick introduction and then get into the questions. I'm David Grusso. I'm here with Kenny Evans and Dr. Maxine Savitz. We're conducting an oral history interview as part of the PCAST project,

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an NSF grant between Rice University and the Science History Institute. Today is July 1st, 2021, and we're conducting this interview via Zoom. Thank you again for taking the time to speak with us. And as I mentioned in my email, we kind of want to start at the very beginning. So I know you were born in 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland. I want to know a little bit about your family

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structure. Are you an only child? Do you have siblings? Can you tell me a little bit about your parents? Okay, I was one of three children in the oldest. I have a brother two years younger and a sister 11 years younger. I lived in Baltimore all my from being born through high school graduation. My father was in the wholesale grocery business. He had been the only one of

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his family born in the US. The rest had all come from Kiev. It was interesting in that time. He graduated from high school at age 16, and you didn't have to go to college to go to law school. So he went to law school at night and finished at 19, couldn't take the bar, end up going in the family business with it. And then my mother was also born in the US in Chester, Pennsylvania, but her family

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had come from St. Petersburg, and she went to Galtar College, and they were married in 1935. All right, just as you're speaking, I'm taking some notes. So if I'm a little slow, it's just because I'm typing something on the computer. So you're born in 37. One of the major events clearly in the years to come was the start of the Second World War.

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Were any of your family members drafted or did they enlist for that war once the US became involved? No, no, they were sort of, my father was too old to be in and had poor air sight. My mother had a brother who was in the service, but that was the only, you know, closest family member that I know of. So you started, I assume you started school in 1942, 1943, kindergarten,

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first grade? Yeah, I started school at that point in some time around that. And in those days, if you were born in after January 1st, you entered in February for the first six months, as opposed to starting in September of the following year. So you were considered, quote, a mid-year. And the third grade, which was in 45, because we're seeing the war, I took a summer

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program at Hopkins and skipped the other half of the third grade to get caught up to be in the fourth grade, went all through public school in elementary. Then we had junior high, which was seventh through ninth in high school. What area of Baltimore did you go up in? I grew up in the northwest area, area called Mount Washington. We were two blocks from Pimlico racetrack.

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And the house is still there. I have a high school friend that I saw three years ago who lives three houses away. And it was interesting to go by and see the old house. I had wanted to stop in. My parents lived there until 12, 1940, sold it in 67. And my mother, father moved to an apartment, then my mother took her retirement home. I wanted to stop in and see if my children did

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not think that was a good idea. Can you tell me what life was like in your neighborhood in those early years, your childhood years? Were you after school out and about on the street playing games? Were you exploring the neighborhood on a bike? What was life like? I mean, it was very open and free. And I look at how different it is now for my grandchildren who have to arrange play dates and

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can't just go out. I mean, you get on a bike ride. A bike can go ride with friends or two friends. And you just knew you had to be home from time for dinner. People wore a watch. I was one way to camp at age nine because of polio. Everybody got sent out of the city at that time and started playing tennis, which then became an avid tennis player, which I did up until about 10 or 15 years

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ago. And I had a very good friend who lived four blocks away, saying Susan Schwartz. And we went in the summer and got to go play tennis in the park, called Druge Hill Park, which is in the northwest section, and ride our bikes down there and play on their clay courts and come home. And it was just a very open and you could do what you want to do. But Baltimore is a very

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segregated city. It was segregated both racially. I mean, we did not have integrated schools till the Brown decision, which was my senior year in high school. And it was also segregated religious wise. There was the north of Charles Street, or east of Charles Street, was the Protestant and Catholic community. West was a Jewish community. And there's a book by a son paper writer called

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Not In My Neighborhood, which goes through three different segments of Baltimore's time frame and describes very well the period from the 40s and the 60s. And I remember recently somebody asked me, did I have any African American friends growing up? Well, the only African Americans who came in contact with was the household help. And it was just, it was a segregated

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city. Just like you had very little, Mount Washington was a more integrated city regarding Eric of the city regarding religious. There were both Catholics. There were all three, all religions there, but not a integrated, regarding race. So was your family religious? No, they had come, my father had come from a Orthodox family. They were belong to Reformed

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synagogue. And I was not a very good student at the time. But anyhow, it was not taught very well. You mentioned that your father worked for the family business, right? Even though he did the law classes, he didn't get the bar. He worked for the family business. Did your mother work when you were young, or was she staying at home with the children?

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She stayed at home with the children and did a lot of volunteer work. She actually helped start the Meals on Wheels program and Baltimore doing, I guess, the late 40s or 50s. And it was active in organizations. You mentioned that she went to Goucher College. I may have missed it. What degree did she receive from that? It was a bachelor's degree.

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Goucher College at that point was an old women's school in the city. And now it's became co-ed, I guess, 20 years ago. It's out in Towson. Was there a discipline that she majored in? I'm not sure. She came to Baltimore to also study at the Peabody territory because she was interested. I mean, she was interested in piano and late pianos.

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But I'm not sure. She did not major in science. That came from my father's family. So can you tell me a little bit about what it was like for your family when you were home at mealtimes? Were you, I don't know, chatting about segregation? Were you chatting about the war? Did your parents discuss political issues more broadly? Or what was your home life

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when you weren't out playing with your friends? I mean, one of the things that was very important, we all had dinner together all the time, which I think is very, very important. My sister was 11 years younger. So it was really my brother and my parents. My father particularly has always interested in politics and, you know, a Roosevelt Democrat liberal.

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We would discuss that. He also was an advocate reader and so would, you know, go to the Enoch Pratt Library, you know, regularly with books. And I could, we often go with him. There was a children's park. And, you know, we would discuss literature. And I'm sure the war was discussed. I just don't remember. I was too, you know, too young. I mean, I remember rationing

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in which you could have, and I remember a sticker on the car. But, you know, I don't remember how much we discussed. And as far as I know, friends of theirs who did go into the service all survived. So it was, but very much a discussion, you know, was, and also was always, what did we do at school, or where we learned, you know, that it was sort of a typical family discussion. But there had

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always been an interest in politics. And what about your parents' interest in your education? You had two that went to college and graduated from college. Was there an expectation early on that you were going to be doing the same, that you were going to be attending a college, getting a degree in some sort of area of specialization? Yeah, I mean, the education was very important.

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I mean, it was a really real value. And there was never any question that we would all go to college. And we were very fortunate that, you know, my parents also made provisions so that we could all afford to go to college and, and sort of the college of our choice. I mean, I had, the Goucher College offered a dozen full scholarships to people who graduated from

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Baltimore High Schools. And it was just sort of on ranks. And I, again, it's an old women's school. And I was given one. But when I had, I had also gotten into Brynmore. And they and I realized it was a better school and going away. And they were willing for me to forgo that merit scholarship and, you know, go to Brynmore. So it was, it was really hot, highly valued.

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So as a, as a young child, did you have any specific interests academically? Were you, did you have any sort of fascination with Roman history? Did you like botany or were you just a general interest sort of kit? Well, it's a general interest, but I was very good at a respect trick called, you know, and math at that point, you know, they learned that I needed to

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wear glasses when I was in second grade, because I copied the numbers wrong and got the wrong answer as opposed to what's always, they went, it was very easy for me. But I was always interested, I was always a reader. But I mean, you know, from the typical things that girls read of the that girls read of the Bobsi twins going to literature that we transgress, and my friend

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Susan and I were in high school, she went to different high school, you know, we read the Russian authors when one was young as opposed to waiting and not have time. And so, you know, it was, and then also the other thing which did carry through and does still today is, you know, we got at home, a morning and evening newspaper, the Baltimore Sun and there was an

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evening sun, which one read, you know, early, early on, I mean, read from the, from an early, early age. So, unless there are other items that you'd like to talk about in terms of early schooling, I think I want to shift to talking a little bit more about your time in high school. Does that sound like an okay way to go? The only the only thing that was a difference in

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Baltimore had a school called 49, where you could do three years of junior high and two. And I don't even know, I don't know if it's still there and at my father and you had to be recommended for it. My father had done it when he had gone all through the public schools, which is why he graduated so early. I was invited to do that, but my parents said no,

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because I had already skipped a half a grade. And I think that was a right to send at a time, but many of my friends were going. So that's the only incident. But my junior high school had, you know, a very, you know, it was, again, a segregated school, but the classmates, Philip Glass, for example, was in my high school, my junior high school classes. And he

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left after ninth grade to go near the University of Chicago to their program. So we had, you know, we had a priest teach us Latin in ninth grade. And he was an ex priest. And we would communicate in Latin and did a Latin newspaper. I mean, there were sort of these things sort of come to mind that we're interesting activities made made school interesting. We also one took the bus

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to school for public transportation. I mean, it was and I did take piano lessons at Peabody by three car. I was going to ask, given your mother's interest in music, was that something that she wanted her children to undertake as well? Yes, yes. And I did through through elementary school. And as I said, we could take the streetcar from where we lived down to where the Peabody was.

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But I have a, I go to symphony all the time, but I do not have a good ear for remembering or can I tell the difference between G major and B minor. And you had to, after four years at the Peabody, you had to take your training. And I did it with the end of it. I'm sometimes sorry that I gave it up early just for being able to play it. Now, I know you mentioned that there

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were some discussions of politics, you don't necessarily remember everything. By the time you were 13 years old, that's kind of the start of McCarthyism in the United States. Do you have any recollections of discussions around, you know, the communist threat and those sorts of issues at that period of time? Yes, I mean, there was just discussion about that. And my,

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I know my, my father never was interested in joining the party, but he was interested in knowing when Wallace, before McCarthyism and what came to talk, he would go, I don't know if any of their friends who were, you know, on the list, they didn't, and Hopkins was a clear, there was probably professors there, but they were not friends.

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We talked about it. My first political remembrance is going with my friend Susan Schwartz in 52 to work on the Stevenson campaign. Also, when I was there, the Alessandro was mayor when I was growing up. And so the Alessandro's house and Nancy Pelosi's are still there in little Italy. We didn't hear much. She's, I mean, she's a couple of years younger and always went

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to Catholic school. So why at the age of 15, did you decide to work on a political campaign? I was just interested, I was interested in, you know, and how the country was run. And I liked Stevenson and my friend, you know, and I, and with a very good friend of mine and I were energized to do it. And my parents had no, I mean, I didn't have to ask for permission. Can I

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go down and stuff envelopes, things like that. But it was something, you know, as you know, I can say with my first of all involvement, I remember more discussion. My parents also knew our congressman, either late 40s, early 50s, Sam Friedel. So there had always been an act, my father had always, my mother particularly had always had a real interest in government and

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not, but not being part of it. Can you tell me a little bit about your high school experiences? What classes like, were like there? Now, so, you know, it's, it's a little difficult doing oral history work, you know, where people wind up and what they wind up studying in college. And so I don't want to

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assume that you've had an interest in science and high school, but I do want to ask if there were, if, if at that point in your life, you had started to think about what you might want to do when going to college, what you might want to study. So I just want to hear a little bit more about the high school experiences. And if there was anything there that was formative for your

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decision, eventually to pursue chemistry. Yeah, I mean, I, as I said, I was good at math and I was starting sciences, you know, I, I, Baltimore had two all male high schools and two all public schools and two female high schools. The other were co-ed, just as a side, the one male high school Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, which my brother went to, was very much science-oriented,

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but did not allow women, didn't, but so I, most of my friends were going to Forrest Park, my parents thought that Western, which was the all girls, would be a better environment. Don't ask me why. I mean, you know, you have children at 14, have these arguments and family wins. Well, it ended up being fine. The interesting, the teachers there,

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predominantly women, as you would expect, and most of them had graduated from Goucher. I mean, and again, it was not a, it was also much more mixed religious wise, but not racially at all. My senior year, I was editor of the newspaper, was when the Brown decision came down. And I wrote an editorial in favor of it. And my advisor to the newspaper

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was not happy, but that's a side thing. But I, you know, started off taking math and chemistry and, and then physics, biology, and then the advanced chemistry and the math all the way through. And it liked it. And, you know, I don't know whether, and I was trying to think, was I at one point thinking of wanting to be a doctor, but it was very oriented to the sciences. And,

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and when I entered Bremore, I wasn't sure whether he's going to be a math major or a chemistry major. I mean, it had gotten, I was thinking less about medical school, more about staying in the sciences, but, but I, and they were taught very well. I mean, I also had four years of Latin. I mean, it was a traditional type of thing, and the history program. I mean, it was, you know, and had, and

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you were back even in, in one of the difference, even back in elementary school, Baltimore had a track system that. So if there were an elementary school, there were 90 of us in first grade, there were three sections of first grade, all based on ability. So high school that had, you know, because they did have advanced placement courses. And that, that sort of did it. But the history and

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and required English courses, excuse me, were not. At the time, did you notice any difference in the, I'm trying to think of how to, how to phrase the question. In the 50s? Well, in, in middle school, you were going to, you were with both boys and girls, right? It was

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both genders. You switched to an all girls school and high school with predominantly female teachers. Given what we know about historically about the sexism that usually happened in classes with girls being pushed towards certain tracks of interest and boys, like you mentioned, the polytechnic was a science oriented school for boys. Did you notice a difference in

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the way that you were being treated or acknowledged in the classroom once you had moved to an all female school for high school? Like, was there a difference in the education that you were receiving compared to being in middle school that was both genders? No, I mean, I, I think it goes into being the advantage of an all women's college too, which

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is the thing that you, and I didn't, and in talking to my friends who went to Forest Park, which was a TOA school, I don't remember any of us ever thinking about, we couldn't speak out. And, you know, and, and, and couldn't be the leaders in the areas or the discourage from taking signs of the my junior high school friends, you know, and just in thinking back,

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I was the only one who went into science. But in either, so it was, you know, it was an environment. The other thing is that it was a school Western didn't have 95% of the people go on to college. There was also a mix of people who, who did not go to college right away, who went to sooner more the vocational. So as a to far post Forest Park, where 90% went to college, but that didn't

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discourage any of us who want to track to go to college, either by the other students we were with, or the faculty. So we were really encouraged, you know, to do things. I mean, we did manage, you know, run all the things, but there was a resource issue, like we couldn't play hockey, but we, a regular hockey, but we could play soccer. But that was just, you know, a resource issue of

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the time. And for your, for your high school science education. This is taking place in I mean, 1950s. So this is post war. The United States seem to be taking greater interest in science and engineering education. Did you notice any differences in how you were being taught or what you were being taught in high school in this new vision of what American science should be

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like. I'm thinking of Vannevar Bush's science, the endless frontier that he wrote in 1950. Yeah. And so like, you know, this, this is also the era where we start seeing the rise of what becomes the NSF, things like that, right? There's an investment in science in the US. And I'm wondering if you noticed anything as a high school student,

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in terms of that new investment in science and science education. No, I didn't notice it in high school, but in college, it was very clear because the whole, and then we were jumping ahead, but I was class of 58 and 57 with Sputniks. I mean, and this is, I'm sure, whether that was a feature that drove me to really do

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science and not medicine was, you know, we're encouraged to go on and there was lots of resources. But the high school, the high school teachers had been, you know, they were, the nice thing was the chemistry courses were taught by people who had majored in chemistry and physics, the physics by people who knew physics and the math, so that you, we, you know, we had well-trained

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teachers who you could learn from and we were well prepared. I mean, you know, when we, when you had to go take the AP test, one, you know, scored enough that you didn't get advanced placement when you went to these colleges, but the first year courses, you know, first semester were, were not difficult in those areas, more difficult than some others. So,

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you know, I know, I don't remember, you know, I don't remember in the early 50s the push on, on science, and it could be because my, the front, my family's friends were not particularly science people, though my father's youngest sister, he was the youngest, but the one had been a math major and graduating from

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Goucher in 1920, but the others, which just to bring one other thing to get to, which plays a part who were mentors or all, my father's had a sister, Esther Lazarus, who was the first woman to head the Department of Public Welfare in a major city, and so in the 40s and 50s she did that, and she took the train from before she was a social worker

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graduating 30s, and she took the train from Baltimore to Philadelphia every regularly to get a master's in social worker at Penn. I mean, but so that she was clearly, she was married, had new children, kept her maiden name, I mean, so she was clearly a role model for my father's oldest sister who had to leave high school at 14, then helped run the family business,

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ended up running the pap spirit distributions for the city of, for the state of Maryland, until she was 85 and froze to come over and said, time for you to leave. She had one daughter, her husband manufactured coats, people, anyhow, I mean, so there was in my family, people, professional people who, you know, there were clearly, particularly Esther was

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a role model for going on in a field, though it wasn't science per se. Okay. You mentioned Goucher, you mentioned Bryn Mawr, were there other colleges that you were interested in? Well, I mean, I was, when I, Wellesley was another, I mean, there were, I had looked at Swarthmore, I don't know why it could point, maybe Bryn Mawr was easier to get into Philadelphia,

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but it was, you one looked at the women's schools. I mean, at least, you know, the seven sisters were, and adding in Pembroke, and all really were in those, and that day before the IVs and all went coed, were places of choice, in a sense, for people. And then there was a difference environment than I see, having been in a women's college, women's high school, I don't

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think makes much difference, versus, you know, be interested in now, you know, who the women graduating from the school that are coed, how well are they doing relative to when they went, when there were single sex schools. And so it sounds like you wanted to stay in the general northeast corridor? Well, my family wanted me to stay in the general northeast corridor,

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we can get to graduate school, and later with the pressure there, even though I was fully funded. But so, you know, and Bryn Mawr was closer to Baltimore than Boston, and one could easily take the train. And I also knew, I had, there was a person, I knew from people that I, from my high school, at least one person went to Bryn Mawr every year I was there,

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that they had really good sciences. And so that was something that, it and Mount Holyoke of the seven sisters had the best sciences at the time. So it sounds like it was a relatively simple decision for you to go to Bryn Mawr? Yeah, I mean. And was there anyone else from your high school that decided to go? You mentioned

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there was always one person each year? There was a person, not in my class, a person ahead of me, a person who graduated from Bryn Mawr in 57 and 156, 155, this was like Bryn Mawr took one person. Several people went to Goucher, partly financial, and partly was where they got into. My friend Susan went to Vassar, another friend went to Smith, another did go to Weld's. So

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he went to, as I recall, and I was trying to think of this, Mawr went to Weld to Goucher, if they didn't go to the seven sisters, then went to the University of Maryland. And that has sort of changed now. So you started Bryn Mawr in 54 or 55?

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No, September of 54. 54, okay. Was this the first time that you were away from home for a long period of time? Aside from going to summer camp for years, and yes, I mean, I had, um, yeah, I bet that, yes, it was first time.

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Okay, you mentioned that you didn't necessarily know what you wanted to major in when you were going to college, right? You were thinking mathematics, maybe science, you weren't necessarily sure. Did you have a sense, though, of generally what you might want to be doing as a career post college? Like, did you have, you know, nowadays, you know, students are always expected

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to apply knowing exactly what it is that, like, oh, I'm going to be an engineer, I'm going to be this, I'm going to be that. Did you have a sense of what career it is you wanted to pursue post college when entering college? I knew that I wanted to do something in the sciences or math or medicine.

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And I remember the dean saying to us, third of the people knew what they wanted to do when they entered, a third knew when they had a major, and a third finally knew when they left. And that was the thing. What was interesting, uh, the difference between coming from a public school at that point versus from a private or boarding school, was showed a real difference, at least in my,

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uh, my freshman year, not in the sciences, because I was well prepared. And in fact, there were two students who had gone to Windsor High School, which are all girls in Boston, and one father was well known surgeon, the other was, I would help tutor them in chemistry. But I had, they, I just could not write. And everybody had to take a freshman composition

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course. And even though I'd been entered the paper, um, we read, and their freshman composition, and I'm very much in favor of, of this, nobody could take, test out of it. But you, it was connected with a period of reading. So whether you did American literature, British, incredible thinking. And every Monday morning, you had a 500 page paper, do the first semester,

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second semester, a thousand word page. You learned to write. Well, I really struggled. The dean said to me, well, why, you're just off track, you're way high in the sciences, the math, and here you are struggling. And it was a real difference than just the critical thinking. And also, I'd never had any exams except for the college boards. I mean, we had hour tests, not two or three hour

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type test. So it was a real, though our class was the first one there to have more than 50% from public school. I mean, it was, that was a difference in the, the college mix at that time. But, you know, that was, you know, it all works out. And, you know, one has learned to, if not creatively, one can write scientifically or correct without

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chiefful right, though, which I think is very important skill for MIT. Finally, a couple, about 10 years ago, put in a major writing course, you know, engineers have to write proposals, have to write papers. I didn't check your background. So that is something I have students that I teach. I do courses at Penn occasionally,

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and my major focus is no matter what you're going to do, you need to be able to speak. And you need to be able to write. So those are critical, critical things for any type of profession I could go into. For Bryn Mawr, what was the size of your freshman class? How many students did they admit? We had the largest freshman class time, 150. The school was about

00:35:55.440 - 00:36:25.120

600 students. And they also, unlike the other schools, Bryn Mawr always had a PhD program. And that was coed, actually. And that allowed the faculty to do research of a different level, then just have, they had a senior honors program, but, you know, they had full-scale master's and PhD programs. Also at Bryn Mawr, if you wanted, and the school didn't have,

00:36:25.120 - 00:36:52.160

you could take courses at Penn at Haverford or Swarthmore. Okay. So you start your freshman year. Science is math. Pretty simple. Writing is a new thing that you're learning to become better at. What was campus like for you in that freshman year? Were you just focused on your classes? You had mentioned tennis, right? In interest in tennis,

00:36:52.960 - 00:37:17.440

was there a tennis team at Bryn Mawr that you joined? Were there extracurricular activities that you started to become interested in or engaged in when you became a freshman at the university? It's interesting. I haven't even thought of it. Now, I did not. I was on tennis team in high school, did not. At Bryn Mawr, they took it for my sport. I also could swim. I didn't

00:37:17.440 - 00:37:46.640

go out for the swimming team. They just took time, because we had to be in a laboratory less the freshman year than other years. But I played tennis just as a recreational thing. I was in a dorm called Rhodes North and South of 120 students, and it was all for classes. And you stayed in the same dorm for all four years, which I think had advanced. Now they all

00:37:46.640 - 00:38:21.280

moved around. You really got to know people in the upper classes, and then later this. But for our class, for whatever reason, had 40 students, 40 members of our class were in Rhodes North and South. And on my corridor, there were 16 girls, eight of us were freshmen. We drove the three seniors crazy. We did not have as much of a time. I mean, they had quiet hours, but then 10 to 10

00:38:21.280 - 00:38:47.440

30 was noisy hours, but we were in the bay. We were just overwhelmed in numbers. And you would have these philosophical discussions and things like that, that were, you know, and just people from all different backgrounds. So I was really very fortunate. And I'm still very friendly with seven or eight of these people that my oldest grandson was very impressed with that you've

00:38:47.440 - 00:39:18.640

known these people over 60 years, and we get together now by Zoom once a month. But they were two of us on the West Coast, they would come here, and I see when I go east. But I was really not, I don't remember being active in extracurricular activities in the same way that I had been in high school. I didn't write for the newspaper or try to. I wasn't one, because I

00:39:18.640 - 00:39:49.760

couldn't sing, who was going to be in the class plays. They did have a government club. It was not a debating thing, but it was just sort of, which I, you know, I ended up being in my junior year of the class, this treasurer for all undergraduate activities, but that goes back. But I don't, you know, I just don't remember any kind of extracurricular. And of course,

00:39:49.920 - 00:40:13.440

this one got up in class, I said, the labs took a lot of time. And we just spent, and you spend a lot of time talking. I mean, you're just interacting with, and I also am very much in favor of liberal arts undergraduates, because you get to one, your curriculum is different, but you also interact with people who have different ideas and different disciplines. And at that point,

00:40:14.400 - 00:40:40.720

they had, I didn't ever smoke, but they had, you couldn't smoke in your rooms, but they had smokers, where people could go play bridge and smoke and talk. And so one of my best friends from freshman year on, until she passed away, three years ago, was a smoker and a bridge player. And I played some bridge, and we would go in and, you know, do something like that. But

00:40:40.720 - 00:41:07.200

I don't remember, there was more time of interacting with people than I remember, than formal, than any of the undergraduate activities. And another question about your entering class, obviously, Brown v. Brown v. Board decision happened in your senior year of high school. Was Bryn Mawr,

00:41:09.840 - 00:41:35.200

was it, was there racial diversity at the college at the time, or were you going into a situation where it was predominantly white women in college attending classes? I mean, it was racially diverse from a point of view that African Americans had been at the school since the teens of the year. But there were

00:41:35.200 - 00:42:03.280

handful. We did have more foreign students than when some of, you know, two people from African countries. They weren't all from the, from Europe, some Asians. So, but, and in fact, there have been some recent activities that there was a president, M. Kerry Thomas, and the library was named after her,

00:42:03.280 - 00:42:29.840

and she really built up the school in the 30s and 40s, that's been known to make racial and anti-Semitic remarks. So the library name came off, I mean, got caught up. But at that point, there was very little racial, I mean, it was just a matter of the numbers. I don't know whether they could have applied, you know, just why the lower the historical black, I mean, Howard

00:42:29.840 - 00:42:57.040

University was a major draw for, you know, very bright women, Shirley Ann Jackson, Gruben Washington was trained to go to Howard and somebody said, no, go to MIT. And she was the first African American physics major undergraduate and graduate in that's the late 60s. So it was a matter of, you know, the school didn't do recruiting or the school, I don't know how much recruiting

00:42:57.040 - 00:43:28.480

school did then versus they did much more active recruiting, or at least I became part of it in the 70s and 80s, and I think as a competition for where women were going to school change. And what was the teacher makeup in terms of gender at Bryn Mawr? Were you receiving education from mostly women like you had in high school? Or was it an equal split between women and men?

00:43:28.480 - 00:43:56.960

Was it more men? What was it? It was sort of equally distributed. And in the sciences, there were both never more, well, there were more, there were equal. And all through in the humanities, too. I mean, the interesting thing, the head of the chemistry department, which is part of the reason I majored in chemistry, Ernst Berliner had left Germany, got his PhD at Harvard and

00:43:56.960 - 00:44:22.400

was head of the department, and married one of the women who got a PhD at Bryn Mawr, Francis. And Ernst Berliner taught the first, he taught the first semester of the freshman chemistry course, and his wife taught the second. Well, he was recruiting, and he would come in the laboratory, and, you know, we had teaching assistants who were graduate students, and they would say, well,

00:44:22.400 - 00:44:48.240

you know, what are you going to major in? And what are you going to do? And it really recruited us. I mean, it was very, it was interesting to see that that makeup, and then Francis taught the second year, he taught organic, but the physical, well, there were two, that time, two out of the five were women. And Bryn Mawr had had male presidents in addition to women,

00:44:48.240 - 00:45:12.960

but when I was here, Catherine McBride, who was there from the early 40s till the 60s, she had made a habit of looking at the freshman class, and first day on campus, she could say, bump into you on the path and know your name. I mean, there was a very much, it wasn't like, to me, like family, but they really wanted, you know, education was important. And also,

00:45:14.720 - 00:45:45.120

the school really encouraged people to go on into careers, which was different than some of the other schools, not just in science, but in general. So you mentioned that in terms of having an all female education in high school, that wasn't that critical, but that having one in college was, right? At that time. At that time. Can you tell me what it was about going to an all female college

00:45:46.000 - 00:46:16.800

that was beneficial? Well, it was also one was liberal arts until it was small. So there was a very high, I mean, very low. The faculty student ratio was was was you weren't in big classes, the biggest class was like freshman chemistry that had 60 people, but everybody had taken your science. And then and and so you had freshmen and you had people with their year of

00:46:16.800 - 00:46:45.360

science, people going to medical school. But there weren't these large classes and and and the faculty knew you and the faculty and you were taught by faculty, not by graduate students. You had a graduate student in your as a TA in your laboratory. But as I said, the faculty members were there and got to know you. And that was true of the humanities too.

00:46:45.360 - 00:47:14.720

I mean, even though, you know, in humanities, less contact if you come for three days, three hours of class a day, and you see your professor or not see your professor, they outreached the students also. You know, it was and it was, you know, and people were you couldn't goof off. I mean, you know, that was no. There was little attrition because what they picked people whole, you know,

00:47:15.440 - 00:47:42.400

people and people who selected to come knew that it was going to be a rigorous education. You mentioned that Professor Birdliner went through classes, went through the chemistry lab, asked people, you know, what are you going to major in right, an advocate for chemistry? Is that when so is that is your freshman year when you decided that you wanted to become

00:47:42.400 - 00:48:10.240

a chemistry major? Or is it later at your in your time at Brynmore? That was I really was so more. I mean, I did lean towards that. But my second year, I continued on with math and with the chemistry. And so I liked the lab work. It was just that was what, as opposed to more of a theoretical type of thing. And so, you know, and it was, you know, it was,

00:48:11.200 - 00:48:37.680

and I was never the way biology was taught at that time and botany and skinning cats and because my, I had three friends who were publishing features that there are fun, the catskin would arrive. And memorizing all this botany as opposed to understanding mechanisms. And I, after my second year, Brynmore, I was able to work in

00:48:38.000 - 00:49:10.560

laboratories during the summer, so that it got some exposure to what it was like outside of a school environment. So when you decided to become a chemistry major, did you have a sense of what a career in chemistry, what it meant to have a career in chemistry? Like, did you, were you thinking to yourself, I'm going to get a degree? I'm going to go teach chemistry? Did you

00:49:10.560 - 00:49:36.080

think to yourself, I'm going to get a degree in chemistry? And I'm going to go work for a company? Like, did you have a sense of what it meant, what having that degree would allow you to do in terms of career opportunities? The sense that one has and the sense that when you talk to, you know, graduate students, often as we try to recruit them in industry to be interned,

00:49:36.080 - 00:49:58.000

you know, you're going to emulate what you've seen and you want to go on and you're going to get an advanced degree, there was no, and then become a professor. I mean, that was really, you know, industry just wasn't in my line of sight at that point. I know about industry because they knew about Dupont and which was a native, I mean, a local thing. And even more so,

00:49:58.960 - 00:50:25.760

after I graduated, the person I did my honors with was a man who had just gotten his PhD at Caltech, had five children in summer, and that my year was his first year of teaching, Frank Mallory. He had to earn some money, so he went and worked for Dupont for the summer, and I was able, I stayed more than did research in his lab. So I got to know something more about industry.

00:50:25.840 - 00:50:52.000

But industry was not, or government, was not in my mind. It was, you know, these were what you knew, and I didn't know anybody that I had family members or family friends or contemporaries of mine who had gone to work in industry, even though Baltimore wasn't, you know, there was a lot of steel industry, there was some chemical industry, McCormick, something there was,

00:50:52.960 - 00:51:25.440

and so it was really, I'm going to go get a PhD, and then I'm going to teach. And nobody's discouraged, nobody encourages, they don't discourage you, and they, you know, say keep an open mind. Yeah, I mean, I was also wondering if you were receiving any specific advice from, did you have an advisor at Bryn Mawr? No, not really. Once you chose your major,

00:51:25.440 - 00:51:54.000

you know, it was somebody, the chemistry department, you know, it was a pretty set curriculum, because of those courses, but then your other, the non-science courses were your own choice, and you just knew you had to play with your, your, there was a dean that we could go to, but most of us, you know, is much more of our own thinking about the non-requirement courses,

00:51:54.000 - 00:52:20.240

what we wanted to do. I mean, or if you had an issue, you could, of course, talk to them. But, you know, the way that they didn't have, that they now have are things like summer internships at industry, or colleges, that didn't, that didn't exist. And, or it didn't exist at a women's school. You know, I have not compared it to, did MIT, well, MIT would still allow women, but very few,

00:52:20.240 - 00:52:48.080

but did the tech or Caltech, did they have people after their fresh, their various years go intern? Now they do. I mean, I would hire them, and then as for the summer, I mean, we had regular people come, do regular, do a real project, and often we would hire them when they graduated, but it was just not, it was just not something that was done at the time that you could work.

00:52:48.080 - 00:53:16.160

As I said, I worked for a Navy laboratory for a couple of years. It was in Annapolis. So I did find it, and the school must have helped me find the job. I just can't remember how I got that, that job. But that has all changed in my mind for much for the better. So I was wondering, in order to learn about careers, when I've spoken to other scientists,

00:53:16.160 - 00:53:39.840

they've mentioned having mentors in college, right, people who are, who, and it wasn't necessarily a formal system, but like you, individuals worked in people's labs. And so interacting with a professor, doing independent research, they started to pick up information about what chemistry was like post college, right? And so I was just wondering if you had had any of those sorts of experiences

00:53:39.840 - 00:54:03.280

where some sort of professor was, I don't want to say looking out for you, but like providing advice to you about how to pursue chemistry as a future career while you were an undergraduate? Well, Berliner was one who, you know, very actively, you know, pursue, you know, that you were going to continue. I mean, and we had 10 chemistry majors out of a class of 140 is a good

00:54:03.280 - 00:54:29.120

section. And he would have kids, and of those, half went to medical school. And so he would sort of joke with them that, you know, why do you want to go to medical school? I mean, that's not really being a chemist. And, you know, but, you know, I mean, he, he was very, and he was there to until my senior year when Frank Mallory came, he was the one who would really encourage and,

00:54:29.120 - 00:54:57.520

you know, and keep pushing, you know, you to continue with the sciences, not to stop. Though some people did stop after their first after graduation and and took jobs when they got married. Others got masters, but he would kid about the people going on. We had a large number go to medical school in our class, too, which was two went to Harvard Medical School out of the

00:54:57.520 - 00:55:33.040

six women there. I mean, if one was a chemistry major, one was a philosophy major. But so, so it was, you know, it was informal in reality, then. And they didn't. And when I went with Mallory, since I was his first first year of teaching, and I was his first honor student, you know, he would very much give advice about graduate school. And, but we didn't discuss what

00:55:33.040 - 00:56:01.360

do you do after graduate school? What did he tell you about graduate school? Like, what advice was he giving about graduate school? Well, so I was thinking of the graduate schools. I was thinking, well, my MIT was one that I knew when people are gone, that he had just graduated Caltech and had been done it in three years. And, you know, was and was and I felt well, that was a chance to go to

00:56:01.360 - 00:56:32.640

California. And to, you know, and they had just started admitting women because they hired from MIT, John Roberts, who said he wouldn't come if he couldn't bring his female graduate students. So they had not had any female graduate students till the fifties. And then no undergraduates till the seventies. Whereas MIT, from the beginning, forgot to leave women out of the charter that

00:56:32.640 - 00:56:59.200

they couldn't come. So they always had a few. And the first one of the first women students was a chemist. And then applied to Berkeley. And my parents wanted me to apply to Hopkins. But anyhow, Mallory advised, he said, go to MIT, not to Caltech. I mean, you want to get through graduate school. And Caltech was still having issues, not issues, but women were still not as

00:56:59.200 - 00:57:26.320

accepting as the male and go to MIT, which is what I did. But I think it was good. It was good advice. Now the schools are, you know, they're much more integrate. I mean, many more women at Caltech now. So I know that you received your PhD in organic chemistry is did your interest in organic begin while you were in college? Or is that something that you

00:57:26.880 - 00:57:51.760

develop after going to MIT? No, I mean, I thought it was probably goes back to initially with Berlin or who was an organic chemist and my senior, it was physical organic chemistry. My senior Frank Mallory was an organic chemist and the work I had done for him. For my senior thesis. And also that summer was all in physical organic chemists. And so it was

00:57:51.760 - 00:58:21.920

something that, you know, I knew about and liked it. And it was not just making new chemicals and synthesis, but understanding mechanisms of how they worked with it was of interest. So I had and there was no real guidance at MIT as to, you know, what might be good for you. There was, you know, you, they had a system, at least in the chemistry department,

00:58:23.120 - 00:58:46.240

say there were 10 or how many faculty members there were, each of them could take only three graduate students so that the younger faculty could. And there were people from Harvard who that summer had come and signed up with faculty members that they wanted. And so you had a beginning of your freshman year or your first year there, you had to think about who might you want to work

00:58:46.320 - 00:59:12.960

with if you want it to be sure. And they became your advisors. So is there anything else about your your time in college that you think we should discuss? No, I mean, I just think, you know, really well prepared one for going. I was well prepared from a scientific technical to, you know, to go on to the next level.

00:59:13.680 - 00:59:44.240

You had no problem with the entering exams. I mean, and you were well prepared, sort of all round and didn't just do science, but you could do, you know, literature and politics and other things so that, you know, I have a very positive feeling and have been active and more and, you know, as they have continued, and also is, you know, pushing them more towards, you know,

00:59:44.240 - 01:00:14.160

getting scientists interested in public policy. In fact, created a endowed a summer internship for a science major to the third year to work with, you know, as an intern in the state, federal area. And because otherwise you would maybe learn policy on the fly, which we had to do later in time. I mean, since you mentioned in policy, and I

01:00:14.160 - 01:00:42.160

just realized that you you'd mentioned Sputnik before we started talking about your time at Bryn Mawr. It was what happened or was Sputnik in any way significant for you or for the professors, the people around you at Bryn Mawr when it happened in 1957? Like what was the general reaction? Well, the general reaction was the need, you know, we need, you know, the U.S. has to catch up and we

01:00:42.160 - 01:01:09.200

need more scientists and engineers and and money became available. I mean, for that was the first time that, you know, I was aware, I guess most faculty did have research grants, but they had and they did have money from NSS. I mean, so that was the early parts. And that sort of geared, you know, whether that was the final thing that made my decision that, you know, I could go on

01:01:09.200 - 01:01:36.640

and get an advanced degree in science and be fully funded and know that there were jobs afterwards, you know, you do think about that. And there was a need for, for this, for people to go on and science. And, and, and there was an excitement about it, where you're going to, you know, how do you, you know, beat the Russians, so to speak. Because we were aware of the Cold War.

01:01:38.800 - 01:02:01.600

Yeah, I just realized that you had mentioned it earlier, and I never followed up with a question about it. You know, I mean, many individuals in the in the United States were very spooked by that, right? Hearing that that beeping as the, as the satellite passed by overhead and, you know, the rise of the communist scare and people starting to build bomb shelters and things

01:02:01.600 - 01:02:20.960

like that was in part response to that the Russians could long, you know, they could launch something into space and hit us. But even before that, you know, with nuclear, I mean, we were part of a generation that you had drills where you got under your chairs, I mean, under your desk. I actually still had that in elementary school.

01:02:23.600 - 01:02:57.440

It was much later. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think, I mean, I think Sputman created a real difference in the funding of science and, and, and the excitement for engineering, particularly to solve solve problems. And the advances that we made were incredible. So your time wraps up at Bryn Mawr, you're off to MIT for your advanced degree, your PhD.

01:02:58.400 - 01:03:26.160

What was it like moving to the Boston area on your own? Well, that was fine. I mean, you know, I mean, it was, I had never been to Boston, but I've been to Philadelphia, else you have been to New York. And I had ended up through, I don't know whether it was through MIT's housing, MIT had to had no norms for women. I mean, there's no undergraduate or

01:03:26.160 - 01:04:02.720

graduate. And I had through somewhere that found a woman, Barbara Stryker, who was also starting as a freshman chemistry major. And we rented an apartment that near Central Square that we could walk to MIT. And, and, and that was, I mean, you know, annual, I had classmates who were in the Boston area that seems very good and good friends of mine from the dorm one, Susan Harwitz, who

01:04:04.160 - 01:04:34.400

was getting her PhD at Brandeis, she subsequently has done not did all the biochemical work on taxal and just retired after 50 years at Einstein. And in my Martha Bridge, who had been first in a class with the Harvard Medical School and so there was a whole network of people there that I knew outside of, you know, of the people I would meet in my classes. And then I met a person who would

01:04:34.480 - 01:05:01.120

end up being my husband Alan December of my first year. So just to be clear, you said there were no dormitories undergraduate or graduate for females at MIT. Right. So the men had dorms where they were so they were all located together. You mentioned, you know, I bring more you were with multiple years of

01:05:03.440 - 01:05:32.000

students, right? Not just freshmen, but sophomores, juniors, seniors all in one location. What was there a difference in terms of like, I'm not sure how to form this question, but it seems to me that since the men were gathered together in dormitories, there might have been an easier time developing camaraderie among them than the women were able to achieve because they were

01:05:32.000 - 01:06:04.000

forced to scatter themselves around the city and apartments and they seem to be more isolated. Does that I can only talk about the count. I mean, many, many of the people in the male graduate students did not live on campus. And many were married. There were few women, period, but the camaraderie and the people we've got to know were those that were in your life. I mean, I was in a

01:06:04.000 - 01:06:32.080

laboratory science where the people with Fred Reed and he had a combined two large labs with Herbert House. So then for the camaraderie of people from your year up to people who were trying to finish. And that's where that's where you learn from. And as I may have seen in some of the other things, as I mentioned, or I haven't mentioned, but it's been written that, you know, there were

01:06:32.080 - 01:06:53.920

the difference between coming from a, it wasn't going from an all, probably all female to an all male school, it was going from, you know, school 600 to 6000 total. I mean, was that, was could have been the size, but once you were in the chemistry department, which is where you were early in thesis, it was much smaller. I mean, there were 30 students in chemistry entering with me.

01:06:54.560 - 01:07:20.320

But the school, the undergraduate school had 30 women total and the graduate school had 30 women total, not in chemistry. I mean, it was just, you know, a small amount. And they could tell the graduate students from the secretaries, because we were in jeans and looking scrubby. And they were professional women should, should, should dress. And the head of the chemist, even though I had

01:07:20.320 - 01:07:52.800

been awarded a teaching assistantship, which I felt was great, because I'm going to go teach. This will give me some chance to learn what it's like on the other end that hope did not want his female crack. And there were, you know, maybe, you know, less than 10% that being TAs in the lab, and we were to grade papers and still got paid the same amount as

01:07:52.800 - 01:08:18.400

if you were TA in the lab, and you didn't know this till you got there. And I was given the test of grading thermodynamics papers and exam. Well, it didn't take me the 12 hours for what I was getting paid for when I did get paid for the 12 hours, but six hours. So I had to start my thesis early. I mean, I interviewed and I was able in the beginning of the second semester of my first

01:08:18.400 - 01:08:48.000

year start my lab work. And so that had its and then I went on actually on NIH grants. At that point, there you it was, I mean, as an individual, they were the NSF and NIH had a fair number of individual, I think they still have fair number of doctoral degrees, but the number it hasn't increased relative to how large the graduate schools have gotten.

01:08:49.120 - 01:09:14.960

So you said that is a cope. Am I getting was that? Yeah, Arthur cope with the head of the chemistry department. And do you know why he did not women want women as lab TAs? Was he vocal about that discrimination? I mean, it was just it was not I mean, it was just those were the rules. Now people would say to me just like women couldn't swim in the MIT pool two days a week,

01:09:14.960 - 01:09:36.640

Tuesdays and Thursdays because the men could swim new those things. I mean, when you tell people these things, they sort of can't believe this generation. When people say, well, why didn't you fight it? Well, you know, the main thing is, you know, I was able to I had a thesis supervisor who was determined women were going to get finished and the rest of the faculty wasn't

01:09:36.640 - 01:10:04.080

discriminating against those of us. You know, if we were in a discussion class, they would call on us just as much as they call on others. You know, it is his policy. And I don't know when the policy changed. And people were ahead of me. The woman graduated from Vermont four or five years before me ended up working at DuPont had said wrote an article and had the same experience.

01:10:05.360 - 01:10:29.360

Yeah, I asked the question in part because I'm always curious to know if anyone is actually explicit about why the policy exists. There's one person that who was interviewed for our collector, Milgrid Cohn, a chemistry professor at the University of Pennsylvania. And during her oral history, she mentioned the fact that she was working for a company. And even though she had a

01:10:29.360 - 01:10:54.400

PhD, she was given a lower grade status than her male colleagues, because the company was worried that if she were given equal status to her male colleagues, all the men would divorce their wives and try to marry her. And so it would be a social disruption. And so that's why women weren't allowed to have this higher ranking is because it would ruin the company. And you know, those are the things

01:10:54.400 - 01:11:20.880

that are always interesting to hear the rationales behind things. And so I was just curious if there was actually a mention of why women were not supposed to be or were not allowed to be TAs and labs. But the industry comment, because even when I was finishing MIT, I was thinking of going still staying in an academic environment, women who graduated from MIT in chemistry

01:11:20.880 - 01:11:50.320

were offered jobs at industry 10% less than male graduating from the same professor. And they were typically given positions of running an analytical lab versus actually, you know, doing development. I mean, there was discrimination in industry, you know, they could be hired. But no, I mean, the only anecdotal story related to yours, I have friends who was in at Harvard Law School and class

01:11:50.320 - 01:12:11.440

in the mid 60s. And there were 20 women and they were all invited to Dean Griswold's for dinner. And the men were very male students were very envious. Why were they invited to dinner with the Dean? And well, and it was he said, you know, each of you are taking a male's place. Wow.

01:12:15.200 - 01:12:40.240

So these, I mean, it's sort of these, you know, these stories are real, though, is things have changed a lot, which is good. Both the number, as I said, when I read something for MIT several years ago, you know, the number of women, you know, in 10 years ago was 45% undergraduate 30% graduate school, women president, women faculty members, women faculty heads. I mean,

01:12:40.240 - 01:13:06.960

it's the whole, but that can start to change to at least women and in decisions in the MIT chemistry department until the 90s and Chuck Bass really did that. Yeah, I was going to ask what the the gender makeup of the chemistry department was when you were graduates. Oh, they were all men. All men. No question. There were no I don't know that there

01:13:06.960 - 01:13:29.840

were any women faculty members at MIT at that time. Millie Drilla House, Russell House was one of the first women. And she was a physicist, but it may not have been till the mid 60s. Okay, I don't know, but there were no. So no one and one didn't think it was interesting. It didn't enter one's thinking at the time. Well, there's nothing but men here. I mean, it, you know, you

01:13:29.840 - 01:13:58.000

were there to get a good education and a good preparation for whatever you were going to do as fast as you could. You mentioned that you had your your TA shift, which was essentially just a greater shift when you started at MIT. I'm curious to know a little bit more about the nature of graduate education in chemistry at that time. Were you taking courses

01:13:59.040 - 01:14:22.480

that first year? Were you just principally working in the lab and doing this grading? What was the curriculum like? What was the structure of the curriculum for graduate students at that time? Well, it was interesting. MIT's chemistry department had, you had to take comprehensive after 18 months, and there were written comprehensives. You took entering when you entered, you took

01:14:22.480 - 01:14:50.720

placement exams in all areas of chemistry. And for some reason, you there was physical, analytic, and organic. If you didn't pay us one, you had to take the other course. The chemistry department had no course requirements in chemistry. Now, you had to, though, be able to pass your comprehensives in, you know, in 18 months. But you had to take three courses in a minor.

01:14:52.080 - 01:15:15.440

So that was the requirement. And at that point, they also had a requirement of reading knowledge of two languages, which in the scientific terms, I mean, when there was a graduate student fourth year ready to finish, he still hadn't passed one of the languages. And they offered courses at eight in the morning. And if you went to it, one of the passages of

01:15:15.440 - 01:15:39.040

two passages would be what you would already translated in class. I had German in college, so I didn't have problems with that. But I, they didn't Latin with my other language, which they chose was French or Russian. But there was no, but everybody took courses. I mean, you know, my, the comprehensives, you know, you took an advanced organic course from Bupi and you took

01:15:39.040 - 01:16:11.520

Swain's physical organic course. I mean, so that if you were, you know, I do not remember having to take courses in all forms of chemistry for the comprehensives. So it was mainly in your field. So mine would evolve and and, but as I said, you know, if you felt you could do those without patient comprehensives, of course, nobody did that. They took the courses. So it was well,

01:16:11.520 - 01:16:40.320

you know, I thought I would mine her in math and I took MIT's math in math class and decided that was not for me. I think there was just such a different level of that math than mine and ended up doing biochemistry. So you had, you were taking some courses where you were also doing lab work in your freshman year. Sorry, your first year. There was no required lab courses. I started my,

01:16:40.320 - 01:17:04.240

started doing lab work for my thesis the second semester of my freshman year. So how did you, so that's what I'm curious to know a bit more about is how did you select the thesis advisor? How did you develop a thesis project? How did that take place? Well, so, so as I mentioned, you would enter, you would went to interview, you know,

01:17:04.240 - 01:17:34.640

so and you see what their background was. And, and I had thought naively that when you went and you did your PhD thesis on what you wanted to do. The topic was the area that you're, you know, whoever you took your advisor to, then you went, went your way. You had to, there was an oral exam after your comprehensives, where you presented an original topic that you

01:17:34.640 - 01:17:59.760

began your research, would think about doing research on, but actually, you didn't, you continued on with the thesis. And Garner Swain, who was top physical organic chemists in large land, was already filled. And they, as I said, they purposely, which I thought was cope, had put in that, you know, faculty members had to limit how many new students it takes

01:17:59.760 - 01:18:31.120

so they younger faculty. So, and I interviewed Fred Greed, that was say, on the tenure track with House, and they shared two labs. And it was doing sort of interesting hypochloride, free radical mechanism studies. And, and he was clearly, he had, he had a female that I didn't think about that at the time, graduate student a year ahead of me. But, and he had, you know,

01:18:31.120 - 01:18:58.320

I think he had a lab and he had time and it seemed like an interesting project. And he was someone, because he would, you know, he was in the laboratory, discussing with what you were doing as opposed to having a postdoc do it, which is what the bigger labs had. So, and it was also which I learned subsequently, he had gotten his PhD at Harvard, and his wife was on the track to get

01:18:58.320 - 01:19:24.320

a PhD at Harvard. And after second year, they got married and she dropped out. I had children, and she ended up being editor of journal organic chemistry. He was determined, any female graduate students that he had, we're going to graduate. I mean, that just, you know, I didn't learn that till later. But, you know, I liked the type of projects he was doing. And I started

01:19:26.240 - 01:19:45.120

working on some places now, have you worked for a couple of professors and move on, you know, choose, but it worked out fine. Yeah, I've heard people talk about the rotation system, you're in someone's lab for a few months, and then you go to someone else's lab. And after a certain, I think it's usually at the end of the first year, you make a decision about who you

01:19:45.120 - 01:20:18.720

want to work with. So how many people were in his lab, beyond just you? Well, I think, I think he had, I'm trying to remember whether it's 10 or 12 people. But the since he and house shared, and it was two, you know, all together across the halls back and forth, there were probably 20 people back and forth who were, you know, students and a few postdocs. And couple international posts, couple

01:20:18.720 - 01:20:43.040

postdocs were international or Indian actually. But you got to know, I mean, that's where you got to know the people in your class. And again, it was the people who were two, three, four years ahead of you that were, were also available for whatever, you know, to help answer questions or mentor or what have you. But everybody was on a different schedule. I was a morning person.

01:20:43.040 - 01:21:06.480

And I would get there seven in the morning and leave by seven. And I had a good friend who was the opposite. He would come six at night and work all night. And that was going to be my next question was what was laboratory life like for you? And what were the, were there official rules to the lab or unofficial rules to the lab? I know some people, they run their

01:21:06.480 - 01:21:28.640

labs like, Oh, yeah, you know, I expect you to be there at least 10 hours each day, six days a week. Some people are like, Well, you know, you need to get your work done. So if it takes you, you know, 15 hours in a week to get that work done, that's fine. If it takes you, you know, 60 hours, then that's what you have to do. I was wondering what, what his laboratory was like in terms of its

01:21:28.640 - 01:21:58.480

structure, its functioning, it's how. There were no formal, formal rules. But one of the things that they required is you had a thesis committee selected your freshman year when you first started of three other professors. And every six months, you had to send to them a update of where your research was. And, and so that's, you know, encourage you to, you know, to do the work and

01:21:58.480 - 01:22:20.160

ended up being a very, you could, when it came time to probably write the thesis, because you've been sending these things every six months, you didn't have to think about what you had done earlier. I mean, it was a good thing. But I mean, there were unofficial rules, because one of the people who worked for Green and was in my class was married and had a child. And after the freshman

01:22:20.160 - 01:22:46.000

year, I don't know whether he worked for Monsanto or worked for one of the chemical companies. And when he came back, Green said, Well, that's when you took the summer off, and then you got to make up for it. We ended up finishing it a little less than in two and a half years. Well, it really didn't go back to Puerto Rico. So the intent was your time was your own. You didn't have to be there

01:22:46.000 - 01:23:13.760

and, you know, and you didn't come in and check off where you were or anything. But you know, you were expected to be doing your research, not taking other jobs. And I mean, that was the only one. And now that they're thinking on safety issues, I always wear glasses. But I don't remember if we had, I think we had to wear safety glasses.

01:23:13.760 - 01:23:34.400

But otherwise, we would, you know, haul our own tanks. And I remember a couple of the male graduate students would think it's very funny when I'm moving, you know, somebody opened the door, so I could move the tank in, not that they were going to help move the tank. I could do that. And there were no rules that you couldn't work alone.

01:23:35.760 - 01:24:02.000

I mean, which, which those are rules now that I know exist here at UCLA, particularly they had, and other labs have had incidents and federal labs. But it was really, you know, it was up to you. What the chairman of the department had said, when we first met our freshman year, we're all over there, all 30 of us, he said, you know, we were all funded some way or other,

01:24:02.000 - 01:24:29.840

some had already an SFS doctoral and some TA. He said, you know, we will guarantee funding of some sort for four years. And after that, you're on your own. And so it was real encouragement that people should finish in four years, which in my mind, I was lucky, I finished in three, my experiments went really well. And I started early, and

01:24:30.640 - 01:24:52.640

was now where people will average five and six years, you know, they're not learning that I don't know what you're, if you have graduate students how long they are, but even the humanities, I know we're alone. But in the sciences, there's no reason that before, you know, you can't do it. And still in a four year period, and some people have said to me, well, but there's so much more,

01:24:52.640 - 01:25:12.400

and there's so much more interpretation, I said, yes, but you can, you know, now how many papers do you need to publish, you know, if you get the first, you know, but the faculty wants. And but we had, there wasn't a gas chromatograph on the market, we had to build our own. I mean, you know, there was just the equipment was not what it is now.

01:25:13.360 - 01:25:36.240

I mean, that was another question I was going to ask you was, what was, what were the technologies that you were using in the lab? And if there were new technologies, so I know you came from Ben Mar, you had the exposure, you were working labs, they had a doctoral program there. So there was, and there was funding for it. So there were probably some more advanced technologies that you

01:25:36.240 - 01:26:04.080

were able to encounter in lab work in Ben Mar, then maybe some other people at smaller colleges might have gotten introduced to. But moving to MIT, I wanted to know if there were technologies in the lab that you didn't know how to use. And if you didn't know how to use them, how did you learn how to use those technologies? Yeah, just I'll just back to one thing with the MIT on the Ben

01:26:04.080 - 01:26:35.600

Mar thing. At that point, they had just come out with spectrometers that you couldn't, and Ben Mar didn't have one, but Haverford did. And it was a five minute bike ride. So I would take my ride to Haverford and run them. Ben Mar at that time, I mean, MIT at that time had just developed mass spectrometer. And but I didn't need that for my work. As I mentioned,

01:26:35.600 - 01:26:58.720

a gas chromatograph, you need to separate out what compounds were being formed at these reactions. How do you need a footprint? And if there could be many organisms, you can't just separate them physically. And so we essentially, you know, had a glass blower who would make the tubes, and we would and somebody had the drawings for how to, you know,

01:27:01.120 - 01:27:31.680

the equipment to actually run them so that you could put your samples in and get a printout out. You know, that was a common thing. But they had the simple things like centrifuges and things like that were not, but a much, much cruder, balanced scales weren't as automated as they are now. I mean, as you got to weigh things. But if people wanted a mass spectrometry,

01:27:33.120 - 01:27:59.600

you know, you could do that there because of the work that got developed in there. But but when you look at the things to look at the things at the atomic level now or the molecular level now, doesn't didn't exist anywhere. So you had to think about you couldn't just do hundreds of experiments to get your data, you know, and then see the data you had to think about what

01:27:59.600 - 01:28:21.520

experiments you were going to do, was it going to provide the data, because you didn't have all all this automatic equipment. You mentioned that you were a more of a morning person getting getting in at 7am, leaving at 7pm. Did you normally have like a 12 hour day while you were doing lab work?

01:28:22.160 - 01:28:38.960

Yeah. And was that all year round or only for part of the year? No, well, I mean, after I had finished my comprehensives, it was all year round. I mean, when when one was taking courses, and then, you know, comprehensives were the first of

01:28:39.760 - 01:29:09.280

February, one sort of took December and January off to study, get nervous for them. Okay. So when you were in lab full time, what were you doing when you weren't in lab? Like, did you have activities like that you were enjoying? You're in another big city, Boston, right? There's probably a lot of stuff to do. What were you doing when you weren't doing

01:29:09.280 - 01:29:37.760

your science? Well, when I was I was playing tennis part of the time, some with graduate students, we had two from Hungary and others. But also I think I had met my became my future husband in my December of my first year. And we were both like the theater. And there was a lot of theater, those pre Broadway theater and small theaters and trall street players, well, that's

01:29:37.760 - 01:30:07.120

who we went to theaters. I went with my to my Brimarch for friends to concerts. And I mean, just a sort of a normal social life of enjoying. You could go to Turkey Park for $2 with a lot of money, then she didn't eat out as much. And then there were some people, there was a graduate student there from Haverford, who was in my class when I ended up becoming president of Lafayette

01:30:07.120 - 01:30:35.280

College, who was a sailor and MIT had a big sailing thing. So several of us would go out and try to learn to sail. It was just, you know, normal. I mean, that you know, just sort of socializing. And I, you know, even at the time, not at the time, but several years after, I socialized more with people who weren't in my lab than people who were in my lab. Is there a reason for that?

01:30:36.000 - 01:30:59.520

No, I mean, I just think it was probably, you know, I had friends from Brimarch and Ashley Allen had gone to MIT as an undergraduate, but then was in medical school when I met them. You know, just went out and they were their friends. So it was or his friends. So it was just a network of that I did have other other contacts.

01:31:00.560 - 01:31:23.040

And I was well, and I had my roommate, but also the woman, the one graduate student I was most friendly with and wouldn't be surprised was Ellen Bracelle, who was a year ahead of me, worked for Green and gone to Barnard. So, and husband was a physics graduate student. And we, and we, you know, I would go to their house for dinner and things like that. We did

01:31:24.080 - 01:31:55.280

socialize. So you finished your degree in three years, right? Yeah. During, so you had in mind that you were going to go on to become a professor. Were you receiving any advice during that period of time about what the next steps would be in terms of having a career in chemistry? Or were you attending professional conferences to present on your research and

01:31:55.280 - 01:32:20.560

learning about what it meant to be a professional chemist during that period of time while you were in graduate school? I mean, it was interesting. We, you know, unlike now, and like last day, people didn't, we didn't go to American Chemical Society meetings. There was a local chapter and student chapters, which we were all members or members of, but you just, you know, one didn't

01:32:20.560 - 01:32:52.720

do that though. And, you know, my thesis work was published a week before my thesis exam in the internal organic chemistry that, because it was green, I'd heard that somebody in Colombia was doing similar work and went to get it there faster. And I, part of what's driven the, you know, it's a warm night, the two body problem. I had a husband, well, then I got married January 1st of 61, which

01:32:52.720 - 01:33:18.480

was middle of my third year. And he was graduating from medical school and to do an internship. And so, and he had grown up in Boston, going to undergraduate school in Boston, graduate medical school, and went to leave and was applying for residencies in California by internships in California. And I asked Green at the, in the middle, in the beginning of the third

01:33:18.480 - 01:33:45.360

year, when he was sort of, would I, because, and Green would invite all his graduate students over. I mean, you had, you know, there was that, for his, to his house in the period of socialization, that, you know, he wants, we want to go to the West Coast, but would he, but would I be finished? Because if not, we would stay on the East Coast. And he said, well, if I wasn't finished by June,

01:33:45.360 - 01:34:09.440

I would be finished by September. And I said, well, you know, if I finished my experimental work, and I'll go and write my thesis wherever we are, he says, no, you won't stay here. I finished by June, we've been, we didn't go to Europe in May, because I didn't finish in June, because I didn't finish early enough. But I anyway, it all worked out that, because he, as I said,

01:34:09.440 - 01:34:39.040

he was determined his female graduate students, all his graduate students should finish, but particularly his. So Alan ended up getting an internship at UCSF, and I applied for an NSF post-operal fellowship to go to Berkeley. And if you agree, because in San Francisco where you wanted to go, I don't know if it ended up being Los Angeles, whether I was, but it wasn't the

01:34:39.040 - 01:35:10.160

issue. And so we went there, and I post-doc for year in biochemistry, really wasn't crazy about it, but professor was never there. So, and it was time, interesting, Berkeley was very conservative at that time. I mean, that, you know, I mean, Kennedy to kind of come to speak to them, but and now I'm blocking the name of the very conservative Buckley, and he had just as big a crowd, which was

01:35:10.160 - 01:35:41.280

sort of interesting. Anyhow, and then it came time to do, found it was going to do residency in psychiatry. At that point, you didn't, you did it at different places often, and he had decided he was going to do Stanford, or UCSF, he would stay there. And I had got a job then to be at UCSF in the lab. But in the programs on the West Coast for four years of residency, and three years

01:35:41.280 - 01:36:06.240

in the East Coast, and you decided, well, he'd really rather, I mean, we decided, rather go to the shorter program, though they were just as well trained. There was a woman at Tess Medical School, Alice Ettinger, who just an incredible, well-known figure for people in the 50s and 60s in the field of radiology. And she was known, and Alan contacted her, she had been an advisor for

01:36:06.240 - 01:36:35.760

him. And there was a note new Cornell. So here in May, we decided we're going to, by July 1st, we will be in New York City. And I have to then find a, want to find a job in New York City. And so the teaching would be the thing to do. I mean, I didn't think about commuting off to New Jersey to Exxon or things like that. And yeah, I wrote to all the schools. And I got a letter from Fordham

01:36:35.760 - 01:37:14.160

that I should have saved that wrote back, we've never hired a diss staff member of the lay faculty and don't plan to do so. That's not to be quoted in the article. But Hunter College, which was all women actually, and it was at 68th and Park, and Cornell was at 60th, at 70th, and first in Cornell's housing for, was right there, I could walk. So they, so they hired me. And what year was that?

01:37:15.120 - 01:37:49.200

That was in 1962. And then after a year of doing a radiology residency, Allen decided he really didn't want to be a radiologist, but switched to psychiatry, which is really opposite extremes. He subsequently has said that if he knew radiology was going to change as it did with all the procedures, and he might have stayed because he did have this MIT science background.

01:37:50.480 - 01:38:24.480

But in those, so this is now 63. If you were a physician, in the 50s and 60s, you had to go into the service, or you would ask to volunteer to go in the service and you went in as a captain. If you didn't volunteer, you could get drafted as a private. But this is how they built up their plan. And there was a very plan that set aside for a certain number of people. So you finished

01:38:24.480 - 01:38:52.240

your specialty, and then you went in as a radiologist, or whatever. He, he was in the very plan for radiology. But when he switched to psychiatry, there were no openings for psychiatry. So he had to go in the service right there. So then we were moving from New York, and he got stationed at Fort Belvoir outside of Virginia. But one of the things, when we were discussing with the

01:38:52.240 - 01:39:21.120

army where he was going to go, they said, well, the government had set me to school for all these years. And they needed to be near a city, not be somewhere else where an army base could be, that I could also get a job. So Fort Belvoir's community distance from Washington, so I was thinking, oh, there's NIH and there's the universities there. And anyways, not knowing then,

01:39:21.120 - 01:39:52.640

first time I went to Fort Belvoir, I noticed there were engineering labs. So we picked up in July of 63 and went to, he started his two year tour of duty, and they put him in radiology. And because of the army's rules, since the regular army person hadn't arrived, and a person, second very person just finished training, came in July, who was fully board certified,

01:39:52.640 - 01:40:16.880

but Allen had started in June, fiscal year then was June, we did them a favor, because we'd be on the rolls come a few days early. He was head of the department for too much, one year, I mean, you know, anyhow. But I got a job at the labs right there. I mean, I saw these labs and I applied, I had also applied to American University. And they didn't have anything that

01:40:16.880 - 01:40:48.240

would have been a commute, but the lab were there and just so it doesn't look like we're into, whereas where I really started working on the fuel cell research and setting up the lab, this is in 1663, when he was finished the service, because of my instead of him going back to Cornell to do psychiatry. And my job, I really, I was enjoying it and it was successful. He decided

01:40:48.240 - 01:41:20.560

to do his residency in Washington, DC, and we stayed. So this whole two body problem, which is more pronounced now, I've always spent more time when I was working for an industry finding a job for the spouse than I did for person I was hired. So you were a researcher at the U.S. Army Laboratory at Fort Belvoir? Fort Belvoir, yeah. Fort Belvoir, okay. And so that started in 1963?

01:41:20.560 - 01:41:50.000

Started in 63. And sorry, go ahead. No, so they had, they had a laboratory night vision was created there. They were the two major army facilities, not doing basic research, but more applied research for Fort Malmuth and Fort Belvoir. And they were right on, and Fort Belvoir had just hired Arthur D. Little was a scientific consulting firm in Boston that no longer exists, but was a

01:41:50.000 - 01:42:20.400

really good ADL, was very good for hired named Gail and Frysinger with PHE, to build up a lab in fuel cells. And he, the idea was at the time, Gemini had referred the army wanted for power, it could be silent power, because there weren't the moving parts that there were in, in diesels or turbine engines, multi-fuel theoretically capability. So they wanted it for, for power,

01:42:20.400 - 01:42:51.680

for potentially for transportation, for sending up sites to start a fuel cell research program. To build up fuel cell technology for ground applications based on that. And it didn't matter to him, he was a PhD, that I didn't, wasn't an electrochemist, but the fact I had a PhD could look good for getting the dollars for to help. And I could, I could know several lab,

01:42:51.680 - 01:43:19.840

he sent me to spend a month at the University of Pennsylvania with this person who had done a lot of fuel cell work and title laboratories outside of Boston. And I, I saw the techniques and what could be used and could then set up, is set up a research lab there, actually, and could hire a technician and to look at what were the

01:43:19.840 - 01:43:43.920

mechanisms on this platinum electrodes and still use platinum electrodes and fuel cells, so that you could see how you could reduce it. Or also, you know, was it different for hydrogen than it was for natural gas, whether for hire, how much you had to reform. So we did some basic research as to, you know, what kind of compounds were being formed. That time I had gas chromatographs

01:43:43.920 - 01:44:13.600

that you could buy from Perkin Elmer in addition to a mass spec and other things. But I also had a portfolio of, of external projects to monitor, to me, and I was with General Electric was in the research labs who had been on Gemini was, was doing research for fuel cells for stationary type of applications, was Pratt and Whitney then, United Technology,

01:44:13.600 - 01:44:40.240

they were in the other, they were on Apollo, those were the two big ones. But ExxonMobil was looking at fuel cells with sulfuric acid, Dave L. David, who became science advisor was running that program. And so, and Pennsylvania was the academic. And so I was, you know, and they, pricing incentive, just think of it as your own money and how you would, you know, spend,

01:44:40.800 - 01:45:09.680

spend it and monitor it. And so I, I sort of learned with help as to what their statements of work were going to be and tracking the research with monitoring, developing these research projects. But then it was then, when I was in Fort Belvoir, that I would give papers on my, um, you know, my own research and, and, and developing a network of these people, the

01:45:09.680 - 01:45:40.320

electrochemical society group, and decided even though I, you know, we published some papers and ended up having one grad, one person, um, for a couple years, and then she left, and then had a woman, Ann Hubbard, whose husband had to serve his two years at Fort Belvoir in the nuclear area. And Ann wanted to be a biology major, but she ended up after two years of research.

01:45:40.320 - 01:46:06.800

And my lab went on to get her PhD in, in biochemistry at, Rockefeller and then was one of the first non-MD people getting tenure at Hopkins Medical School. I said that was my contribution, another contribution to science. My own children became physicians. So there are several questions that, that I have.

01:46:07.680 - 01:46:32.960

I'm going to start with how was it transitioning from organic chemistry to electrochemistry? Was that a relatively easy thing for you to accomplish or did it, I mean, it sounds like it's a fundamentally different area of chemistry that you hadn't just spent three years of research focusing on. So like, how was it making that transition?

01:46:32.960 - 01:46:56.400

Well, I think there were two things. One, you know, you spent three years of doing research, but you get the feel for what kind of, of experiments you need to do to determine what, what results, and, you know, and, and part of it was some organic molecules, because they wanted to really be able to work on natural gas and petroleum and fossil fuels.

01:46:57.440 - 01:47:25.520

But the fact that I could, you know, they sent me to two places that were doing this research and fundamentally that it gave me, you know, I had, and I, and money wasn't an issue for buying equipment or setting up the lab, that, that I was able to create it and learn enough, you know, electrochemistry. And by monitoring or being the project manager from the army's

01:47:25.520 - 01:47:48.240

point of view, these contractors, the general electric people were really supportive. I mean, you know, I could go in, it was being done in their research labs. And if I had questioned, you know, about interpretation of something, they were perfectly willing, you know, very willing to help. I mean, so there was a lot of, there was a lot of support down personally.

01:47:48.240 - 01:48:18.320

I'm the money person, but otherwise, you know, but they also wanted the field to progress. And I was looking at some nasty hydrogen, very, other than for phosphoric acid as the electrolyte. So they, so the transition, and I wasn't under pressure that I had to publish right away. I mean, that, you know, within an academic situation, what Freisinger wanted was to have a working lab

01:48:18.320 - 01:48:46.720

to show the generals that we could do this work. So keep, keep it, you know, and, and, but it wasn't, you know, it was not a, so there was a lot of, it wasn't, I just, it wasn't an issue with it. Another question I had was, as a, as a graduate student, you're, you're reporting to a supervisor, but you're also kind of independent, right? You do your research, you're responsible

01:48:46.720 - 01:49:10.640

for your research. I don't think you mentioned having to supervise any undergraduates while you're a graduate student. Now you're going into a position where not only are you doing research, but you're, you're becoming a lab supervisor, right? So people are reporting to you, you are checking in on projects. I'm assuming you have to write reports about those projects.

01:49:11.920 - 01:49:43.360

How did you develop the skills to do all that when you didn't have any clear exposure to it beforehand? Like how was it, what was it like becoming a manager and how did you manage becoming a manager? Well, two things. One is, there were some undergraduates in our lab at MIT, but because Greens didn't have 30, 20, 30 people in, in post, he sort of supervised the

01:49:43.360 - 01:50:16.080

undergraduate. And one of them went off to come head of the department at Stanford. I mean, so there was, you know, I don't know whether, I mean, I've never thought about that. Frysinger was very helpful on managing the external contracts. I mean, and also you sort of learn by experience. I mean, I'll get a processing in the way that I thought, well, I'm going to

01:50:16.080 - 01:50:38.000

renew this, this contract with GE. I'll just write it up by, you know, gotten the forms and I have, from then the input I need, I send it over to procurement. Then comes a month later, I haven't heard anything. And then I didn't hear anything. Then I walk over to procurement and they said, oh, well, it's at the bottom pile. We didn't know we're in, you know, how much of a hurry. I subsequently

01:50:38.000 - 01:51:11.520

learned from that experience that whatever, and it did me well all through my whole career, that, you know, something had to be taken care of, you know, just you go on and chat it up or whatever that you all done on a personal basis in a sense, whether that's right or not. But that is how. I mean, I guess, you know, I had seen how Green managed his students and also, you know,

01:51:11.520 - 01:51:37.920

just going to the labs, both the Tyco lab, particularly where it was an industrial lab that had, you know, the senior managers and then underneath people who were doing research, you're just a reporting, just sort of learning about what I saw other people doing. As far as being a project manager with the companies, I mean, pricing sort of, you know, guided me on

01:51:37.920 - 01:52:01.360

what kind of, you know, what you want to track. You want to track what the contractors are supposed to do. You want to understand what technologies they're doing to make sure they're not repeating something that somebody else had failed. And you get to know, the nice thing about leading government research programs at that time is you know what everybody's doing.

01:52:01.920 - 01:52:26.160

Unlike the people at GD, don't know what people at Pratt and Whitney are doing, except what they're doing, talk about at professional society. So it was sort of, had some guidance, and then you had deadlines. I mean, you know, I was supposed to, you know, everyone to read a certain phrase of a contract was finished. One had to make sure that document was there.

01:52:26.160 - 01:52:52.880

And there was no formal review process. Other than my review and my boss's review. There was not a big hierarchy, you know, there was, on the non-military side, there was a civilian head, pricing reported to him, and I reported to him. Okay. See, you were in that position for five years?

01:52:52.880 - 01:53:27.040

Yeah. Okay. What made you decide to move on from that position? I know that you became a professor of chemistry at Federal City College. And so I'm wondering where that transition came from, why, yeah. Well, and I learned, so Frysinger left, I guess was in 66, 67. And I was encouraged to apply for the job. I had two young, my first child was born in 65,

01:53:27.040 - 01:53:58.480

and second one in 66. They were 15 months apart. And I had incredibly good household help, the Scottish woman for 16 years, which made it all possible. Mary Good and I would talk about the help we had, and we paid their social security with an issue in the 90s for some people. Anyhow, they, but I wasn't sure I was ready to head a branch or division, whatever it was.

01:53:59.040 - 01:54:27.040

So I didn't apply for the job. And they hired somebody who I just did not, after a while, I just didn't respect. I mean, he just was a micromanager. And so I just, and also when the children were younger, I would limit, I mean, I'd have to do some travel trips to monitor these programs. I actually took a course at UCLA on some new technique when Adam was six

01:54:27.040 - 01:54:58.880

months old. He wasn't happy when I came back. I think gone. Anyhow, and so this, they were opening up. So that was, so I hadn't taken, and I, so I wasn't happy with that. And I was thinking, well, maybe I should do some sort of an academic thing that would give me more time. And we had moved into the district. No, no, we didn't move in. Oh, no, I'm sorry, we hadn't moved him. We were

01:54:58.880 - 01:55:25.440

still in, we were, but he, Allen was community district, I was commuting for it, but we moved in in 71. And so they were just creating this. Washington DC had no land grant school. And so they created this University of Federal Civic College to be a land grant school. And they were hiring, I mean, even though it was clearly the population of student body, the district was,

01:55:25.440 - 01:55:51.120

even at that time, was 60, 70% African Americans was going to be minority groups. And they were hiring, they hired a full professor of English from Harvard. Another chemistry person they had hired was a person just finished his PhD with Harry Gray to Caltech. And so it seemed like an interesting environment and things, they were just starting to do things more

01:55:51.920 - 01:56:22.800

even NSF for minority groups. And so I thought, well, this would be, you know, interesting. And it would be different. I would have more free time and I could start a lab doing some research that, and I didn't even think about the tenure. I can remember even what, and I don't, whether you remember where they had tenure, anyway, went over, was done as a professor.

01:56:22.800 - 01:56:53.680

And it was an interesting experience. I mean, you were hoping you had kids in there who really had had to learn the basic skills of talk about writing and even mathematical concepts. But then some kids, and they were working, I mean, it was just typical of, you know, people, two or three, we're trying to get a degree. And then we were, and we were able to get,

01:56:53.680 - 01:57:21.760

I mean, and the high schools just did terrible preparation in the district, except if you were in Northwest Washington at Wilson High School, and it was just not a good thing. A person, other chemists to myself, and I'll think of his name, we got money from NSF to start a program going to the high schools in a bus to do hands-on experiments, which related to their

01:57:21.760 - 01:57:48.240

daily life, like trying to figure out what's kind of carbohydrate or sugar versus other foods, what kind of nutritional, and how to gas chromatograph, how to spectrometer that people could come on and do. And it was pretty successful. I mean, we would spend several weeks doing a science topic and then go to another school and got kids interested. There were a couple of our

01:57:48.320 - 01:58:17.120

students who graduated. Then we had students who graduated. One went to MIT as a graduate student. I mean, it was an interesting thing. But why I decided to leave was the politics just changed and the faculty changed through Jim Perry State, his whole career. And that's when I, you know, then looked around and NSF had this program that research applied to national needs,

01:58:17.200 - 01:58:45.840

RAID, which was sort of more applied research than the other and covering areas that weren't necessarily covered by the cabinet and other administrative positions. So in the energy position, and I had done work, they hired me to essentially to do fuel cells and batteries, that I had done the fuel cells. But before I started, so that was in 72,

01:58:46.960 - 01:59:13.200

they said, well, a professor from Stanford was coming on a sabbatical, was an economist, and would I consider working with him to look at the demand side, both the technology, so how energy is used. Nobody, this isn't 70, pre-embark, when you're pre-embark of, gas was 20 cents, plenty available and nobody really knew how much used for electricity was

01:59:13.200 - 01:59:39.760

cheap. There had, the nuclear had been handled by the atomic and was still, the AEC was still there and atomic and they were doing storage. The Interior Department was looking at coal, they had set up at NSF, a renewable in the RAND program, renewable energy, fossil energy, and then we were doing the demand. So I said, yes, I would go and do it.

01:59:41.200 - 02:00:15.920

But that was when, the early times, I remember the deputy for that Mayfield asked me a question here, this is 10 years after I've graduated, why did I go to MIT? I wish I thought it was a very strange question to ask, but I, I mean, I said it was an outstanding chemistry department and the best, and so why not? Anyhow, so I was in NSF for a year,

02:00:16.480 - 02:00:48.800

and my problem with NSF, and the starting area, and it was also, we got proposals, I mean, funded MIT people looking at the man side, modeling also at Harvard Cornell, funding actual research at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in thermal energy, some work in lighting, and then actually some NGOs who were looking at policy. This was again before the

02:00:48.800 - 02:01:17.760

embargo. But NSF did not encourage you at that point, or at least in the RAND program, to develop a portfolio. What type of thing should you be looking at? What kind of, whereas what I had been doing at the Army was very clear that we were on a mission to get fuel cells into stationary and mobile trans, power and mobile transportation, and so it was sort of, you took

02:01:17.760 - 02:01:51.600

what you could get as the best, and sort of the embargo came, and then one of the people I had been funding was Jack Gibbons at Oak Ridge, and he came up to head one of the three-letter agencies, they're an energy conservation program, and went to go work with him. We're very focused on initiatives, but and was lent by NSF for a month or two during the embargo time, which is when I

02:01:51.600 - 02:02:25.680

started to get into the policy world, which again, an ad hoc type of thing. So it was 1973 that you moved to Office of Energy Conservation? No, there was no Department of Energy till 77. So I moved to, there was a Federal Energy Office, 73. Then the Energy Research and Development Administration was formed in 75 when they split up the Atomic Energy Commission into the NRC to

02:02:25.680 - 02:03:00.640

separate the regulatory, and the ERDA was to be the Energy R&D. And Bob Siemens, who had been deputy for the Apollo program and had been Secretary of the Air Force, headed it, and Bob Fry, who had been deputy to Ruckelhaus at EPA, became his deputy, and we set up, and that's when the research programs really developed. And I learned a terrific amount of

02:03:00.640 - 02:03:34.080

developing a research program from Bob Fry, who was the deputy and worked in the area, and we collaborated for years. But I had my first things with policy, either when I was alone to FEA or actually there during the embargo time, they were looking for things. So how is it transitioning into this policy arena? So I mean, if I understand correctly,

02:03:34.080 - 02:04:09.280

you're no longer in a lab, you're not managing projects, but you're trying to develop policy. Is that? No, the FEA, at NSF, we were developing projects. We were sponsoring research, and some of it was modeling, and some of it was actually a mechanical thing, being able to have basements full with water for thermal storage and ice for cooling. I mean, it was a big demonstration

02:04:10.240 - 02:04:44.640

of compact florescent lights, but it was also in parallel with policy, because when the first embargo came, they were really looking, what do we do to save and protect ourselves from oil? The state of California had Los Angeles City, rather, just renewed the contract with the Middle East for providing oil for their power, which 50% of the power

02:04:45.280 - 02:05:19.760

electricity at that time was from oil, as opposed to less than a couple percent. So we wanted to track, and California had passed law, or Los Angeles City Council, I guess, that if you, the residential industrial had to reduce their use 10% commercial 20%, and if they didn't over a period of time, their rates would double. I mean, so we funded Rand Corporation

02:05:20.960 - 02:05:48.000

to track that. The policy at the embargo time, lighting Nixon actually in the summer of 73, had imposed some energy conservation things in the federal government from a cost-saving point of view. It had nothing to do with, this was pre-embargo, nothing to do with any shortage, that the government should save in a way of saving money and reduce lighting levels

02:05:48.880 - 02:06:17.840

to something called 50-foot candles, 30, 50. And so when the embargo came, I was meeting with Jack, I was doing buildings related activities from what I had done at NSF. Another person had come from DOT doing transportation, and I said, well, why don't we have the private sector do 50-30-10? The government's been doing it for six months without a problem. So we wrote a paper, one page

02:06:17.840 - 02:06:42.560

paper, and it went up to the channel from the two days later, Nixon announces it. I mean, you talk about real time feedback, not three years of research, and then you get your paper. Well, I mean, that was all very nice. But the next day, I get called in by Eric Zalscher, who was the deputy of FEO at that time, or FEO, saying that,

02:06:44.560 - 02:07:10.480

well, coming the next day, the heads of the three lighting divisions in the US, GE, Westinghouse, and Sylvania, to protest what I had done. I was going to cause unemployment, I was going to cause this and that. Anyway, I was going to be at the meeting. And so at the meeting, we talked about the federal government had done this,

02:07:10.480 - 02:07:34.080

it had not caused, there were no visual problems with it. Then if we had to reduce the amount of fluorescent lighting that you had to take it out, you would save it, not buy it. Well, of course, that meant that we were saying to look for more efficient lighting. Anyway, they each invited me to come to their sites, which I did. And what I learned was, before you go and

02:07:35.920 - 02:08:05.760

promulgate something, you do need to talk to the impacted people, and ended up working closely with them. And for two years worked for a time for the lighting research institute, between my time leaving the government and going to industry in Washington. So then the mixture of FEO became the Federal Energy Administration then in

02:08:07.680 - 02:08:40.240

1975, ERDA was formed, and I went there to head the buildings and industry program. We built up, start building of an R&D program. In 1977, the Office, the Department of Energy was formed, and both organizations fed into, and so we were combining then, I was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Energy Conservation, combining the policy and the R&D. And it was very bipartisan,

02:08:40.240 - 02:09:06.400

and the budgets grew up, and we had some in the buildings area, particularly had some major home runs at the time, with changing from mechanical ballots to solid state ballots, compact fluorescent lighting, to computer programs to design energy-efficient analysis, thermal windows. I said, I mean, it was really an exciting time, and you work with industry,

02:09:06.400 - 02:09:39.360

I mean, that was, and the national labs. So when, I know that there was, right, there was the ERDA, you mentioned that, then DOE, and so you, you continued on your government career at this period of time at the DOE, right? Right. You were, you were in conservation. What were your, I mean, what were your daily responsibilities like? Yeah, I've never worked

02:09:39.920 - 02:10:05.840

in government, and so I'm curious to know a bit more about what you, what was your general functioning on a daily basis? Were you holding meetings? Were you supervising projects? What was the, what were your activities in your position there? Well, at that point, I had 200 people working for me, and, and they were, you know, divided, you know, there was a buildings program,

02:10:05.840 - 02:10:33.360

there was an industrial program, there was a transportation program, and there was other renewables were all handled by another deputy assistant secretary, it was for conservation and renewables, now the energy efficiency of renewables. And so it really was setting, there was, one thing was setting up, and they did this in ERDA with, sorry, is what is,

02:10:33.360 - 02:11:00.800

what are the goals, doing a strategic plan? And, and, and in, in ERDA, I did it for buildings and industry, you know, what would be the goals and, and what projects do you need on a five-year basis, a 30-year basis, or not a 30-10-year basis, what kind of budgets and things like that? We had to do, so we, so even, so at DOE, we had to do strategic planning, but then our budgets

02:11:00.800 - 02:11:23.840

had been growing, but by the time I left DOE, we had a billion-dollar budget, and part of those were grants program, weatherization, which are still doing, it was 200 million state grants program for another schools and hospitals. So you were sort of, you know, supervising, you had a policy office, you were supervising these, but you were also reviewing

02:11:23.840 - 02:11:56.560

the projects, and you were also going out and meeting customers, and then my responsibility was testifying from the Congress to defend the budget, and also, Ford, in my mind, had the best process for developing policies, so we had had the one embargo, and here he is, President, in 75, and they asked people to, this was before, no, this was even before, to develop

02:11:59.360 - 02:12:30.080

what might become legislation, and so we developed planned, one with building for energy performance standards, one was appliance labeling, because they didn't want standards at the time, another was tax credit and weatherization, and it handled separately was the automotive standards, this is 75, so it had to be when FEA, before I went to ERDA, but it sort of

02:12:30.080 - 02:13:00.640

mixed between two anyhow, and we wrote it, it went through the FEA, Roger Sand had replaced Jack Gibbons, then they had a meeting with Secretary or the administrator, and then when there was a meeting out in Colorado, I mean, Sand went to there, and so we were promoting legislation, it was project independence, really what it was to get independent, and one of my,

02:13:00.640 - 02:13:22.800

and so the building energy, and one of the things I, to keep my sanity, not just administering things, there was only something that I would focus on, and in the power, and building energy performance standards, aside from the budget, I mean, the budget was very important, and ultimately at DOE, there were, these all merged together, but at the Department of

02:13:22.800 - 02:13:49.360

Energy, there were two different appropriation committees, there was the interior appropriations for, which grew out of the fossil thing for conservation, and then there was the energy and water for the non-interior, and then you had the house and the senate, you had the hospitalization, anyhow, you learn to testify by watching just answer the question, don't go more.

02:13:50.320 - 02:14:16.880

And, but, so the building energy performance standards was one of the, you know, and the administration would have, was much, it would have, or the Congress would have hearings, where they would have the administration, and then outside people that you would recommend, and I remember the building energy performance standards was done jointly with HUD,

02:14:17.600 - 02:14:42.960

Donna Shalala was at the time that had a policy at HUD, she then went on to greater things, including Congress, and we would, you know, we had to testify, and that came under Senator Proxmire, who was known for his golden eggs type of thing, but his staff was very interested in this building energy performance standards, I would walk into the hearing room because it was

02:14:42.960 - 02:15:11.520

energy, they'd open the curtains so they didn't have to keep so much lag on, but you also, you learn to work with the staff, you don't need to work with the, you know, the, the principals, and I did more training of chief technology officers from the private sector that they don't need to have a meeting with Congressman Yates, who headed appropriations for the interior

02:15:12.400 - 02:15:39.120

budget until they got merged in the later time in the 90s, that you want to talk to Bob Crippowitz, who really knows everything, I mean, you know, and it's, you just learned by doing how, how, how these things, and then the R&D was, you know, just exciting getting, you know, things get commercialized, and, but there were also, I remember, there was one

02:15:39.440 - 02:16:03.840

Congressman McCormick from State of Washington was chemist, otherwise everybody was lawyers, and he made a comment to me when I presented an early budget, he was on the authorization for science, he said, well, how risky are these projects, and I would say many of them are high-risk, they may not be successful, and his comment to me was, you're not doing the right job

02:16:03.920 - 02:16:31.200

if all your projects are short of being success, you're to do high-risk balance. So part of this, you know, setting the strategies for what we should do, one-term high-risk, the long-term, near-term, then we ultimately then had responsibility for implementing some of these programs, which is the hardest part. So you mentioned working some, a little bit with

02:16:32.160 - 02:16:56.400

housing and urban development, right, HUD. Were there other agencies that you needed to interact with, government agencies that you needed to interact with on a regular basis? I could imagine, and maybe my imagination is just completely wrong, that if you're focusing on conservation and new energy standards, technologies, that the newly formed or relatively newly formed

02:16:56.480 - 02:17:22.000

EPA might be an important agency to work with if they're concerned about, you know, new things that are going to be entering the environmental street. Were there other government agencies that you needed to work with on a regular basis? Well, I mean, we were with, it was before EPA created their Energy Star program, which is, there's very close coordination

02:17:22.000 - 02:17:46.880

now between the two agencies. But indoor air quality was of concern to people. If you were tightening up your house, you know, you're putting weatherization and you're putting thermal windows, you're talking where you're going to have less air changes, would there be indoor air qualities? And people at Lawrence Berkeley, there were several national laboratories

02:17:46.880 - 02:18:15.760

that really entered into high gear for looking at conservation away from their earlier start. I mean, there were programs here. Oak Ridge had been one, that's why Jack Gibbons had come to the office of, to be in the conservation, had had the conservation part of the first federal energy office. But Lawrence Berkeley lab or RevSELD, how many had developed a big

02:18:16.640 - 02:18:43.680

program and they had looked, they had sort of program on indoor air quality. And how do you measure indoor air quality? So we had, and it determined, and if you did have a problem, what kind of technology might you need? So we would have, the actual, in the buildings area, the largest interaction was with NIST. They had, because they were responsible, ultimately,

02:18:43.680 - 02:19:11.360

for setting up procedures. So how do you test efficiency of appliances? Well, air condition, from which the basis of that were standards developed. They also had a building program. They literally at NIST had built a house that you could put in energy efficient and measure, and in a real term, also put renewables on it. They had a big group on fire and safety. And so,

02:19:11.360 - 02:19:32.080

as you were looking at implementing standards, fire and safety standards were implemented through the codes. How are you going to implement building standards through the codes? Well, the transportation program interacted, well, they interacted with EPA a lot with the, because of the testing, testing capability for

02:19:34.400 - 02:20:00.080

dynamometer testing was all done up in Michigan by EPA, then Department of Transportation had programs and ultimately with the standards. So those were the main, the main ways. We also, interaction with the states. I mean, we borrowed from California for building standards, ultimately, appliance standards, because they had had this great

02:20:00.080 - 02:20:24.080

shortage. They formed the California Energy Commission, and they put, had this legislation, and we could just see how we could tailor it, and also see how they were implementing it. So there was that interaction. And there was a lot of, I mean, I, some DOD, because they were worried about getting supplies, but they were not,

02:20:24.080 - 02:20:52.320

they're being, DODs become much more active in, in energy efficiency, because of the cost, and also, but we had a, there was creative, and I can't remember when it was created, but was there when I was, the Federal Energy Management Program called FEMP, which run 20, and that was each agency had a set of target for how,

02:20:52.320 - 02:21:17.840

in their buildings, they would reduce their energy. Government uses, is the largest user of energy in buildings, and in transportation. And so, and they had a report and track. So all of those agencies, GSA became a major player in that because they own the government facilities. And it's interesting, this year at budget FEMP runs, they do a few demonstration programs with,

02:21:17.840 - 02:21:44.400

you know, and share best practices. This run, you know, $20, $30 million. The current budget has an increase to add another zero, where, so, which will allow things like the national labs and the federal government buildings to really retrofit the need by, and, but GSA had also built a building in Manchester, New Hampshire, around the time

02:21:44.400 - 02:22:04.960

of the embargo, that was the most efficient building measured in BTUs per square foot. I mean, you didn't have any measurement terms, because energy just wasn't, you know, you knew miles per gallon, but you just didn't, wasn't, you know, seven miles per gallon, who cared? I'm sorry, I'm skipping around, but your questions are,

02:22:05.760 - 02:22:23.040

making me think of things that I didn't know about ahead of time. I mean, I didn't think about, I hadn't thought about for a while. I know, it's great to hear. And it's always, so in oral history, it's always nice to see how people make connections to the questions that we ask. And so we like when people explore

02:22:23.040 - 02:22:46.480

questions to see how those connections come to be. Now, I don't want to miss anything. I know that, well, you mentioned that you, after leaving government, and I guess this was before joining the Garrett Corporation, you did some consulting, right? Yeah, I left the government in 83.

02:22:49.360 - 02:23:08.720

So the two questions I wanted to ask were, are there other things about your time in government that you think would be important for us to know? I mean, you understand the general nature for a project, and I don't want to miss something. But I'm not, you know, I'm not an insider in the work that you're doing. So I don't know if there are questions that I haven't asked that I should

02:23:08.720 - 02:23:37.760

have asked. So that's one thing. But the other question is, you know, I want to know what brought your career in the government to an end? Well, that was the one I was going to say, were you going to ask me? And I don't know if you know any of the history. So I was career civil servant, and deputy, I mean, it rose to be that the highest at the, within GS18, then the same

02:23:37.760 - 02:24:16.080

time that the, when Carter came in, they created the senior executive service, and got rid of the higher levels of GS, and called the SES. And my S was on my position, I was at the highest level of the SES. What the SES allowed you to do was you could unlimited leave accumulation or things. But the other thing was that you could be removed for various reasons. And

02:24:16.880 - 02:24:47.520

which if you were career civil service, you're still career. But, you know, it wasn't a lifetime thing, whereas in the former that happened. So, you know, I had worked, and I was non political, that's what, you know, as the work, you know, under, well, it started in the 60s, but I was just much lower level. The story of, you know, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan comes in. Well,

02:24:47.520 - 02:25:07.600

Reagan wanted to eliminate two things, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education. And if he couldn't get rid of the Department of Energy, at least he could get rid of some of the things they didn't like, which was efficiency and renewables. And though when California, when he had been governor, he had allowed these things to happen. But, you know,

02:25:07.600 - 02:25:37.280

that's, so I get a, so they hired somebody named Tribal Peace to be the Assistant Secretary for Conservation and Renewables. He came from a paper back in Georgia or something like that. He was, he didn't know knowledge of the government, no knowledge of our, he was pure you know, whether the paper company had contributed to the Reagan campaign or

02:25:37.280 - 02:26:06.160

whatever. One of our first hearings in front of Mr. Yates, for his interior appropriations, Yates asked, wait, you have something Tribal, Tribal was his name, Tribal Peace was off science, he was a good guy, Tribal PE, what does PE mean? And so Tribal says professional engineers, and Yates says, aren't all engineers professionals? Well, downhill from there. And Yates just called

02:26:06.160 - 02:26:39.840

on the rest of us, but in any event. So they got him, so they, so they, and with the first budget, went, went through, well, it was a very bipartisan. And so Reagan came in 80, the 80 election in 81 and had to live with the 81 budget in 82. We, you know, had it, and they really demolished it. They tried to beef it up with

02:26:42.560 - 02:27:06.800

money for a combustion facility that Office of Science would interact, end up being good anyhow. You know, and I would go testify for the budget and I would go by the rules and not say, this is got to, you know, this doesn't make any sense. I mean, this, but the staff and the congressional people had seen me for a year. Anyway, they decided to reassign me. You could be reassigned to

02:27:07.760 - 02:27:36.240

color to Salt Lake City, to the Western Area Power Administration. And I had talked to a man named Hufflefinger, who was just the head of H, equivalent head of HR, who was just really disliked at transportation, just like there. I said, and I knew they were planning to do this. I had gotten some inkling. I said, just let me give me 30 days, I'll find another job. No,

02:27:36.240 - 02:28:09.120

so they go through this to assign, knowing that my family is here, knowing also it's not a comparable, in Washington rather, no, and this was in 83, my son and senior in high school daughter, sophomore, and Alan's practice was there, that I, you know, wasn't, I was going to if I turned it down, I would be let go. And so they knew I was going to turn it down.

02:28:10.000 - 02:28:34.640

And so that, well, so I brought a case up before the Office of Special Counsel, saying this was all politically motivated, point of view, because they just, you know, they were going, well, I had so, you know, it builds up the conservation programs, and it was had been under a Democrat, and they're going to get all sorts of things in there. They, the

02:28:34.640 - 02:29:06.000

building energy performance standards, they hated, and they ended up being repealed, but that, and the industry didn't, whatever. And so I, the Office of Special Counsel was hot, it was headed by a person, something, a very conservative judge in the, on the circuit in section nine, California, and he passed away recently. The person investigating my case said yes, they had,

02:29:07.920 - 02:29:39.040

it was politically motivated, I should be reinstated. Well, so the, the administration, the, but that's just a recommendation. It's not a requirement. And the government, so the, instead of having me move to Colorado, I leave the government. And, and with, you know, whatever benefits, we don't lose any of those. And this all took a year. I mean, it was just,

02:29:39.520 - 02:30:07.280

it had incredible support by both, by my, well, my family, particularly, but with my colleagues, and we had had to go through a reduction in force at DOE when Reagan came in. I had a, you know, 50 people I had to remove, which were just, you know, awful. And in those days, it was, you know, first in, first out, you know, it's some, some people ended up leaving and doing

02:30:07.280 - 02:30:34.160

very well. But I was fighting for those to be able to stay. Anyhow, the department decided not to reinstate, and I could have then thought it through the courts and, you know, enough, go declare victory. And the fact that this very, you know, the office personnel management, special counsel person who was conservative and found the department wrong, that was fine.

02:30:34.560 - 02:31:08.160

Now, that was my leaving of government, which I discussed very little, but I was, they changed the law. So on the house, Ottinger and Schrodinger, Ottinger was the head of, I would not have, Dingel was head, but he was subcommittee for, on the Commerce Committee for Energy. And Pat Schroeder was govern, the government committee held hearings,

02:31:08.160 - 02:31:44.880

and they changed the law that you couldn't reassign an SES without discussing it with them and giving notice. Subsequently, both Pribble had to leave and the Secretary of Energy, who was Edwards, a dentist, had to leave. But I was surprised in 2006. The California Air Resources Board was looking, it was Forsaker was looking for somebody new. Mary Nichols had left before and they had

02:31:44.960 - 02:32:13.920

somebody and they wanted to know if I were interested. And at that point, it was doing Bush to California Air Resources Board, the best energy group you could have in the country, because they were really moving along with the air and the automotive. And so I applied for the job and I got letters, very good letters from industry and letters from other people,

02:32:14.640 - 02:32:46.320

and I wasn't sure I wanted to do it. And then they said, well, I've come down to the final two. Did I want to, you know, talk to the governor, want to do it? And they said he knows about why you left DOE. I ended up not wanting to do the commute and pushing. I didn't take the job. I would have had to leave it because my husband developed this very fast-growing deadly cancer.

02:32:47.040 - 02:33:21.360

But anyway, so it's, you know, it was just a part. But I remember a person on Percy's staff, who was a senator from Illinois, who was at the time, had said that he and Hatfield and the secretary complained to the undersecretary who then told me that all they wanted to do was say, well, I'm going to give anyone wants to know why they were firing me.

02:33:23.680 - 02:33:48.080

I mean, so, I mean, I had learned from, you know, the early days in the 70s of working collaboratively with both the Democrats and the Republicans. I mean, and energy efficiency is a bipartisan thing. You know, it's everybody has to live in spaces that are heated and cool and get back and forth. There is transportation for working industry. I mean, it impacts all of our

02:33:48.080 - 02:34:20.480

lives. And, you know, it's, and I did, I was able with one of the source and social science programs at ERDA, which where I had a psychologist and a social scientist and a financial person to find out why, you know, what will motivate consumers. Did a study with Princeton called Twin Rivers, Rob Sokolow's program, where after the second embargo, they went around and this half of the

02:34:20.480 - 02:34:44.320

development posted on their kitchen windows what their electricity use was that day. It compared it to the other day. Others, they did nothing. And, you know, 15 to 20% drop in energy use when you sell it every day. And that was before meter, led to meters. I mean, but, you know, there's behavioral stuff that work. So, I mean, it was interesting. The in the 80s, Reagan people

02:34:44.320 - 02:35:18.000

want to end that right away. So we were doing mind, brain, brain manipulation. So that was, that was why I left the government. And I got back into good stead. I have to give Mike Davis credit. I mean, I was shown Academy committees all after that of for energy and related things. But Mike Davis in was in in Bush one, the assistant secretary for

02:35:19.040 - 02:35:46.800

conservation. And he had me named to go on the Secretary of Energy's advisory board, which was under the current that DOE current president, there was an admiral on the tiger team. And then I remained on it until it got disbanded, they disbanded under Trump. No, it was

02:35:50.400 - 02:36:14.240

Trump, but I left it after well, I left it doing the Bush to administration. Well, that does take us to the end of your time at the DOE. And we're all getting tired of sitting. Well, yeah. Sometimes when you do oral history interviews, you don't get to a good stopping

02:36:14.240 - 02:36:37.440

point. But I think this seems like a good one, a great place to pick up next time hearing about that the years between government and joining the Garrett corporation, and then moving on from that point in your history. So I think we're scheduled for next Thursday, necessarily same time. So if that works for you, I'd love to pick things up then.

02:36:39.680 - 02:37:10.320

You're bringing up all these memories. People don't have to go to psychiatrists. All right. So if you want to turn off the recording, yeah, can do. Yeah, I just started the recording. Okay, thank you. So today is July 8, 2021. This is our second

02:37:10.320 - 02:37:39.280

interview with Dr. Maxine Savitz as part of the PCAST oral history project with us. I'm David Caruso and Kenny Evans is here as well. We're going to be picking up where we left off last time. But before we get into your work after government, what I wanted to start with is just asking to see if there's anything that you've thought of since that first session that you'd like to

02:37:39.280 - 02:38:11.360

add before we move on to, I guess, your work post 1983. It occurred to me, you had asked about when I set up the laboratory, who might help me in setting it up. And I said that wasn't an issue I had done laboratory work as part of my thesis. But when I went to, after being at National Science Foundation, and went to some of the pre-alphabet to Department of Energy, particularly

02:38:11.360 - 02:38:38.480

Federal Energy Administration, Energy Research and Development Administration, there I end up managing people anywhere beginning with five people, and then ultimately at DOE over 200. And there were people who had given me help. One of them was Mayor Roger Sands was made at Federal Energy Administration, the Assistant Administrator for Conservation and Renewables.

02:38:38.480 - 02:39:04.320

He succeeded Jack Gibbons, who had been there for about a year. And he said you're hire good people and your program is growing. I mean, and so, but you'd need to be sure to delegate. So, I mean, that was something that, you know, management is unless you're, and he was an MBA, he was not a scientist or an engineer, but had been that then founded a very successful company,

02:39:05.280 - 02:39:31.440

AES, Fossil Energy Mubble. He has actually dedicated space at the Phillips Museum in Washington and the Natural History Museum, very philanthropic. And then I was at ERDA, the Energy Research and Development Administration, and Gene Monella was the Assistant Administrator of that for efficiency. And there were six of us who reported to him directly.

02:39:31.520 - 02:40:01.040

And he said, you know, you are to work as a team, not in competition to each other. And that each of you should be able to be able to discuss the other five programs as well as your own. And that sort of started the whole aspect of team quality. The only thing is, I mentioned Bob Fry earlier, who was a deputy for ERDA. He had been deputy also at

02:40:02.880 - 02:40:24.560

EPA for the first ministry. He's a rice graduate, was a rice robber. He passed away, unfortunately, then a Harvard MBA, worked from Kinsey and then got into government. So, these people all knew about management, they knew enough about engineering and science. Two things I learned from him, well, many things, but he had three special assistants,

02:40:24.560 - 02:40:51.840

so that if you ever needed to question the answer by Bob, how do you respond? You didn't have email and anything like that, this is in the 70s. And you would talk to one of the assistants and within a day you get a response back. So, when I became the deputy for conservation, I made sure I had an assistant who was always available. The other thing is that

02:40:53.520 - 02:41:20.080

we were getting, because there had been pent up demand to do research in the industrial and buildings area, we just got lots of proposals. We would get several hundred to an RFP. Well, how do you choose these? And he had given us some guidance on criteria for selecting proposals and the whole process. And that really worked through for a long time, whatever I did. Then

02:41:20.080 - 02:41:50.960

the last thing was the Department of Energy, when it was Form 77-78. My program was like 10% of the budget, but I got over 70% of the congressional correspondence. Everybody had an idea about how to reduce energy in their homes and the embargo, second embargo came, and here's what they were going to do. Cars and the Congress wanted responses within a week. And you could spend tens

02:41:50.960 - 02:42:16.720

of millions of dollars that have been appropriated and nobody looked at what, you know, they trusted you on what you were spending. We were tracked on our congressional correspondence. And every Monday we met with the deputies. It was Jack O'Leary. And I ended up hiring somebody to be, to answer the letters. And they said, well, you're not hiring an engineer. And I said, no, I'm going to hire

02:42:16.720 - 02:42:42.640

somebody who knows the hill. And also, you could, we'll talk to you and get the engineering right. And I hired a woman who had been a staffer on the hill. And we got off the radar screen and answered our letter. She ended up moving California, I worked at Southern California Edison, where her last job there was a secretariat for the ward. And I see her, she lives in Pasadena. So

02:42:42.640 - 02:43:09.440

it's just sort of interesting these things you learn. Some you think about intuitively, but others, you know, requires some help. And in some ways, sorry, in graduate school, maybe if I had minored in business, I might have been better prepared. Yeah, I mean, management and delegation and figuring out how to communicate ideas,

02:43:09.440 - 02:43:34.560

I think ones being central to a lot of the work that people ultimately take on. And writing skills, I think more so than many other things, are extremely important since if you, if you cannot communicate well in writing, people really aren't going to know what's going on. And if you communicate well, you can convince people of what it is you want to happen. And so it sounds like

02:43:34.560 - 02:43:55.280

negotiating or just having someone to correspond with members on the hill probably would be extremely beneficial, right? Because then people are getting answers, and they're not constantly pestering you with, well, what do you mean by this? What do you mean by that? It's like, well, no, if you write clearly, then, you know, these questions will be answered in advance.

02:43:55.280 - 02:44:23.520

Well, why haven't I heard from you? And engineers don't want to sit there and write the letter. Congress will write a report or write up a, you know, procurement package, but to go right on, you know, this is the priority of it, even though they know their money comes from the Congress. So at the end of the last session, you told us about your, I'll just say departure

02:44:26.480 - 02:44:57.520

from government. This was 1983, I think, when your position, right? So what, what did you decide to do at that point? You'd spent so much time in government. I think it was about over a decade at that point. 17 years. 17 years in government, working in various positions, various programs. What was going to be your next step? Well, I wasn't sure. We wanted,

02:44:57.520 - 02:45:28.320

wanted to stay in Washington because our 83, my son was a senior in high school and my daughter, sophomore in high school. And we, and so we had ultimately also thought of moving to California eventually. And my husband grew up in Boston, spent all his education in Boston, and still didn't like the cold. We had spent a year in interned in San Francisco. So we weren't, we were

02:45:28.320 - 02:45:54.080

going to stay, watch. So I think I would do some consulting, which I did. And also, right before I left, the John Mason, who was the Chief Technology Officer for Garrett Corporation, which was an aerospace company to an AFB and made small located Phoenix in Los Angeles, made turbochargers was their product most known to the consumer. The others, they make small engines

02:45:54.080 - 02:46:24.400

that are on lear jets and commercial. And also all the environmental control system and start turbines for all planes. And they were doing, they have been doing program jointly with Ford and a second program with GM and Allison Division of GM for looking at gas turbines for automotive, because they could take different fuels and also potential being more efficient.

02:46:25.040 - 02:46:49.360

So he came to my office knowing I was, he said, would I like to come and work at Garrett for him? As he was a chief engineer, and this was in California. So I said, well, I didn't want to come for two years. So we made, and I, you know, I went home and talked to Alan about it. And we, you know, this was perfect with California and two years. Anyhow, they had a Washington office.

02:46:50.080 - 02:47:18.000

And so I worked part time, I'd be in the Washington office a week or so a month, then I would be out in Cal, come out to LA for a week and spend it there just learning the company and learning people. And he was somebody who had finished Caltech in the late 40s, saw that in the paper about some position at Garrett was a chemical engineer,

02:47:18.000 - 02:47:41.280

and he was an aerospace and had risen up to be the chief technology officer and knew every product and every person. I mean, he was just a terrific person. They'll talk about delegating or doing things at the last minute. This is not John, but anyhow. So, and he had hired, same time as he hired me, person from the turbocharger division too. And you know, so that,

02:47:41.280 - 02:48:06.480

so I did that. And actually their facility was right near next to LAX. I mean, where there's an animal parking lot near terminal one. So I could fly in to LA, walk there, stay at the hide across the street, not even need a car for the five. So the other part I was, I worked with the Lighting Research Institute, which I mentioned briefly in talking about the lighting

02:48:07.520 - 02:48:28.160

areas where they, with the Illuminating Engineering Society, wanted to set up an independent R&D program, different from their three main companies. And I, even though they were headquartered in New York, I could do that from Washington. So that's filled my time. And so what were your specific responsibilities in each of those roles? Was it

02:48:29.040 - 02:48:58.880

organizational management? Was it trying to build something? Were you working in policy areas to make sure that things are meeting with government standards? What were you doing in those two positions? Well, the IES one was organizational and setting up an R&D agenda. And that was, which they would ultimately implement. And then with the Garrett, it was

02:49:00.720 - 02:49:26.320

learning about the company, but also areas that they were interested in going into, particularly fuel cells, solid oxide fuel cells, which Garrett's known for heat exchangers, which were shaped, the plate and fin type of things. And a solid oxide fuel cell has a very similar structure and you could roll. And so I hadn't really done much fuel cell work

02:49:26.320 - 02:49:52.080

since the early 70s. But, you know, so I, you know, set, I went out and talked to the people doing the heat exchanger work. They also had some service. And, you know, so where, where should Garrett's role if there should be one there? And then being in the Washington office, where the people in the Washington office, there were few who were lobbyists, worked with Congress, but others were

02:49:52.080 - 02:50:20.640

interfacing with the different government agencies. So I, it was a very good education for me for when I got to California, apparently, because I knew how they worked. And you, you didn't go approach a government agency without telling them first. But they were, and they were just well known and well respected. So, so I worked on the fuel cell effort and some advanced materials effort. So it

02:50:20.640 - 02:50:50.800

was really, and through that was learning the company. And so Garrett's pursuit of the fuel cells was just, was this purely for alternative energy methods? Or was this with the mind towards energy conservation, trying to figure out different ways to supply energy to things, and not necessarily rely on fossil fuels and stuff like that. Because I mean, being a California based organization,

02:50:50.800 - 02:51:14.480

but also being the Reagan years, I'm wondering what is motivating this move towards this fuel cell? Well, part of it is a new product line. I mean, the turbochargers developed out of their small turbine engines. So they worked with the diesel company. I think it was, it was Cummins that wanted to have, have their engines turbocharged. And that led to, they were very good about

02:51:14.480 - 02:51:46.320

applying their technologies to different products. So it was into that fray. And then there's also they had been involved with ceramics. And so the idea of getting a solid oxide fuel cell would be a different power system. So it would be related to, to that. And it's interesting. I found, but John Mason was interested also, very much interested in the environment and things like

02:51:46.320 - 02:52:17.760

that. He passed away two years ago and his son sent me a letter we had both, that we had both signed to Senator from Colorado, Tim Worth, about our support for energy conservation, R&D, things related to climate change. I hadn't realized that. I mean, I knew the energy because I was still, Garrett was very good about, and then became Allied signal, and then Allied signal,

02:52:17.760 - 02:52:42.960

letting me to do work on various committees related to energy. And it was, I was amazed that we had written this letter and they were talking about climate concerns in 87. And they, they were concerned, but also potential use on airspace because of missions. I mean, otherwise you're gasoline. And if you're now, if you're at a, you know, you're starting an engine at an airport,

02:52:42.960 - 02:53:09.600

then you're, you know, stationary, you're just adding to pollution in addition to the planes flying off. So it was looking to be, you know, protect their product line. A lot of it. So you moved out to California in 85? 85, yes. So your, your kids were, were off to college and beyond. So yeah, my, my daughter who

02:53:09.600 - 02:53:35.600

went to Stanford, she, she said, well, why do we follow her to California? Or is she following us? She wouldn't see her friends in Washington. So she spent this, she spent the summer after a freshman year living with family that she, we were very friendly with, and that she was friendly with her daughter and she worked for an NGO and that was, which was fine. And they both ended up going

02:53:35.600 - 02:54:05.520

to medical school at UCLA, I think because we were in California. I mean, as opposed to, my son was at Yale, did an MD PhD and he chose UCLA over Hopkins. And I think partly because just to get a feel for a different environment. Yeah. And maybe avoid the cold weather. Yeah. But now you, then he moved back in 94. Anyhow, but the weather is a big driver.

02:54:07.200 - 02:54:31.920

So you start in 85 at Garrett, you're settled and you were in the LA area. I assume you weren't farther. Yeah, we lived actually in Westwood near you. So we rented a condo. My husband had gotten, he had kept his, he was a psychiatrist, had kept his medical license all the way through. But the last couple of years in Washington, in addition to having private practice, he started

02:54:31.920 - 02:54:56.080

getting involved with managed care. And he really decided he didn't want to, this is mid 80s, set up a new practice. So he got a job as medical director of Cygnus, managed care operation. That was in Glendale and I'm in by the airport. So when, and we knew that my head and uncle who had lived in Beverly Hills, that we knew that area. So we wanted to live there because we're sort of equidistant

02:54:56.080 - 02:55:26.800

for our commuting, travel. And still, yeah. And we mentioned part of the following year, we found one bought, bought one and it's same street and it has walking to live there, you know, ever since it's lived here, ever since that time. So in the after the first two years, I'm saying two years, I know that you were doing some work for Garrett prior to your,

02:55:26.800 - 02:55:56.560

your official full time start in 1985. But after two years at Garrett full time, you became the director of the Surroundment Components Division at signal aerospace. Is that correct? So what, what, what brought about that move? Well, one thing, we were part of, Garrett was part of Signal Corporation, as was UOP, which is what Mary Goode headed. And one of the

02:55:56.560 - 02:56:26.080

things I had done in the two years working with John was, that's when I first met Mary, was setting up a research program that was more fundamental with UOP and, and Garrett. Otherwise, Garrett was all applied engineering. We didn't have a corporate research lab, per se, with there were research, and we had only two. Anyway, in 87 Hughes was corporate was up for bid, who was going to take

02:56:26.080 - 02:56:51.520

their aerospace company and Signal and Allied, which was Allied chemical, talked about bidding on it. And instead of bidding on it, they decided to merge. So I felt that I was back in the government in the central way as a change in administration, because, you know, there were in the just aerospace alone with Bendix Corporation was what they had. And it was, you know, there were two chief

02:56:51.520 - 02:57:21.120

technology officers, there was very little overlap in products. But there was the personnel, and also the corporate research labs, that's when Mary became the chief technology officer. So John Mason became the chief technology officer rather than the person from Bendix. And so, so there was some, you know, trying to put together these two things, two organizations,

02:57:21.120 - 02:57:49.440

which ended up being working well. And when Bocity came in, they have Tennessee men with their 26 different units, and Larry Bocity, who was second at GE, but never going to head GE came, nearly 90s, he put it into four major buckets and got rid of converse tennis shoes and things like that. So it was aerospace, chemicals, automotive, and there were specialty chemicals.

02:57:51.120 - 02:58:17.440

And one, and they ran at the Kansas City National Lab, which was responsible for the non nuclear triggering devices for, for the weapons, so which was, you know, but and then he jumped and I'll get back to this round, but he really put in total quality and we spoke as one organization, which became very important for anyway. So

02:58:18.960 - 02:58:48.320

one of the things that Gary continued to work on the ceramic gas turbine, which were part of the DOE program, and had continued to be funded, but it really was clear that it wasn't going to be for automotive, but they were interested in it for aerospace. And person at DOE, who was running the program in the 80s, I mean, somebody that I knew, but also they don't work, he's, they felt,

02:58:48.320 - 02:59:12.640

could they, you know, switch and look at ceramics for aerospace applications, because for small engines, you can't just, there's not enough airspace to just put lots of coatings and things. So and Allison was interested in the same thing that they reported General Motors at the time. So there was an ongoing ceramic program that still continued, but for different application

02:59:13.280 - 02:59:45.440

of the other, there was no, there were a couple man, in fact, there was Norton, and there was Carborundum, who were US manufacturers, but the best, I mean, of ceramic material and parts, but the best ones were Kyocera and MGK in Japan. And there was really concern that by the guard people, we were 95% of the small engine market that, and planes, and Japan had set up following

02:59:45.440 - 03:00:15.440

tracking the US energy programs had set up with ceramic gas turbine program. So they were afraid that they, in addition to current parts, would start to back engineer. And so do we do something, should we, and there was no US one, we should do, do we, and we had a now a research organization in Marstown that was very material oriented, and they had high, very high development of metals,

03:00:15.440 - 03:00:54.800

plus they were working on ceramics. So we decided we would form a division, or I mean a bridge, to really develop the ceramics and try to, and manufacture, and ultimately manufacture and put them into the, into the applications, mainly for aerospace applications, but turbo chargers could also be there, would have, you would no longer have the inertia, they would be faster.

03:00:56.080 - 03:01:30.320

Going in NGK in Japan was making ceramic turbo chargers. And so, so that's where we formed, and they, so they asked because I had, had worked the government, and I knew the technology if I would hit it. And so I thought this sounded, sounded, and, and the corporation now was willing to make the investment. And Dan Burnham, who was at the time head of aerospace, he had been

03:01:30.320 - 03:01:51.680

come from the chemical, actually had been a carbon rundum at one point, and he had didn't know aerospace. Bosity just mixed everybody up, which was fine. I mean, so I was under the rain, and they gave me certain things that I wanted from the beginning. I mean, we didn't have a material that we would know was, there, there was a metal foundry that made, made all

03:01:51.680 - 03:02:17.040

the metal parts, but the ceramics are quite different, and you want to clean, clean, doesn't have to be clean room, but it has to be contaminant free. And yeah, and I said, in addition, I need, you know, I needed to hire external to the company, engineers who had been in industry, working on small parts and some material experts. And as I mentioned earlier, with the heat

03:02:17.040 - 03:02:43.920

exchangers, there were some ceramic people in Torrance at the, the, the, the division there. And they had been a Penn State, and they found some of their colleagues, a couple working at General Motors and a couple, you know, everybody in their late 20s, early 30s, air products who were knew how about commercialization. And I wanted a Garrett business development person who

03:02:43.920 - 03:03:04.880

really knew the corporation where we could sell internally, but also sell externally. And I, and I had gone permission that I could provide if we got the material to also to Allison, it was a competitor of Garrett, but you know, we're going to have different people working on it. And it's also a contract administrator that I didn't, who could just dedicate

03:03:05.440 - 03:03:35.520

her to end to be a woman herself to it. So we started this company and then after six months, either they or we approached them or Kia Sarah approached us about a potential joint venture. And so for the summer of 88, we, we went there to Japan, they came, it's about potentially doing a joint venture, because also Senator Byrd at the time said us had to buy in the R&D programs

03:03:35.520 - 03:04:00.240

that were on their his domain, which the conservation of fossil were from the Department of Energy, had to be made in the U.S. And Kia Sarah, and it's not happy. And you can pack your knees would not test our materials. I mean, it didn't mean that was anyhow, even before that, anyhow. And it was decided. And, you know, then they could be this joint venture could be in the

03:04:00.240 - 03:04:29.600

U.S. Well, it was decided the Phoenix division still wasn't happy about it. And so we didn't do what we just proceeded. They opened the facility up in Oregon. But our Marstown group had developed a very good high temperature toughers, a silicon nitride problem with ceramics, you know, they've dropped and, you know, they break and you can have they can be have a lot of strength and they do

03:04:29.600 - 03:04:56.560

high temperature. But way most of the way to toughen it is by making a composite put a fiber in and that will. But they had developed the Marstown people develop an in situ material where you could internally grow silicon nitride, not quite fibers, but and not whiskers, they were much longer than that. That would give it the added toughness that one needed. And we ended up having

03:04:56.560 - 03:05:24.640

one of the best materials in the world from and, and the people I had hired really knew how to go trying to make parts. And we also there was technology that Oak Ridge National Lab had developed under DOE program called gel casting. And I made an arrangement for that, or scientists to spend a year in our laboratories to help transfer the technology and things. And so

03:05:25.280 - 03:05:56.800

ultimately, in the early so after three years or so, we were getting that we really were going to need a facility because we were being able to make repeatable parts and they were either various blades, or also simple things like this, but ended up being a big from a project of rings, or for other parts, not just the hot engine part. And so I needed, we needed to have our own

03:05:56.800 - 03:06:23.760

facility. And Mary was very helpful in that. In fact, the two of us approached the Chief Operating Officer of Allied Signal, he said, Well, here's two of us approaching, their waves can turn us down. And so we ended up going into production. And one of them, and the silicon nitride on it, when the main engine that gathers the seals, we're going against, we're metal going

03:06:23.760 - 03:06:51.840

against metal and we're warrantied for 20,000 hours, lasting for 5,000 hours. That was a big expense. Whereas the ceramics have much better wear property. And so we and Kiasera ended up being a major supplier for retrofitting the whole thing. And it never, and then we were on another part for the starters, because of not expansion and going from room temperature to very cold

03:06:51.840 - 03:07:25.280

temperatures. It was, so it did grow. But we never, they never really got to certifying it for the ceramic blades for the hot section. So it was a niche market. So a couple of questions. When, when this reorganization restructuring happened with the merger, were you, so you mentioned hiring individuals and, and bringing people on. You

03:07:25.280 - 03:08:01.680

mentioned the lab in Morristown. Were you physically in the same location as you had been when you joined Garrett? Or were you moving into new facilities in the Los Angeles area for this new venture? Now, what had happened, the facility that I had been hired into, which was a corporate headquarters, was at the airport. And after the merger, they decided we didn't need a headquarters

03:08:01.680 - 03:08:31.520

in, of, even though they were doing heat exchanger work. So Ed Hennessy at the time decided to sell that property. And Tarn's had built new facility, there've been new facilities built in Tarn's, which is 10 miles south of the airport, and also 405. And that was where the foundry was. That was where the aerospace headquarters were for the corporation. And they had, so for the, the foundry

03:08:31.520 - 03:08:58.960

had from some of our initial work had, which was a block away from the main campus, had some space that we could use in our offices. We're in trailers. I mean, it was, and then when we, in 92, when we built, needed a production facility, we moved back to the Tarn's site. And there was empty space there that we could convert into the laboratory. And we didn't need clean rooms or

03:08:58.960 - 03:09:28.080

anything like that, but we needed it to be relatively clean. I know you mentioned needing to, you traveled to Japan when, when Kyocera was interested in, in a joint venture. Did you have to travel elsewhere to, to manage this division? Like, did you have to go back to New Jersey? Occasionally? Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, oh yes, very much so, because, you know, they had

03:09:28.080 - 03:09:54.000

developed it and, you know, how you scale up and they would send people to us. And, you know, I would also be traveling to Phoenix to keep, and, and the engine division in Phoenix had a real schism. There were half of them who really liked the plane, so I tried the Institute. Others said, only a composite. We just don't trust, I mean, it was just interesting. They had a really good

03:09:54.000 - 03:10:17.680

material scientist there, Jim Wimmer, who, after a year, two years, we were in operation, asked if he could come join our group, and he moved from Phoenix to Torrance. And that, it was amazing. Jim, coming to us, just gave us all the credibility we needed with the engine division. They still had their composite people, but I mean, his, and he was a super engine material scientist and engine,

03:10:17.680 - 03:10:44.560

but I also traveled. We were doing work with Oak Bridge, and Oak Bridge had the, had developed a building, high temperature material lab, that could do testing, and we could transfer the testing from it in there. I was also on their advisory committee. So, and, and I went to Washington to talk to the various customers. Went out, Alson, the Division of General

03:10:44.560 - 03:11:16.320

Motors was in Indian, in Indianapolis, and they're now Rolls Royce, and went there. I mean, partly of, you know, seeing and show you. So, I didn't do any international travel. I sent my young engineer, John, John Pollinger off to Germany that had some interesting instrumentation to learn it, and he ends up coming back, ended up being on the Concorde. I mean, it just, that was

03:11:17.040 - 03:11:44.320

what he's, he's the one, he's gone from the German superhighways. This is a 30 year old brilliant man. I mean, just one, and then off on the, all of a sudden, he's on the Concorde. One other question, just out of curiosity. The lab in Morristown, was there any, any association or any affiliation to the, I don't know who owned Bell Labs at that point

03:11:45.280 - 03:12:08.400

in time, but was there any connection to Bell Labs in Murray Hill, or is it a completely separate different? Completely, completely separate. Yeah. And we were not, until we merged with Honeywell, we were much more into the structural, what's called structural ceramics for parts as opposed to the functional electronic one. Okay. And I can't remember anybody in

03:12:09.040 - 03:12:36.080

Morristown who had come from, that we might have hired from Bell Labs. I just don't, don't know. But just as I spoke about back and forth, after we, after Mary Good left, and she, to join the government in the 90s as undersecretary for commerce, Vasity really was very, you know, he wasn't a big research fan, neither was Welsh. I mean,

03:12:36.080 - 03:13:03.120

Emel did build back to use Research Lab. And they had somebody either hired from Westing House to be Chief Technology Officer that didn't quite work out. And the labs just lost more and more of their esteem and some of their, their people and their leadership. They were, and Lance Davis who ran the lab, went and joined Mary was concerned about whether Vasity would

03:13:03.120 - 03:13:37.120

keep him and also, and he went and became Assistant Deputy at Defense under Neater Jones in the 90s, and then became the Executive Revker Academy of Engineering for almost 20 years. But, and they, but so they were the, after the Honeywell merger, I ended up being part-time head of the Morristown Group, which was doing more aerospace things and not

03:13:37.120 - 03:14:04.880

the general chemical things at that point. Okay. You mentioned in your travels, Phoenix, you mentioned Oak Ridge. Were you traveling to DC at all? Were you handling any of the policy issues? Were you meeting with congressmen and individuals at various federal agencies? Yeah, I mean, with, well, at the Congress, it was not just on legislation at that point. It was

03:14:04.880 - 03:14:33.680

really appropriations to be sure that our signal got the money we wanted to, because this development was done jointly with our own money and the government. So it was informing congressmen Yates, who was the head of Interior, which was a committee we came under by it and fossil energy, by legacy. Ultimately, the last 10 years, it moved all to energy and water. And, you know,

03:14:33.680 - 03:15:02.480

and I would bring parts to show them. And I had known him from when I was at DOE. And the committee, Emily and Garrett are now, they're now, I think it was very good about, you know, when there was testimony, we would come and testify to, you know, talk about our progress. So it was on, on the line. And I would meet with DOE and DARPA and some, some DOD, those were the,

03:15:02.480 - 03:15:32.480

the main, main ones. And then the other that I did, and also I would time the meetings, I was on various committees and boards beginning, particularly in the 90s, that were in Washington. And, and they, they paid for my travel expenses. So I didn't have to take it out of my budget. I have a, I'm curious about something. I'm not sure how to formulate the question.

03:15:33.200 - 03:16:02.000

I'm thinking about your career, especially post government career, where you are still heavily, you're very invested in US policy with regard to science and technology. You left the government during the beginning of the Reagan era. You were in this private company during the rest of the Reagan era, the beginning of Bush, and then moving into Clinton.

03:16:02.560 - 03:16:30.640

And so I'm wondering if you have any broad perspectives on the ways in which the various governments that you encountered over your time at Garrett and later Honeywell, the way that, did you notice any changes in the way that the governments were thinking about science and technology during this portion of your career? Did it tie into,

03:16:31.920 - 03:16:58.560

was there just a general governmental interest in science and technology? So regardless of administration, people wanted to talk to you about the things that were going on, or did you see different emphases depending on whose administration it was? Well, because Garrett was aerospace and defense oriented, under the Reagan administration, the DOD budget was growing, and the research

03:16:58.560 - 03:17:29.920

budget, and that's consequently, DARPA became, for those of us in the more basic, a funder. They kept, Reagan particularly kept dropping the request for the efficiency programs and renewables to Congress. The Congress kept adding it back. And so that those programs, both the policies changed. I mean, in the time that they had had, we had had appliance standards

03:17:29.920 - 03:17:54.000

in the early 80s, and under Reagan administration, they were repealed. But then the states could do their own thing. And when Bush came in, states said they didn't want eight different, I mean, the appliance industry said they didn't want eight different standards. They, you know, would rather just have one national standard, because we had California, New York, trying to

03:17:54.000 - 03:18:27.600

think Illinois. So there was that, but there was, you know, there was just no real policy. Now the Academy was particularly going into the Clinton, well, the Clinton Bush was in 2000, was, you know, doing energy studies all along. I mean, they were evaluating, CAFE was, the automotive standards were still going on. Were they, how well were they progressing?

03:18:27.600 - 03:19:06.480

Things really changed, though, in the Clinton administration. I mean, I don't remember, Bush was more sympathetic to, and clearly some of this climate thing, to the R&D budgets. I really was less involved with what the NSF budget was, until I went on the National Science Board in 1996, or yeah. But, but so the, you know, so the company, you know, would spend its own

03:19:06.480 - 03:19:35.120

money on things, but it was also for future developments was very used to, and they were involved with the space program early on, so they were very used to being partners with the government. Okay, so let's see, when did the, so I know eventually you became the general manager of technology partnerships at Honeywell, but I'm not sure when, when you took that position on,

03:19:35.120 - 03:20:08.080

what year was it? It took over Honeywell in, in 1999, including the May. And, and it was at that point that, interesting, our corporate research groups, both UOP and Marstown, did research that was very futuristic, like we have a man, Ray Boffman, who's now, he went then to University of Texas in Dallas, went after this merger, had started 10

03:20:08.080 - 03:20:35.920

years ago, nano technology work that we incurred, but they also did very applied work, that, you know, like the ceramics work they did for us, we're looking at coatings for some of the engines. And, but the, Honeywell had very active research groups in both Arizona, the main one was in Minneapolis, where their headquarters were, and they never talked to the business units. I mean,

03:20:35.920 - 03:21:03.280

it was like, you know, we're here, and they, they got Honeywell, you know, corporate money, and they got some, you know, government money. So the idea was to see, to see what technologies they were developing could be applicable to their own products, plus the old allied signals, and also getting the various labs to work together. And so, and then I, after two years,

03:21:03.280 - 03:21:40.880

I retired, and then G tried to take over us within a year, and because Jack Welch had not been happy about the merger, and there was rumor UTC was going to take it over, and the EU, any trust people stopped that merger, and which was, Honeywell's done much better than GA, and in the, in the whole operation.

03:21:43.760 - 03:22:14.480

Now, Kenny, I'm not sure if, if you want to ask now about, so Dr. Savage, I know that you served on several energy R&D panels during the Clinton P-cast, the one that John Holdren shared, the Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the 21st Century, and then the Powerful Partnerships. Kenny, do you think now is a good time to talk about those?

03:22:16.240 - 03:22:42.000

Yeah, I would say so. But let me just, just a few, just a couple things, because I was continually involved with energy, up until, I mean, well, you know, in there being those Academy committees, and also, I felt somewhere the government rehabilitated me, and the last part of the Bush administration, I went on the Secretary of Energy, the advisory board,

03:22:42.000 - 03:23:09.920

so I got back into energy policy. The other thing that happened in Lance Davis, who I mentioned earlier, and I were both in 1992, inducted to the Academy of Engineering. And that made, I mean, it shouldn't make a difference, just like going formally on P-cast, shouldn't make a difference as to how the outside world treats you. But that led to more activities related to both

03:23:10.720 - 03:23:33.760

government boards and also advisory for the laboratory, national laboratories. So anyway, then we can get to the Holdren study. Yeah. Well, when did you, you said you were rehabilitated in some, when did you start serving on the Secretary of Energy advisory board? It was a late part of the 89 or 90, something like that. And I was on it until

03:23:35.920 - 03:24:05.520

when Bush 2 came in, and they disbanded in 2001, 2002. I see. Were you, like when you were appointed to that board, like in the early 90s, were you aware of, you know, Bromley's work at P-cast and that White House operation during that time? Well, because I was, Jack Gibbons was a good friend. He had been, as I said, I had come to go work,

03:24:05.600 - 03:24:28.160

he had been at Oak Bridge, which I had worked with in the 70s, and then he was first head of energy conservation. He then went back to Oak Ridge a year or two, then became head of the Office of Technology Assessment, which was another good advising group that Newt Gingrich stopped funding the $11 million, and there's been talk about resurrecting it, and that's a different

03:24:28.160 - 03:24:55.600

topic. But anyway, and I served on several of their assessments, which were related to energy efficiency, and so Jack and I, and actually Mary, the four of us were very friendly. So I was very aware of it. I was also aware of it in the 80s, Keyworth, and I guess was there, because, but I didn't, I knew more about the science supplies in there than I knew about,

03:24:56.560 - 03:25:24.240

it was the P-cast working groups. I knew more about when Jack was there, and then Neal came on as second advisor. I see. So it was Jack that recruited you for the Clinton years? Well, he recruited me for National Science Board, and there was, but the Holdren study, I think, was under when Neal was there, 96, 97. And so that was clearly whether

03:25:25.520 - 03:25:56.480

John was the one who, because I had known John since he was at Berkeley, and also having still been involved. I mean, I was still known to be involved with the energy efficiency programs, and having helped develop them and grow them from both the work that we had a study in CF that Dan Jurgen chaired. Where's the E and DOE in the mid 90s? And the fact that the energy budget

03:25:57.280 - 03:26:26.080

was like four or five billion dollars, and they had science and the same, but the weapons program was the rest and cleanup, and it's still that way. So, and I had been vice chair of that, and Dan was interesting. He had done his first work, but he really didn't know much about energy R&D, and that's what this was focused on. And he's a wonderful writer. He could take,

03:26:26.080 - 03:26:58.640

you know, what things we talked about, and just like the catchy title. So, there were some others. So, I had been participating in energy studies that CF would do. And there was something also called the, that was more under the Clinton moves, yeah, that the Laboratory Operations Board was part of DOE with four outside people, four inside people, and from our lab people

03:26:58.640 - 03:27:36.480

reporting to the undersecretary. And Charlie Curtis was first one that he became deputy, and earning the needs came from OSTP and became the undersecretary. So, that I think was in the second term of the Clinton administration also. And we had done a study on 2000 ordered by the Congress, 22 years of federal R&D and fossil and conservation, was it worth it? And I had been

03:27:36.480 - 03:28:00.880

vice chair of that Bob Fry had chaired it. And we, so that, so there had been a lot of was that study with the National Academy, or was that? Yeah, it was National Academy. Yeah, the National Academy was continually to DOE studies, there was Board of Energy, and I would sound on their Board of Energy and Environmental Sciences. And before that, it was just the

03:28:01.440 - 03:28:34.400

Board of Engineering, Energy Engineering. They had a reorganization in 2000. But yeah, the 2000, was it worth it came after the John Holdren exercise? I see. You said exercise, so when you, could you maybe expand on what, what you mean by that? Well, I mean, it was work. I mean, I was, I was, you know, I should have said study instead of exit, but I mean, and, but it was

03:28:34.400 - 03:29:04.800

very good. I mean, what, what I found, finally, that, because it, I mean, it would be a study that normally now, what, when John became head of PCAST, one of the things he wanted to make sure of is that we did studies that the Academy wouldn't do. So that, and, and, and this was a study, the R&D study that we did was, was very detailed and was been something more like the National

03:29:04.800 - 03:29:34.720

Academy would do, but they weren't doing it, and DOE wasn't funding it, and we really needed it for the guidance, because just what should trajectory, you know, this going from the mid 90s in look for the different applied energy programs. And, and it was sort of fun to, you know, to, to think about you know, an energy efficient budget, you've had an idea of what you would like. And then

03:29:34.720 - 03:30:02.400

you have the people you were discussing with, with fossil and nuclear, and I remember Bill focus and from outreach joined the fossil, he says, why does the energy efficiency always win? I said, except for Senator Gerber, but no, so it was, I mean, it was an interesting, and, and that one was interesting that I didn't, it takes time to do the, I mean, it was when it was on PCAST

03:30:02.960 - 03:30:36.480

with Obama, which is, but the studies are very involved. And, you know, that when I did have a staff person on OSTP who worked with me, but just get, you know, getting information and putting it all together for, for the chapter. And then, but so I was perfectly happy for me to willing for me to work on that. And it, and I could still get my, I wasn't making the ceramic

03:30:36.480 - 03:31:03.760

ports, I had good people making the ceramic port. And I could, it brought me to Washington, where I could still go see customers. But they were going to brief Clinton on the study. And, and as he is, and we were being invited to that briefing, whereas the, when I was on the Obama staff, we met with the president a lot, 14 times, but it was just PCAST and staff,

03:31:03.760 - 03:31:27.120

it wasn't other members of the committee of external committees, or who might, and the corporation said, the Washington office said no, that because the automotive people who were their customers for turbochargers might be very unhappy that, you know, part of it was looking at policies in addition to R and D, and was increasing the fuel efficiency standard was one

03:31:27.120 - 03:31:51.200

of them. I see. That was, this is the Clinton briefing. Yeah. I see. So that's all right, I got the report, God. Well, the report. So Clinton was then made aware of this report, that was part of what you were briefing him about. Yeah, and John was briefly, John was a member of PCAST, yes, and they were, you know, I don't know how many, well, I can't, then you're,

03:31:51.200 - 03:32:21.680

the report you did from 2018, I can't remember how many, if they said in there how many times, I don't think you did, they met with the president. That, PCAST had much more, at least, what I understand from when, even when Jack began, Al Gore was really delegated to be sort of the chief receiver of an interface with PCAST. Yeah, that makes, that makes sense. And I've

03:32:22.720 - 03:32:47.040

heard that before, that Gore was kind of delegated to dealing with, early on at least, in the Clinton administration, dealing with science and technology. Around that, well, in the, you were then, around that time, you said either 96 or 98 were appointed to the National Science Board. Right. So, how did that, was this another thing,

03:32:47.040 - 03:33:10.720

you know, another kind of consequence of you being somewhat, you know, visible in these, like in these circles, as well as like being, you know, inducted into the National Academy of Engineering? So, so Jack had me nominated, given something, and yeah, but, but it was clearly, you know, the selling point was the fact that I had been elected to the NAE. I mean, it's so that,

03:33:11.280 - 03:33:34.960

in some way, you know, the other reports could be important, but that was less important, because actually, I thought to be political, if you were pro something that, but being in the NAE, for whatever reason, you know, has a seal of approval, you know, it's housekeeping seal of approval, just like going to MIT did. I mean, it was just interesting,

03:33:34.960 - 03:34:10.080

what, how, how the, the community reacts to, to these things. And Jack made a point, there were four people from industry on the, there, you had six year terms, and it rotated, there were 24 people on it, you know, and he had four people from industry on there, Jack Armstrong, John Armstrong, from IBM, another person from Ally Signo, Marie, and the Chief Technology Officer of Dupont, who

03:34:10.080 - 03:34:44.000

then went to Corning. It was interesting, the Bush National Science Board did not have industry people appointed. And having industry, pardon? Bush one or Bush two? Bush two. I don't know whether Bush, the Bush one, I can, but Bush two did not. And then I, you know, now, I mean, they've had, Maria, Julia Philson, who had been at eight, she headed the board, or Maria headed the board,

03:34:44.000 - 03:35:12.640

but they now had people who had been at industry, Obama had, I don't know. And Obama actually reappointed some of the people from, I mean, not Obama, Trump actually reappointed some of the people from, from Obama time. But so we were, but the industry people different from the academics wanted to know, well, you know, why do you keep funding these things forever? Shouldn't 20% of

03:35:12.640 - 03:35:42.560

the portfolio turnover every five years? And what's your criteria for choosing projects and things like that? Yeah, it was a different perspective. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I wonder, so I'm curious about you mentioned earlier that Dr. Holder and kind of have this vision for, you know, PCAST reports being things that the National Academies weren't doing.

03:35:43.360 - 03:36:11.120

Well, wouldn't it be appropriate for, wouldn't it be appropriate for PCAST to be more appropriate for the Academy? I see, I see. Some of the reports, or the two reports from the Clinton administration, then in developing those reports, who was your target target audience? Was it the president or was it a more kind of general? Where did you want the reports to land? I guess

03:36:11.120 - 03:36:36.480

that's what I'm asking. Well, I mean, I, you know, at that point, you know, I was not, not sure. I hadn't seen a, I don't remember seeing a lot of PCAST reports. It was clearly meant for, you know, when John recruited us, it was clearly meant to be for the president or the, or the administration. I mean, and that, that one in that case, because it was related to DOE, was clearly going to be

03:36:36.480 - 03:37:10.560

meant for DOE and because of budget OMB. Right. But also it ended up, John used it very successfully, you know, briefing Congress on it, and even doing Bush 1 would use it to try to increase, you make sure the budgets wouldn't get decreased, but would increase. No. The numbers were still appropriate. They hadn't been reached. Right. Yeah. Well,

03:37:10.560 - 03:37:40.160

I know in those reports, they had pretty ambitious budget targets. No. It's always good to set the bar high. Discussions, I imagine. Was it, was it similar under President Obama? I know John Holdren has these, you know, infamous long and detailed studies. Was that kind of the, kind of the similar experience in the Obama administration in terms of developing reports

03:37:40.160 - 03:38:11.680

and getting them out there? Well, the idea was to get reports and have actionable items. I mean, that was really a key thing. And for the audience, and depending who chaired the report, often will depend upon the length that, you know, Ernie and I chaired one on energy innovation that actually got implemented a lot with Quadrennial Energy Review, Quadrennial Technical

03:38:12.400 - 03:38:43.680

Review, and an organization within DOE, how it would change in supporting and had some budget stuff and also some social science. Well, you know, our report was 30 or 40 pages. We wanted short reports. There were other reports that became much longer, but they were, and the idea was to try to get them done in a, you know, in a reasonable time so that the policies

03:38:43.680 - 03:39:12.000

could be implemented. And those were clearly geared for the President or the Cabinet official that would request it. I mean, one of the things we had, Cabinet people come both to our public sessions to talk about, you know, their issues. And also, we had a dinner, this is in the Obama PCAST, a dinner Thursday, meaning for typically Thursday and Friday and Thursday night, we would

03:39:12.000 - 03:39:36.160

have a dinner at an academy, other than when it was in renovation, would allow us to meet there, but have a dinner and invite, you know, a Cabinet person, a staff person to come and the things they might be interested in. And Secretary Chu came to see us. He said he had a good feel for the science programs, but not necessarily for the applied programs and where

03:39:36.160 - 03:40:03.680

they were going. And so that led us to, you know, do that, do that report. And of course, then Ernie became Secretary of Energy. And my comment was the best way to get your thing is implemented was to get somebody on the report because the Secretary, because he implemented all the organizational changes and the QTR, QER. I mean, it was a very good,

03:40:04.720 - 03:40:33.440

but the reports, you know, we were not given a page limit. It was really up to the people who were chairing the studies. Right. That makes sense. You were also in the Obama PCAST appointed as a vice chair. Did that change kind of responsibilities in your role in that committee? Yeah, that occurred. Bill Press and I were appointed

03:40:33.440 - 03:41:01.680

co-vice chairs when Harold Varmas, who was the second external co-chair, became head of the National Cancer Institute. And so he had to had to leave. You know, I mean, what it became was more time. We had, John had weekly phone conversation with the four, he and Eric, and Bill, myself, and then the staff person. They're really very limited staff, two people,

03:41:02.240 - 03:41:32.160

and those were those weekly calls. They're pretty consistent. We're really to go over some of the report status, what some issues were coming, planning for the next meeting, who do we invite, what's the agenda. And then there was more responsibility to readings from the control of reading the reports before they got issued.

03:41:32.880 - 03:41:54.640

I mean, one of the things that impressed me about PCAST, at least with the Obama administration, and I don't know how it was, is the review process. I mean, the academy has a very detailed and works very well. I've been on the report review and on various, and also being part of, that makes the reports better. I mean, they send it out to external

03:41:54.640 - 03:42:23.840

reviewers and it, you make changes, you have to respond to every comment. PCAST did its own review. I mean, the quality initially with Hal Varmas and Eric and John, I mean, and they're all very good writers and good editors, and would do that. And we would also, unlike the academy, who doesn't want to interact with the sponsor as you're developing the recommendations,

03:42:23.840 - 03:42:50.880

you get input from the sponsor, from technical things, we could interface with the sponsor and could run things by the sponsors before we did the reports. It didn't necessarily mean we changed them, but they would also get a chance to read. But I think the quality of the report, I mean, it's hard to say. Other people would have to judge. It's been fairly good. It's been fairly high.

03:42:53.760 - 03:43:17.600

But we didn't have formal reviewer. I mean, and everybody on PCAST was supposed to read it before we were to approve it. Right. And everyone met, was it every other month? Were these Thursdays? Every other month. So yeah, when John called me in February of 2009, he said, you know, six times a year in Washington, two days a week, you know, will not be that much.

03:43:18.480 - 03:43:44.640

Look at do interesting reports of interesting people, you know, that we'll have an audience. I mean, being receptive, we didn't know how receptive at the time, which was very receptive. But, you know, it didn't mention you're going to be doing 36 studies, which of course nobody had ever had ever thought of. And those were not within the two days. I mean, you know,

03:43:44.640 - 03:44:18.320

we did a fair amount of in-person meetings, and we all had external members. But and as it evolved over time, we started getting a lot of internal expertise by phone calls. It was before Zoom. So we could talk through, you know, this chief technology officer or this person from HUD or from NIH, without having to physically have a meeting, but you did have at least two,

03:44:18.320 - 03:44:41.920

and then just getting it together and, you know, making sense of it. So, it was Rosina Bermbalm, who had been on OSTP during the Clinton administration, really good climate was on our picket. She was dean at Michigan for public power. She said she was spending 50 percent,

03:44:41.920 - 03:45:08.480

50, 75 percent of her time on PCAST activities. And mine was close to 50 percent. Yes. It was, you know, they were with the telephone, you know, and doing the reports. But, you know, when you look at, you know, that you had, you know, it was just, you were addressing interesting topics, the very experienced people, and Obama really cared about it. I mean, that was the thing.

03:45:08.480 - 03:45:43.520

I mean, after each meeting, John, in his weekly report to the president, would always summarize what we had done at the meeting, when we didn't meet with him. And so, it was very much aware. And we were able to get very good speakers come to us, because PCAST was viewed as a important part of the administration. Right. Right. That makes sense.

03:45:43.520 - 03:46:09.680

And John said he was, he was, Eric's now a cabinet official, which I think is great, knowing that he even gives them, but he attend, he was able to attend all of those meetings as a non-cabinet member. Right. Wait, you said Dr. Holdren was able to attend cabinet meetings as a non-cabinet member. Yeah. And they had sort of one, a green cabinet or something that were

03:46:09.680 - 03:46:34.160

all people from the energy and environment areas that he was very much part of, but he could, the National Security Council meetings he could attend. Right. He just wasn't a principal, but having a real seat at the table makes a difference. Right. Right. When you, when you did meet with the president, you said you met 14 times with President Obama. What were those meetings like?

03:46:34.160 - 03:47:01.280

Did they, did you meet in the same place? Was there a press? Was there? No, I mean, these meetings were, I mean, just in general, our PCAST meetings, just the first day, Thursday was all closed meeting. I mean, and the dinner was a closed dinner. The Friday morning meeting was open and all streamed webcasts and they're all available. But we would often have

03:47:01.280 - 03:47:27.440

one of the people on the panel or something was there would then come to a lunch with this result that would be closed again to get, you know, we're a lot of the ideas and things. But the meetings with the president, they were in different places. The first meeting with the president was just sort of a photo office when we were all inducted into PCAST. And that occurred during the

03:47:27.440 - 03:47:59.120

National Academy of Science meeting in April in 2020 to right. And so in a picture that above, over the link, over Lincoln, signing the formation of the National Academy in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War, just like he did the lay grant schools. I mean, so that was, so, so that was sort of our first meeting with him. And I can't remember all the

03:47:59.120 - 03:48:25.280

means, but then another meeting. And we second meeting we had was in, guess in August, where we met in a, we ourselves met in one of the buildings on, that are on, it was Augusta CQ building or something. And finally, the other, that was before we started meeting the Academy or who tell, but we met with the president that time

03:48:25.280 - 03:48:53.120

in the state dining room where the Lincoln picture is. And that was when we were really starting to put the agenda together and also to brief him on the H1N1 report that had really gotten started early, early on, because there was real concern that that fall and stuff. And Eric and Harold had chaired that and had, you know, just before we had really had a

03:48:53.120 - 03:49:22.080

more, but we're in a nice meeting. And we had come up with various topics that we thought should be studies at that. And remember, we had things that we've, and we tried to group them and things we, we saw very important things that might be done. And, and the president came by himself. For the first couple years, the president always came by himself. Interesting. And, and so

03:49:22.080 - 03:49:52.640

we met in that room. He, and he was very much engaged. I mean, we'd ask questions and give feedback. And, and John always set the agenda prior to the meeting with, to the president. So he knew what we wanted to talk about. I don't know if that, but later on the last few years, I know he and Eric met with the president right before us with, but we met in various rooms the first

03:49:52.640 - 03:50:26.400

few years, which was fun. I mean, the way we met in the, in the family, old family dining room, which was, you know, in March, and I'll get back to that meeting in a minute. We met in the map room, which was the pins are still in there from World War II. And that Biden came to that meeting. And, but no press ever. And usually, for the first few, it was just Obama. And, and as it went on,

03:50:26.960 - 03:50:52.560

Valerie Jarrett would be there. And then sometimes the head of OMB or chief of staff would, would, and we would, so those were essentially, and then we started, we would meet in the Roosevelt rooms. The last few years, that's where it always was. The road, which is right across from the Oval Office. But we never got to see the Oval Office, which is what I said to John. It would be nice to see

03:50:52.560 - 03:51:18.560

the Oval Office. Anyhow, we, and that was a barrel, as I said, Valerie Jarrett, and Valerie Jarrett would come ahead of the president. I mean, you know, she would come in time and the president, they would, Eric and John would brief the president. So it was essentially, we would meet, you know, at this, the state dining room, we met family dining room once a month. Oh,

03:51:18.560 - 03:51:45.360

the last meeting was in the China room, which is China for all from all the presidential. And that's outside of the diplomatic room, which is where they took our last picture. But the meeting that I remember, I mean, remember clearly, I couldn't tell you the topics of all 14, but in March of 2010, we met with him in the old family dining room. And they're picked,

03:51:45.360 - 03:52:09.520

you can probably get from Kai or somebody, if you want any of the pictures, I mean, we're not supposed to give them out to anybody, but, you know, just sitting where you have place cards and, you know, but now the president didn't need one unless Biden was there. And I was seated next to him, and he had a yellow pad, and he doodled. I mean, you know,

03:52:09.520 - 03:52:38.160

it's, but he took, he took it with him, it was. The other, just as a side comment, they provided water for us to drink, but there was not, you know, no food. And you had a pads of paper, but not whole pads with the White House, you know, emblem on it, you know, half a dozen pieces of paper and pencil, because you could not bring anything into these meetings. I mean,

03:52:38.160 - 03:53:01.360

everything was all electronics and everything was locked up. But the March, and, and I don't know how we weren't supposed, you know, we were not, we would say we met with the president, but we're not, we were not supposed to give, you know, what was discussed, but I'll give you an anecdote, and whether it be used or not, I don't know, but it was just, one would have to be sure,

03:53:01.360 - 03:53:32.320

but it could go in the oral history, but whether it goes in the region. So that one, the March of 2010, we're still in the middle of the recovery from the 2008. But Obama made time to meet with us, and was on time, and, you know, we're an hour, an hour, anyhow. We had just finished, Ed Pennote and I had just finished, it was our first, but the third,

03:53:32.320 - 03:54:00.160

assessment of the Nano Technology Initiative that Clinton had initiated. Congress had passed it as a law, and required that the administration and a Bush delegated it to PCAST, do an assessment of every two years of how it was going. And the Academy do, every three years, a detailed technical assessment, how it was, it was going. So Ed Pennote and I were asked to co-chair

03:54:00.960 - 03:54:31.760

it. And we had Chad Merkin, who was one of the top five Nano Technology experts on PCAST. He could be on our committee, but not chair it. I mean, they were conscious that they didn't want conflict of interest to show, and we had then external people. But Ed and I had it from the bio area, had material interest, and I, from doing the work that I had been doing with, you know,

03:54:33.040 - 03:55:04.720

at Allied Signal. And we knew, you know, how, and Chad was very helpful in getting the right people come be part of the committee. And also, so we presented the report to the president, because it had just been finished. And you're, it's not just a free-for-all. I mean, we were really rehearsed. I mean, you know, you had six minutes, and, you know, and Eric was really very good at this,

03:55:04.720 - 03:55:28.960

and one time, and, you know, so what are you going to say? So, and you leave time that the president, you know, we didn't live in his time, you could have as much, but yet, you know, our time, and, and, you know, so, and, you know, and I got together, what part he would talk about what part I would talk about, you know, and the other, some, and one time, you weren't supposed to have notes, we had the

03:55:28.960 - 03:55:54.000

report. But I said, well, we're going to talk about material. Why can't I, I'm used to, you know, and having, selling ceramic materials to various, then people, you would bring samples of what you made. So I said, well, maybe we should bring some samples of nanotechnology products or to be other than in his Blackberry. I mean, you know, which you can't open. So they had,

03:55:54.000 - 03:56:20.320

one of the committee members had access to, had developed some that they had tested the strengths compared to Kevlar with bullets shot each and the Kevlar sort of did bend some, but the material made out of nano was fine. And then there was a small company that had invented a lycoplastic with nano parts in it that could convert sunlight to electricity. So you

03:56:20.320 - 03:56:48.000

could put it on a tent, you could put it on a, I mean, and then there was something liquid that showed some anyway. So the White House let the two hard samples go through that liquids couldn't bring in. But in any event, we showed these and then he had just, Obama had just started his scientific ambassadors to, to developing countries or to Middle East and one of our

03:56:48.000 - 03:57:18.640

PCAST members was the one for Egypt was from it. So he wanted to talk to Anwar about the Egypt thing. And, and those were the two. And then we got into a discussion about, you know, the economic, you know, what were some potential approaches and Rick Levin, who was our token economist, he was president Yale at the time, but not our token member, hey, was, you know,

03:57:18.640 - 03:57:42.640

had some thoughts regarding, you know, what approaches particularly regarding labor and projects that could be ready that Obama said he would take back. But in the middle of all this comes, he says, Obama says to me, to Maxine, this is a half hour after what happens if this stuff gets up your nose. So he clearly had been thinking, because nanoparticles are very small, asbestos

03:57:42.640 - 03:58:07.600

is the same thing. But you know, and it was, and one of the things in our report was we thought more attention had to be made to the environmental aspects of nanoparticles, both in the use of them in manufacturing and also the production of parts. But it just was showing that, you know, he was thinking, you know, and because he didn't take notes. I mean, he, he listened. I mean,

03:58:07.600 - 03:58:38.080

and it was just a very, you know, a very interesting type of thing. And, and we would discuss future thoughts. We've one of our meetings towards towards the end. He had asked us to look at sort of technologies related to the aging, because there's people more and more so they could remain independent in what was possible. As we started to do the study, we took hearing aids

03:58:38.080 - 03:59:00.080

as a separate thing to do a letter report, because that was so significant, and so much needed to be done and was key. It was over, you know, over half the population, over 80 needs hearing aids, and they're very expensive. And so we said, well, we're going to, meeting we told him, this is how we brought bringing him an update. And we said, we're going to

03:59:02.640 - 03:59:33.760

discuss hearing aids and their costs and what might be done, both to bring down the costs and to make, and they're not available by under Medicare. They were particularly eliminated when Medicare was developed in 1965. So he says, what, what? And then he said, I mean, what's really hit him was that, you know, a set of hearing aids is 10 times the cost of an iPad. I mean, you know, that it

03:59:33.760 - 04:00:04.880

really was. And then the next time was important, briefed him on the examples that, and my recommendation one was that the FDA changed the rules so that you could take a prescription from any audiologist or doctor and have it filled anywhere. You didn't have to have the audiologist be like glasses, essentially. And all legislation was passed.

04:00:04.880 - 04:00:30.400

This was Lauren really carried it through. But the FDA, because the end of 2016 initiated some regular, they've yet to find, I mean, they're now finalizing, Trump administration did not finalize them. But that was one way, you know, really good implementation. And it will lead, the VA was paying $400 for set of hearing aids, the same one

04:00:30.400 - 04:00:58.480

as we had to buy for 10,000, 10 times the amount. And so just on the mass pricing, and it felt that it could, you know, could you use some of the enhancers that could be, could they be sold over the counter than, I mean, so it was a really, you know, broad, broad issue. And that was done pretty, fairly quickly. I had always been curious about where the, how the hearing aid

04:00:58.480 - 04:01:30.640

report got started. Yeah, I mean, they would just, as I said, some of the reports we would initiate on our own, you know, bring up, and some would get initiated by the people who came to speak to us. And, you know, and, I mean, we did one on privacy, the technology, very privacy, to technology regarding policy, not the privacy, and not the policies, but that's what was doing that.

04:01:30.640 - 04:01:59.920

And that could start and then said, we should look at the technologies regarding, and you could really see, again, this is more how concerned the president was of the need for privacy versus openness, and, you know, to really getting it right. I mean, it was just the very open-minded, I mean, which was just, and, and, you know, I mean, as much as we put in a lot

04:01:59.920 - 04:02:33.600

of work, and a lot of reports that many of them, you know, got implemented some minute, you know, may have or get done later. But the fact that, you know, there was such a willing audience to accept them, or to initiate, and that really would help formulate in his mind what, what to do. And just like the education ones, he was, you know, the whole K through 12 would be,

04:02:34.240 - 04:02:58.560

and he was always, you know, interested with John and going to the science fairs and having science fairs at the White House. I mean, it's just, you know, it's nice to see. And Biden came to two or three meetings, and he actually came to dinner at the Academy. We had hoped maybe he would invite us to dinner one week, but that's just a side.

04:02:59.440 - 04:03:26.960

But he, he came in the Secret Service all cleared out the Academy that, that evening. And he, you know, came at six or eight. Normally they spent an hour, he spent actually two hours there. And everybody got a chance to ask a question or more, not just technology related. And you just saw the depth of knowledge that he had on these subjects and the engagement with it.

04:03:26.960 - 04:03:55.280

It was, you know, really very, very good. Just like when, one of the first meetings he came to was when we were in the map room, and he, that was right after the change of the, the election where we lost, where they lost the house in 2010. And then we've had the energy report where we were putting in, asking for advanced R&D. And one of the, and the comment was,

04:03:55.280 - 04:04:26.800

maybe the, you know, the Congress will at least agree on R&D. We don't know, but I mean, it was the, you know, and then he came to the last one. He came to one other. But there was the other thing that was sort of even thinking about the crisis where we didn't do a report, but we were called upon. And John was when Ebola came up. And, you know, who on PCAS, and we had several physicians

04:04:26.800 - 04:04:55.920

and people in the bio area who, you know, could meet both with the task force and also meet, you know, with not formal PCAS meetings to really discuss what were the options for Ebola. So it was drawn upon, they asked what were drawn upon by the administration. Right. Right. Did you, I know at the very end, last time you had mentioned that you also

04:04:57.840 - 04:05:20.640

met at Camp David, when did that happen? So that happened in September, I remember exactly, because that was one presidential meeting I missed if you can, because of my son's 50th birthday and he wanted to have dinner. At Shea Pines and I had to make, so I had to go this Friday, but not on Thursday. So it was

04:05:20.640 - 04:05:59.200

September of 2015. And he, Obama had really opened Camp David to cabinet and sub-cabinet members to bring their advisory groups or people reporting to them. And so John had arranged that we could go for PCAS to come. And this is a staff that supported us for day. And we would hold a meeting there. I mean, we would have our PCAS Thursday meeting there. And then Friday, they

04:05:59.280 - 04:06:26.160

would have the regular meeting and meet and then the meet with the president. And we had the dinner, I think, was one of that night too. And so first of all, you had to sign a non-disclosure agreement that you weren't going to tell anybody you were going to Camp David. They arranged a bus to take us there. And it was not, and we were the only

04:06:26.480 - 04:06:52.800

external people there at the time. A naval base of 30,000 people was Jason, the camp David, and the commander of that base lives on, is the only one who lives on site. And no electronics at all except if you have White House ones. So John could have his computer so he could, for our meeting, could take regular notes, but we had to leave everything on the bus,

04:06:52.800 - 04:07:19.920

essentially. And then you're given golf carts and they say, well, here's the map and here's where we're going to go to Building X. And we're just wondering how are you, how are you, but there was a lead one. And the building we had our meeting in was the same building that had, as I think I mentioned, Roosevelt and Churchill on the porch discussing Normandy. I mean,

04:07:20.000 - 04:07:50.880

it was just, it's very rustic, but you have a lot of history where when Carter had Rabin and Arafat there, they had to make sure that their cottages were equal distance from the president's house. And when they would have more like the G7 or something there, you couldn't, you know, had to do that. But, you know, just being with all this history around and

04:07:50.880 - 04:08:18.960

they had, Bush One had built a non-denominational chapel that allowed for, to have bigger meetings, you can have under people in there, we were 20 some. But, and then somebody from the Navy briefed us on a lot of the histories to tell us, you know, what had happened there. And I mean, those little anecdotes that were around and, you know, you saw, well, I think as I mentioned before,

04:08:18.960 - 04:08:45.520

that Obama had had a basketball court built with the climbing wall, because the Navy used the facilities there, like swimming pool, the gym and all was part of their facilities. The president's house had its own pool and they had water in front for, because when Roosevelt was president, there was concern. If there was a fire, you get out and get the water and everything's

04:08:45.520 - 04:09:18.320

built of wood. You know, it's just, you know, a very special, special place. And you look and you see, you know, all these rocks and things around. Well, the rocks aren't just rocks, they're very secure area. And it was a real treat. I mean, you know, you read about Cape David and then you there's actually a picture, a formal picture of all of us in front of the Camp David sign.

04:09:19.200 - 04:09:47.600

So I don't know for your report if you want any of those, but you could get probably either a CHI or Eric can get you the pictures. Because, you know, I mean, the White House photographer took pictures of all the, but also every meeting, the White House photographer took pictures of us. Right. Great. We're have some four year requests out for pictures to fix for the

04:09:48.720 - 04:10:16.320

the various presidential libraries. Give us all the footage they have that's been classified. Yeah. And I don't know if, I mean, Obama's read libraries and open it, but whether you can get it from the OSTP people, well, potentially. Yeah. Yeah. We hope to. Yeah. So was there during your time on PCS, were there things you had wished you could have tackled or things that you

04:10:16.320 - 04:10:45.680

thought you would have liked to have done while you were on the committee? No, I mean, I was particularly interested in the energy and climate and the redid a lot of that. And, and, you know, part of our studies became part of Obama's climate action plan. And I'm trying to think in the education areas, we covered K through 12 and then research

04:10:45.680 - 04:11:18.720

universities, community colleges, aging. And I'm not, I'm trying to think, were there any crisis that we didn't, as I said, the Ebola was handled. So, and there were, you know, the health ones, because the reason they, we've all worked on the OPCAS, varied from those H1N1 and rapid vaccine development to things like systems engineering of healthcare to bio. We did only two secret

04:11:18.720 - 04:11:55.200

reports and then had a public release of a letter because we were all, most of us, some were not clear. Yeah, I mean, I think I'm just trying to think whether issues that because you could weave into so much of, you know, these, we didn't really tackle the R&D, the federal government's R&D initiatives. As such, we would look at, or R&D enterprise, you know, if you complain,

04:11:56.160 - 04:12:22.800

and it's more basic research, you know, that what percent of GDP should be on research and what should be the balance of applied and basic, I would say, that was probably, you know, one thing that you think about, that we didn't do very much. Workforce development got covered a little bit in the community colleges because they're a training person, but really looking at

04:12:23.680 - 04:12:52.480

what should workforce development look like and what should the federal, we didn't do. The one thing we didn't do as much of, without I think the Academy does, more of, is briefing the Congress of our reports for things that need it. They got sent the reports. When we first did it on the PCAS, on the NANO one, because I was just used to briefing them, and range for their congressional,

04:12:52.480 - 04:13:18.320

it was STP's Congressional Affairs, when to brief the authorizing committees and the House and Senate on that report and what our results were, both budget-wise and where they were really worried about the foreign competition, because all of a sudden China was, the first report was really starting to get lots of patents, and I'm going to make sure we were still the leader.

04:13:21.600 - 04:13:49.440

But other reports did not. We did get, when something happened, we thought every two years to review the NANO program was just too much. We had to do four assessments at night. So we went and talked to the staff, or John, we organized, John talked to the staff when they were reauthorizing the NANO legislation to make it not be as long. And I think it was talk, the last, at the Trump

04:13:49.440 - 04:14:22.720

administration, trying to roll in the PCS management part into the Academy's technical review. And I don't know that, I know that came out in the report. I don't know if it's actually been done. And we were, we were really not, we did nothing DOD related. And that's because DOD had its own, I mean, cyber, you could say, you know, and you have the security agencies that you talk to,

04:14:23.280 - 04:14:57.440

but because they had the Defense Science Board and the Policy Board, we had people who dealt, so my trade from Monday from Microsoft was, they were very much involved with DOD. Google was, so when Michael McQuade went on, so there was not a lot of, so we didn't do, you know, we didn't even talk about DOD projects. And there was never any talk,

04:14:57.440 - 04:15:23.360

but just thinking about it, never, it was never any, because it was supposed to be advised to the president, never did combine, and I don't think it was necessary, studies with other cabinet-level committees. Domestic Policy Council and Economic Council would come and, you know, talk with some, with some of their issues were, and where they had somebody that's saying, they had somebody who had

04:15:23.360 - 04:15:51.280

been on John Heather, on Domestic Policy Council, she was our liaison for the Energy and Climate Studies. And, you know, as I said, the cabinet officials would, you know, be at pre-briefings, you know, we would meet with people from there before, and sometimes when we would meet with officials there, and those I remember, and I, in the study on university research,

04:15:52.880 - 04:16:24.000

you know, talking with Dr. Francis Collins, we talked to people under him, then we talked to Francis, and he had a chance to review the report beforehand, same thing. The forensic one had a lot of back and forth, that was one of our last reports, and Valerie Jarrett had requested that, and Eric took the lead on it, and had outside group of judges. I mean, there were people from

04:16:24.000 - 04:16:54.800

the law areas, and the back and forth between what we wrote, and what Sally Yates wanted as the deputy, and also the FBI, because in some ways the FBI lab got criticized, but, you know, we would change where, I mean, finally the report could get out, and actually she came, which I, and again, I don't know that this should be public, that she came to PCS to thank us for the report,

04:16:55.760 - 04:17:10.800

came to the Academy meeting, which was very, very, very nice. So, Sally Yates did? No, Valerie Jarrett did. Oh, Valerie Jarrett, okay, yeah.

04:17:10.800 - 04:17:37.440

Sally Yates finally accepted what we wrote, but I mean, it was just the micro, the FBI and Sally Yates, and I mean, so that was the most, and I can remember back and forth that went back, I know, I was listening, we were all involved in that one, but we were involved with the one on privacy, but I don't remember there being as much back and forth,

04:17:38.880 - 04:17:58.960

because again, we were doing that one with what technologies, and there was a the parallel policy won by Podesta led by him, and I think that was the only report that had a parallel one, one, two. Yeah, I understood the forensics report to be somewhat controversial when it was

04:18:00.480 - 04:18:37.280

I couldn't believe your state of Texas was still using dog bites. And even though, you know, DNA is, you know, the best of them all, if you're not trained to do them right, and have the right, you know, the right conditions, you could get the wrong answers. It's not, it was not 100% unless you really start to enforce what the laboratory

04:18:37.280 - 04:19:01.440

conditions should be, and, you know, we're continually finding, finding out things. Yeah, I, you know, I one point met someone from the Innocence Project, the Innocence Project, and they were also very thankful that this report saw away today, so that's good. Yeah, I mean, all the reports were published. I mean, you know, when we sent them,

04:19:02.000 - 04:19:26.240

you know, they went to the, you know, relevant agencies, they went to all the domestic staff, you know, the different cabinet groups, they were sent to the Congress. So they were, and then they were put up on the web. But during the day of the Trump administration, my daughter-in-law went through the OST website,

04:19:26.240 - 04:19:52.160

they were all gone. You had to go through the archives, but we had set up, Bill Press had set up a separate website that had all that there in case they disappeared from any kind of website that they'd be available. Not a little paranoia. Yeah, I went through the day beforehand and downloaded every single thing on the website,

04:19:52.400 - 04:20:17.280

so I got it archived just in case. Were there other, you know, reports, you mentioned there were some back and forth, were there other reports that came out who were controversial or you received kind of public pushback for your recommendations? No, well, something like the hearing report, I mean, the audiology, you know, that community

04:20:17.280 - 04:20:47.920

didn't think you needed anything, but that would be a natural type of thing. No, I mean, some of them got, I mean, you know, on the antibiotics to animals that should be reduced, you know, I mean, it was a knowledge of that. How much is being, it was implemented, I'm not sure. I mean, I think one of the things that,

04:20:48.640 - 04:21:17.360

and I guess that's part of limited staff, and I have the same problem with the academy, of, you know, tracking what got accepted, if what you got recommended, and some of it could come down the road at a future time, but I don't know if the Agriculture Department really did any work on releasing the,

04:21:21.920 - 04:21:53.360

adopting any of our recommendations for the spectrum report was another one that got good publicity and having this brand for spectrum sharing did end up being, so I'm looking at a sheet that you quoted in your other study that Ashley had done, where the executive order was led to about the antibiotic resistant

04:21:54.080 - 04:22:22.080

warning animals, whether that got reversed or not, I don't know. I know that with the energy department, which I tracked with the closest under Trump, they reversed the organization where we had combined science and energy to one undersecretary, which had been initially, then it had been split during the,

04:22:23.440 - 04:22:52.560

I guess Ray Orback was the first one in the Bush administration, then it was put back by, after I report along with a policy office reporting directly to the secretary and not being confirmed position, and Trump went back to the old organization, that they're a separate undersecretary for science, a separate undersecretary, they did

04:22:52.560 - 04:23:26.800

not do any, under Obama, two quadranial technology reviews were done, and one QER, but they never repeated the QER, I assume the defense QERs were continued, so we modeled that on it, so it was, and that was one where we partly, because Ernie had been on it, and partly because we had come up with the idea that OSTP was, and PCAST was to review the

04:23:27.680 - 04:24:14.960

QER, and we did, many of us served on parts to review the QTR, because we were involved with them, but also the QER before it was issued was supposed to be reviewed by OSTP, which it was, it was another, I sort of, it comes back to me, of another report that was monitored pretty well. I had always been very curious about the, kind of the reorganizing, and

04:24:14.960 - 04:24:39.760

then I guess this, what you mentioned about the undersecretaries at DOE, what was the, do you know what the rationale behind reversing that, kind of, organizational change was? Well, I think partly it was because it could have been because it was an Obama reorganization, I mean, which, but it had been that way for, you know, a long,

04:24:40.800 - 04:25:08.960

a long time, I mean, it was, it had been initially the two together then, and the Bush one, I think, or back, it was then, that the, there was a real push for science to get more elevated to there than they implied, but, you know, it's, but it was, when Steve Coonan under, and Chu didn't reorganize it, he kept it as it was, you know, he was the undersecretary for science, and then they

04:25:08.960 - 04:25:39.200

had that head of, director of the Office of Science, what does one do different than the other, because it's the same, same, same broad, and to my mind, I, early on, even in the 78, trying to encourage the Office of Science to do some understanding of mechanisms and science related to the applied, let's say with battery research, and they all want to do high energy physics, so many of us

04:25:39.200 - 04:26:10.080

really wanted much more synergy, so that made a lot of, a lot of sense, so they're back together again, still waiting confirmation of the person, Geraldine Richmond, to be the undersecretary. That makes sense, yeah, that, tracking that, when I first, it was confusing for me why, why all those pieces were moving and when, thank you for clearing that up.

04:26:10.080 - 04:26:33.600

Yeah, and it was very clear, also, you know, and Ernie had been there in, you know, in the second part of the Clinton administration, as the undersecretary, and he really knew the Department of Energy, and it was interesting when he was named people from, some of the people from the labs, well, they remembered him from 20 years ago, and how much

04:26:33.600 - 04:27:01.680

policy, well, 20 years, and he had run the, started and run the MIT program, and so everyone thinks was the best secretary of energy there's been, and with the widest breath of knowledge, and also good people, and, you know, a well-run organization, and a lot of credibility. And it became an important part because of the climate, addressing issues,

04:27:02.640 - 04:27:27.040

and also because of his knowledge, and then, you know, his participation in the Randio, and things like that, it was very, you know, and we do not, I mean, the thinking that we would, one point, we were thinking that having Kerry come for, to talk to us with, but the schedule just never allowed that John worked closely with Kerry, and particularly when they, when Kerry led the

04:27:27.120 - 04:27:56.160

Arctic Five Group, John was the head of the R&D contingent from the different countries they looked in, so he was involved in that. Well, I have a couple other questions related to, to PCAS, but we've also been going for two hours, I just wanted to check and see if you're, you're good to keep going, or if you

04:27:56.160 - 04:28:28.720

need a break, or... I'm okay, do you want me to break? I'm okay. I'm okay, yeah. Okay. Well, I, I, while we're on DOE stuff, I had, I had two questions. One was, at some point during the Obama administration, funding for PCAS came out of, I think, the office of budget. It's somewhere buried in the DOE budget. Well, so, so PCAS was being funded under the OSTP budget. They're a

04:28:28.720 - 04:28:57.520

big budget of $6 million or whatever it is, and PCAS cost a better million. So Congressman Wolf, some appropriations for which the White House and PCAS came under, wasn't happy that John was still willing to have bilateral talks with China. NASA had capitulated and said, so he removed part of the budget. And so, in looking to see what do you eliminate, and, and PCAS,

04:28:57.520 - 04:29:38.640

and OSTP had grown under John. So he had, had grown under John, and, but because of John's relationship with that time, it was Steve Chiu, you know what I mean? And, you know, and the whole, and we got the office of science to fund us. So, but it was run out of, well, all our travel was, was looked through the office of science and, and I'm trying to say, and, and we had to send our,

04:29:39.200 - 04:30:08.240

but we sent our, I think we sent our vouchers to PCAS and they sent them over to office side one way or the other. They paid for travel and they paid for whatever costs we were incurred for their meetings and travel. Now, well, just not like, no, of us, but of the, all the people who came to work on our committees. So that would, and I guess, yeah, so it's buried in, you know,

04:30:08.240 - 04:30:36.080

this $5 billion budget. And so after it got reinstated, I think earning wanted John to resume the, you know, that they would fund it themselves, but they always still did it. Again, they had some money left over, and we had the opportunity to get all of our reports if we wanted at no cost to us, but of bound. So we have four, well, now people don't want paper,

04:30:36.080 - 04:31:04.960

but it's nice to have four bound volumes of the 36 reports in sequential order. Also protection, one could have, you know, scan them if they hadn't all been eliminated, but that was, that was the backstory of that million dollars. Thank you. I understand that that arrangement continued in the Trump administration. I was

04:31:04.960 - 04:31:35.760

just curious where it started and why. Yeah. I mean, they should have been funded, you know, what was needed, but yeah. Does PCAST need to meet more? I mean, there's always been this question, but it seems, you know, many people were working, not all of them were, few of us were retired. Well, I wonder, you know, PCAST has this, you know, like you said,

04:31:35.760 - 04:31:59.600

that the agenda is kind of set by, you know, the membership and what the president wants and other folks and there's a back and forth. Are there, are there particular issues that you think PCAST is kind of uniquely equipped to address? Well, I mean, I think, you know, when you, when you look at some of the overall, the H1N one was a clear one as to, you know,

04:31:59.600 - 04:32:23.360

we're looking at technologies for cities, well, Qatar do that, but they don't have very much of an R&D thing that you can get input from them. Many of these, the spectrum, you know, were they going to be willing to have the FCC look at, you know, I mean, it's, you know, one could say, you know, the education one was interesting on our one on research universities.

04:32:23.360 - 04:32:47.840

That came out, there were absolutely three studies going on that complemented. There was one by the academy that was, I think Mary Good was a coach here that no, she was one of the small business. One from the academy ours and one from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, all of which I think Neal may have chaired, could looking at research, they complemented

04:32:47.840 - 04:33:15.040

each other, but one could have said, you know, that was, you know, something like, I mean, I think it's useful, you know, if you have a really working advisory group, like making use of SEAP, which is what Ernie, Ernie did, you could do those reports, rather than think, but, you know, let's say something about antibiotic resistant bacteria and having

04:33:16.320 - 04:33:43.440

animals do something about it. You know, the agriculture department wouldn't have been willing to undertake that. So, and as I said, you know, whether meeting were often when, when, you know, the Ebola came up, there were, you know, John assembled, we had telephone conversations, I don't know if it came up at early meeting, but and then people go to now with Zoom,

04:33:43.440 - 04:34:08.320

if something like that were to come up, you could easily call for an ad hoc type of, but I think, I don't know whether the other PCAST had such a rigorous schedule as we did, as the, you know, and they were set two years in advance. I mean, we would all try to protect our calendars. And the four co-chair, we had, you know, every week we had a phone call,

04:34:09.040 - 04:34:38.960

230 East Coast time, West Coast time, and John said, I was always on some plane, but, you know, so, you know, I think, I think, you know, it was interesting, I don't know if you got a chance to look at the PCAST reports at all that I mentioned last time, that how you could get reassembled as a subgroup, if, you know, I mean, this happened to come doing, you know, one wonders

04:34:38.960 - 04:35:10.800

why PCAST wasn't asked to do those activities, or didn't take it. Now, PCAST did fund Harvey, the Academy set up a standing committee for infectious disease at Harvey Feinberg, that came out with some short reports in response to things Kevin sent and NIH sent. And we coordinated very much with Harvey when we, with our topics, and we did not overlap.

04:35:12.560 - 04:35:38.080

And they did very quick, short responses, you know, eight to 10 pages, which were very good. Yeah, those reports were great. I guess I'd been curious why they, at some point, stopped, or did they stop being asked, or was it a, they kind of had a set, you know. No, I think they got stopped being asked, and the standing committee still exists,

04:35:38.080 - 04:36:06.800

but, you know, I don't know, yeah, it isn't clear, and I, you know, even as a vaccine, all those things, they were not asked. There were, did some report on vaccine approaches, but no, I, we thought they were very good, and, and Harvey, we showed actually our first two reports to Harvey before we issued them, even, so he could, you know, make sure we were not overstaffed.

04:36:06.800 - 04:36:39.440

So I think one of the things that John really did well was trying to carve out areas PCAST should do and, and eliminate things that it shouldn't do. I see. What about, you know, in the cast, you know, charter that often uses this word diversity, do you kind of, I guess, I'm looking to get your thoughts on kind of balance of the committee, you know, there's, there are people

04:36:39.520 - 04:37:02.880

from, you know, historically PCAST and its predecessors were largely like from the physical sciences, you know, and that, and the post-world were two worlds, you know, they're all atomic physicists and people from the Rad Lab and other stuff. PCAST now is a larger body with more kind of diversity in, you know, in its, in its membership. Do you kind of have a perspective on what, what that balance

04:37:02.880 - 04:37:36.160

should be in terms of diversity of the panel? Well, I mean, I think one of the, we had a lot of biological representation and, and Eric is having even more biological, even, I haven't seen any of the names yet, but just, you know, his comes from biological, Francis Arnold's things are more biological. Maria comes from a hard science. We had, you know, diversity with regard to

04:37:36.160 - 04:38:05.600

enter industry and the advanced manufacturing. I'm talking about this back moment, things that have continued starting this advanced manufacturing initiatives that where we said the three, particularly DOE, DARPA and MISS should have programs. The DOE program is going on and flourishing as is the DOD, which just has gotten an academy issue to report on it,

04:38:07.280 - 04:38:36.480

its approaches and how it was doing, not any metrics yet that's going on now, but, and their budgets have increased, it's going on to about 200. So that has had, the Trump administration changed the name, but it's, you know, this thing. So I thought that was a good, I mean, that's, we had university people, industry people, I mean, where we did, what we didn't have,

04:38:37.360 - 04:39:02.640

and except for, as I mentioned, Rick Levin, our token economists, I think having more social scientists is, you know, having your comments and so much of what you want to do depends upon, you know, how are people going to adapt these things? And will they implement them? And what does it take? You know, why aren't people getting vaccinated? You can do look at the vaccination

04:39:02.640 - 04:39:34.160

now, you know, the people, studies that really undertake, you know, what makes people behave, the energy report we did said that DOE and NSF should carve out money to start looking at social science and consumer adaptation manufacturers doing things that are not standards. And Bob Fry and I got a program, the result of that, which Steve Poonam funded, Alternative Energy Future Project,

04:39:34.160 - 04:40:01.360

which was really looking at social science accelerating implementation in the energy area. So I think, you know, I think having a couple of social scientists will would be useful, but there's always an argument between the physical scientists and also social science, really a science. And economists are important, but also having someone with,

04:40:02.640 - 04:40:40.560

you know, a psychology or social service, you know, that type of, or a market type of person could be very useful to implement things. So, but otherwise, you know, and gender, the hardest on any of these committees is getting people from industry to commit the time. And we were very fortunate. He wasn't on the initial one that Michael McQuade was able to do it.

04:40:40.720 - 04:41:09.040

United Technology was happy to have him do it back in the days. Allysignal at Mary Good. I mean, you know, I think it's, it's important to have an industry. And then we had the industry perspective, Craig Mundy from Microsoft and Eric from Google and I from Honeywell. So it's important to have that perspective. Yeah, so it's going to be interesting to see what

04:41:11.360 - 04:41:41.040

what the composition looks like of the new PCAST and how many. 21, I think was a good number. 30 Bush, who had 36, I don't know how you run 36 people, I mean, or do anything. And, you know, there weren't many reports that we just looked at the nano ones. On gender makeup, there were five women. And the interesting thing, Barbara, Barbara Shale, who was vice president

04:41:41.040 - 04:42:10.880

of the Academy of Sciences. And at the time, was professor of biology at Wash U and doing PCAST time became the dean. And I from was vice president of the NE and we used to kid what we had covered two boxes, because we were both women and covered representing the science and engineering community. As the whole. And then we had Shirley and Jackson from from RPI and Rosina and Chris. So there were

04:42:10.880 - 04:42:38.400

five of us and Shirley and Jackson left the second term, because she had an opportunity to be on a security presidential advisory group. And you can only be on one presidential advisory group, you can be on a presidential advisory group and many cabinet groups. But that makes sense. And then we she, we have Wanda Austin headed aerospace corporation. And so we had two,

04:42:39.760 - 04:43:11.120

and then we had Mariam allowed. So we had three sort of underrepresented minority groups, people. They're there. But no, the group really worked well together. I mean, you know, we didn't have to have, you know, any, you know, they didn't need to be any formal training or anything. They just, you know, everybody, I think that because everybody had been done lots of, you know,

04:43:11.120 - 04:43:41.040

work before on various committees. Should PCAST have a couple younger people? I mean, you know, meaning, you know, with that, you know, we did have some younger people. And, you know, but we're now gotten older. But, you know, I think having generational differences could be very useful, too. You know, I think the agriculture, I mean, we didn't have anybody really, you know,

04:43:41.040 - 04:44:05.920

we had people like Barbara, because she was at University of Washington, they had very close relationships with, with, with farm, Washington University of Washington University of Washington, Wash U at St. Louis, very, you know, close relationships with ag people. And we could, we called on them for, and others, but, but there was nobody from that industry per, per say.

04:44:09.760 - 04:44:41.680

It's interesting you mentioned the, the younger folks perspective. I think that Kelvin set up a board for early career scientist PCAST. I haven't, I know that they have met once, or they met once, but I haven't seen much more activity from who said who set it up. Dr. Drogemaier. Oh, okay. No, he did. Oh, did they ever, did they ever meet? I saw a screen

04:44:41.760 - 04:45:11.280

cap from a Zoom meeting, but I'm not sure how often they met, but it was a, was an idea they, they got from somewhere to, to put together like a young, an early career panel. No, I mean, I think I would rather see a couple of people embedded into the PCAST panel, that, you know, will as opposed to having a separate, separate panel, because you're

04:45:11.280 - 04:45:38.960

not going to have the same. Now, what the Academy did interesting along those lines, they set up from the division that does the social science work, a rapid response group to look at social science issues for the COVID. Yeah. Now you should want a couple reports. They, they, that started later than Harvey, but yet,

04:45:38.960 - 04:46:03.280

you know, they, and I, you know, I think that was an interesting approach. As, as it's a subgroup of the standing committee of social scientists. Right. Do you think this is a rather direct kind of targeted question, but do you think of, do you think PCAST should be statutory? Do you think that there should be,

04:46:04.960 - 04:46:25.440

and I don't, I don't have a good, I'm just curious on your perspective on that, is there, you know, it could disappear tomorrow or, or not, you know, based on its current charter, do you think it's something that Congress should mandate? Well, I mean, you know, if it, if it did get mandated, that would short, but that wouldn't assure that the president would use it,

04:46:26.000 - 04:46:55.440

or that the president would appoint people even. I mean, you know, it can be one of those things. Now, the OSTP is set up as a separate unit. I guess it's legislatively, I mean, in my own mind, I think it would be good, and it would be good, you know, that you, but you have to have flexibility. So, you know, you don't say whether it's 20 members or

04:46:55.600 - 04:47:24.000

30, but it would be good also to know that the, the head of OSTP was, was, and was made, was announced, you know, early on, not two years later. And they're not, being a science advisor is not mandated. Kevin was never a science advisor. Marlboro was never a science advisor. And wearing those two hats, I think, now, well, now it's a cabinet position.

04:47:24.960 - 04:47:52.400

So can, I don't know if people can revert. So the fact that it's a cabinet position, even though it's a cabinet position, head of OSTP, it still means that person will be at the, at the cabinet, you know, as an advisor to the president in those ways. But, you know, they could delay and naming cabinet officials or, you know, I mean, having the right structure,

04:47:52.880 - 04:48:21.440

and the question is, it would be interesting as part of your report drawing a, you know, what should the ideal PCAST look like in the first, in the first third of, well, we're almost there, the first half of the 21st century. You know, it's, it's going to be interesting to see in some ways, Eric, who was so involved in our, what practices does he use for his PCAST?

04:48:22.000 - 04:48:39.840

Right. But, I mean, I, you know, just like, you know, Congress can create it, and then they could defund it. I mean, there was the Office of Technology Assessment. Many of us felt that it was disappointing to see that independent technical advice disappear. The congressional

04:48:39.840 - 04:49:04.160

readership service is a more short term type of thing. And for whatever reason, the academy has not picked up that role in the same way. They do get funded by, but they haven't, in many of us over time, you know, encouraged him to do that. So, yeah, I don't, you know, it's an executive order gets issued each year. I mean, each time, but

04:49:04.960 - 04:49:33.280

whether you put that in statutory language, you know, something to be, I think something to be discussed, what it might look like. So, where's the discussion? You can get all the former PCAST chairs to get together and wrangle out an appropriate language. Right. Yeah, it's, well, it's one of our research questions, I guess. Thank you for

04:49:33.280 - 04:49:57.280

your perspective on it. And I'm curious that, you know, that you mentioned the two hats thing, and this is something that I've just, I've always wondered about. So, there was, I know you were involved at one point. There was a National Academy's series of studies on presidential appointments. Right. Neal chaired one, I think, that I would. Yeah.

04:49:58.160 - 04:50:26.320

I, when the 2008 election, excuse me, when 2016 election happened, I then searched for one. I thought maybe there'd be an updated version. Do you have any sense for what, I mean, to me, it was a really helpful document. Is that something that the academies, I don't know, I guess I'm asking. Well, I think it's, yeah, I thought they were helpful documents, and it showed

04:50:27.120 - 04:50:55.840

to the general public, you could see which easily see which positions were Senate confirmable, which were not, you know, and what was left, you know, what was important at the time. And I don't know whether, and I don't know who funded those. I don't know in the past when their NSF funded them. But I remember Debbie Stein, who was the director of Cosa

04:50:55.840 - 04:51:18.880

Papa at the time, she really, and she was there doing also the Gathering Storm. In my mind was a sort of a force behind it. And, you know, I think it's a, I think if they had done it, Trump would probably have ignored it anyway, but somebody, somebody coming in who hasn't been in government and get more and more can be,

04:51:19.840 - 04:51:47.360

I can also show the private sector and what needs to be filled that can be useful to them. I mean, I think it's, and it was not a, you know, it was a sort of straightforward study that could be done reasonably inexpensive. And with, I remember the one I was on, I think Neal was chair, Christie Whitman, he had a lot of people who had had political

04:51:47.360 - 04:52:13.040

appointments on it. So they really knew what was required of the government, you know, of the position. And it could almost do the whole thing by Zoom and one in person meeting. No, but I think that would be, it's not something Pcare should or OSTP should do. Right. Yeah, that seems like that would too much overlap there.

04:52:13.040 - 04:52:40.560

And any administrative, any, like, I mean, any, any, it has to be an independent group to do it. Well, I've got other questions, but I want to see, you know, before I kind of move on. And I know we kind of jumped a number of maybe a decade or something. So I want to see, maybe if Dave has, has any questions.

04:52:42.240 - 04:53:06.720

So I mean, you mentioned retiring soon after Honeywell. So I'm assuming that was around 2001. 2003, yeah, 2003. It's when I retired. Yeah. So I mean, I didn't have that many questions because I mean, it's quite clear that retirement did not mean stopping for you. So you've been quite busy. All I would have asked is,

04:53:07.520 - 04:53:32.800

is whether or not there's anything you would want to discuss about those years between 2003 and when you started working as a member of the PCAST. That's the only thing I had, Kenny. Well, I mean, I guess one of the things I'm one of it is personal that so 92, I would have made a member of the

04:53:33.520 - 04:54:08.080

elect to the Academy in 96. I was asked if I or end of nine of, I'm not nice, 2005, the end of 2005, whether I would want to be considered to be vice president for the NAA and and be on the ballot to be two people that and and so I discussed with my husband, you know, and that that was going to be quarter of my time. And I thought that was be a good I, you know,

04:54:08.080 - 04:54:30.960

that I said that he thought that was fine. And the person's responsibility as vice president is fundraising, working with the development office. And it had typically, if Lance Davis would say, as soon as you have a woman on the ballot against a man, the woman wins. And so they had these lists and 10 percent women, but they've been increasing. We were five percent

04:54:30.960 - 04:54:59.360

of time anyway. So I did and I in April, I was told I won the election in May. My husband was diagnosed with a very rare cancer, mantle cell lymphoma, which had chance to you either live one year, three years or five years. And and so the question was, should I do it? And and he said yes. And he was starting, he started his treatment in June

04:55:00.320 - 04:55:26.240

and followed the MD Anderson. He was in LA, but his seat was ended with the MD Anderson, of course. And after the first round, he just had terrible reaction and was in intensive care for three weeks and rehab in the hospital, five weeks and and survive for 14 months. But we never, he had to relearn to speak to swallow. I mean, it was just, you know, a very

04:55:28.160 - 04:55:52.240

difficult time. And he was in very good health. I mean, it was the diagnosis of the first day he exercised, he had, he had retired and really retired. I mean, he was on one of Robert Wood Johnson panel, other board, but otherwise, you know, he exercised and it is his thing. Well, happy that I was otherwise engaged. And then I debated, do I,

04:55:53.680 - 04:56:22.240

you know, let and I, the person I'd run against as a good friend, talked to Lance, and he said, well, if you miss the first four or five months, you'll make up for later. And so I did it. And I could do a lot of meetings by, I was at that point also on the Sandia board and the PNL board. And it's always on American Council for Energy Efficiency. And

04:56:24.320 - 04:56:52.560

was doing some, the Energy Academy. So anyhow, we, you know, so, I mean, but if you want to talk about one of the hardest times in one's life is seeing somebody, you know, this very important person and for, for, you know, just suffer. Anyhow, he did live to see his granddaughter born, which was very, very nice. Anyhow, he, but so, so, you know, so that occupied a good

04:56:54.000 - 04:57:24.080

part of my time. I, and if I, we had helped 24 seven, but if I had to go to a meeting, one of the family members would come also to be with Alan. And he, I mean, he was well aware of everything. He just had trouble communicating. Anyhow, the thing that, for me personally, the fact that PCAST came up sort of 15 months after he died with sort of, and I was doing the academy

04:57:25.040 - 04:57:58.320

work and which took up time. They have six council meetings a year and then meeting with the end the development people and I going out to solicit money. And then still always doing studies for him. But this was sort of a good, good sort of transition to, you know, as a time, time thing, I guess, and an intellectually challenge. But I was fortunate that I could still

04:57:59.200 - 04:58:35.360

continue some things, you know, by phone. They would say, if Sandia people would say, oh, the phone comes out, if I'm the ceiling comes, it's 40. And Zoom makes it much easier now. But it really, they were very, they were very supportive of, you know, my situation. And so that, so that, that took, I tell people never postpone anything at any age. Don't delay, do it.

04:58:36.320 - 04:59:03.520

And this had tremendous support from family and colleagues and friends that it was, very, very good. But again, so go back to, so I think, you know, having been elected vice president of the NAE, even though John knew who I was sort of put, you know, well, here's Barbara, the NAS, this, you know, if you look at what things make a difference in one's

04:59:03.520 - 04:59:26.000

career, aside from having a supportive spouse, which is important for the whole thing, is when the education and then to being elected to the academy, and then vice president, and then PCAST. I mean, all of a sudden, you're on PCAST. And, you know, Harvard wants you to come give a seminar. Well, you know, the week before, I didn't know anything

04:59:26.000 - 04:59:57.280

more than the week I was announced. I mean, it's just the very, it's just interesting how, you know, people think, well, you can be close to the president. You're going to do this. It's realistic or unrealistic. Opportunities come one's way, just from being on it. One can only have so much time or do so much. But the OPCAST, which looked bad after PCAST,

04:59:57.280 - 05:00:22.880

I mean, that was a terrific thing to have doing the whole COVID thing, when you really, you know, couldn't socialize with people and you can do so many. And we had, you know, took very specific topics that we developed, just like we had during the time. And typically two of us or three of us would be the lead. And, you know, we're going to have a weekly

05:00:22.880 - 05:00:46.720

Zoom where we had to give updates of everything. And everybody reviewed the papers and John being the wonderful editor that he is, you know, edited them all when they were done. Michael, at the beginning, was to have a short one. I had, I think I did the PPE with Susan Graham. I think we had eight pages. The update was almost as long, but the other reports were

05:00:46.720 - 05:01:18.480

most under 20 pages. But just having that intellectual getting together and doing, and no staff, I mean, that way. Fortunately, we had academics who really can do really good jobs with foot voting and all those things that when in industry, unless you're sending a report in for publication, you know, reports on on progress of your division or your strategic plan,

05:01:18.480 - 05:02:02.160

you weren't, it wasn't, you know, the documented in the same way. So, so I have so much so that so the Academy one was, which was 25% of my time. But before, you know, I was spending up until oh, six from a three to six, I was doing some Academy studies, also doing there's still sitting on some advisory boards. I mean, which, you know, which took fair, you

05:02:02.160 - 05:02:33.120

know, like, you're probably bad at it and doing some consulting. So it was and seeing, I mean, we had, you know, we would make my son's family is in the East Coast, you know, we would be able to go to the East Coast more often than and daughter in Berkeley. And then travel. So it's sort of had a mixture of things. But having three or four, at least three or four

05:02:33.120 - 05:03:02.640

different things doing, you know, was unconsciously important that I do. Does does OP cast still meet? No, no, no, we disbanded in December. After the Biden win, and we had done our six topics and condominium of the six parts. And the Biden administration was going to, you know, be able to do things in a rational way,

05:03:02.640 - 05:03:35.120

which has you noticed when you got shots in the arms and Jeffrey sites, you know, somebody in charge and, and having the science be followed is really unnecessary. I sent your report to Eric and to Francis Arnold and Maria Zuber. And I heard back from Francis Arnold, if I had any sage advice, others advice, but I'll be, I'll be curious, which I didn't say

05:03:35.120 - 05:04:00.560

to her, I told her that, you know, Eric knows all the best practices. And once they get started, she has questions. I'm happy to answer them. But this, you know, it's a lot, it's not more work than you think it's going to be. And it's a real privilege. But she, I'll be curious as to what their agenda looks like. And what also the makeup, you know, so what are the first things they tackle

05:04:00.560 - 05:04:27.280

and see, you know, is, you know, does infrastructure become something of importance? There's the broad implementation of, you know, and where the whole, and then also we have this, all this legislation and wanting to create NSF and to a technology institute, which those of us worry about the applied programs wonder, why are they going to do this? And,

05:04:28.160 - 05:04:51.920

and then ARPA for climate that's going to be spread across the agencies, the Congress hasn't reacted well to that in the appropriations process. Yeah, I was, you know, someone so familiar with ARPA, I was wondering what your perspective was on the ARPA C and the ARPA H initiatives. Well, and there had been an ARPA Homeland Security that had not been successful. And

05:04:52.880 - 05:05:20.000

I think the ARPA E, which had come out of the Gathering Storm study and just, I think Congress wants to see the justification of ARPA C, the ARPA E did get justified because of the Gathering Storm had a, there was one dissenter of that in that, in that report. But it took until the ARA Act for them to get any money and organize. So even though it got passed during Bush, it wasn't

05:05:20.000 - 05:05:53.360

getting organized. And Steve appointed a room, Majumdar, who ran a group at Berkeley and at LBNL, the lab, good rate mechanical engineer, he did a terrific job and really getting it started. And it got good people and, you know, did the right directions. And, you know, so it really takes what the leadership is. And, you know, and I think the idea of having rotating people for

05:05:53.360 - 05:06:16.320

every three or four years now, in a sense, he has the people rotate out from what's good. Several of them, Dave Davidson stayed and became the Assistant Secretary for Efficiency and Renewables. I mean, so it's, so I don't see how you do it. I think how you do it across several agencies. I mean, should, you know, that's going to, that's going to be a hard thing. And do, does every agency

05:06:16.320 - 05:06:47.600

give money to DOE to do it in their thing, parallel to how they did RPE? I mean, you know, that's, why not just have DOE do it and, and get input as a requirement as the agenda? You know, and it's not something I see always, you know, I don't see OSDP running such a thing like that. It would swamp their budget. But their leadership is key. I mean, and

05:06:49.680 - 05:07:17.120

Arun really did a really good job of it. And, yeah, the Academy was required to, which I was on the committee to look at it after five or six years. And what we said is they really needed to do one after 10 years to see what the impact was, because it was too early. They were early stage. And, you know, what was getting dropped, what was interesting, even at that study,

05:07:17.840 - 05:07:56.880

is some of the most successful ones were not doing energy related changes, but technologies that were related in other fields, which can be a success on its own. But, you know, it doesn't sound in my mind, not a, not a failure to work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will, yeah, I will be curious to see what comes of all the legislation you mentioned. Much less the budgets. I mean,

05:07:56.880 - 05:08:24.800

the DOE budget is just, you know, which is terrific. But they're all, you know, I was impressed, the Pacific Northwest Lab just had its advisory committee meeting on two weeks ago. And, you know, they've been very active in the grid and micro grids. And, you know, they're really in a good position to look at that whole area and storage. And, but they've got the administration wants,

05:08:24.800 - 05:08:47.120

you know, regional activities and underrepresented communities throughout. I mean, and that is very key on everybody's agendas. It's going to be interesting to see how that works out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The budget deadline is fast approaching. This summer has been really interesting following everything happening in both. Are we going to have just a continuing

05:08:47.120 - 05:09:19.760

resolution? Yeah, who knows? Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll see. Well, yeah, I think most of, yeah, I think I've covered most of the questions that I had. I guess I can open it up to Dave or just kind of general perspectives or yeah, I mean, I don't have any other questions myself. I always end interviews with, is there anything that we haven't asked about that you

05:09:19.760 - 05:09:46.960

think we should discuss? So that's always my last question. So I kind of turn it back on to the interviewee to see if there are other things that you would like to explore. Well, just briefly about, you know, role women in science and just, you know, how, how, how it has changed and how it hasn't changed in some ways. I mentioned when I went to MIT how few women there were and how

05:09:46.960 - 05:10:13.280

that's really, you know, changed. And the, but the engineering profession is still in the, in the, you know, still at 10, 20% women and then they drop out. I mean, it's our physical sciences, physics is low. I mean, it's still aiming, but, but, you know, how, how to, how to, and it, but also the women can work together. I've mentioned Mary Goode and I could, you know,

05:10:13.280 - 05:10:42.160

work together, but you could work with, you know, John Mason, who hired me was very supportive of us too. I mean, so it wasn't like something that he didn't want to do. But so many of the agencies didn't have women. And this was particularly in the 70s. And I was very fortunate that I hired half a dozen women who I'm still friendly with, actually, that came right out of, almost right

05:10:42.160 - 05:11:08.080

out of graduate school was their, their first thing. I mean, one had a, but they were in the one had an MBA and Linda Schuck told me, I mentioned her about this oral interview. And she said she didn't feel she had an MBA from Stanford. She didn't feel uncomfortable coming to work in 78 within the DOE. And she was with a group of two of the women in Joe Barrow to look

05:11:08.080 - 05:11:38.800

at market penetration issues for efficiency. I always take money off to do some social science work. But then she got promoted to a job with finance that was looking at real estate finance and all for buildings area. And she would go to meetings with and she would go to meetings with the insurance industry, the banking industry, realtors and be the only woman there. So I had

05:11:38.880 - 05:12:14.400

not heard, went out and got a pair of glasses that were blank so that she would look like she was very serious. And she ended up after when Reagan came in, she moved to Kashin Earth and moved to California in the mid 80s and working at PGMA. And there were several, I had people at Bob Fry's major executive assistant, when he was leaving Earth on DOE was formed, he knew he would

05:12:14.400 - 05:12:39.280

have to leave, but she was not as if I would hire her. And I had Anne working on an energy extension service along with somebody else that we created. So it was, and I mentioned the letter writer ended up being, they're just having, I mean, but in thinking about it, there were fewer from the physical sciences than there were from the social sciences. But that was a part,

05:12:40.160 - 05:13:06.320

an important part of the program. But things change, you know, I mean, you change your head, Rita become head of NSF and Rita Colwell. And it was the same, she was the same generation as I and you know, not, there were not a lot of women role models. You just, you know, you did it. All of us had very supportive spouses and supportive family or supportive families that

05:13:06.320 - 05:13:34.160

became the key to to doing that. So when I would testify in Congress, which I had to do a lot in the late 70s and 80s for authorization, appropriation, and then the bills we were doing, I was always referred to by my first name, but that was fine. But all the men were referred to as Mr. Doctor. And what's appliance standards? I remember Senator from Arkansas saying, well,

05:13:34.160 - 05:14:02.960

when my wife goes to buy an appliance, how is she going to know what's the most efficient? It was, but, but, you know, it was not stopped. And at joining, so, but the government, at least the energy agency had more women than let's say DOD. But the, when I went to the aerospace industry, it had very few women. But John had, there was a couple of young women, mechanical engineers,

05:14:02.960 - 05:14:40.320

and I hired four ceramists right out of graduate school that were doing it. And who then went on to other things. And I mentioned in a talk that I gave that there's now something called C3E, which DOE and MIT, and I gave input to women in clean energy and education and empowerment. And they have an annual meeting and I gave a talk in 2013, I got an award. And I said,

05:14:40.400 - 05:15:05.520

you know, when we started, there weren't 20 women. And here at this annual meeting were 250 women who were entrepreneurial and this energy efficiency renewables, they were entrepreneurs. They were working in academia, or they were working in bigger in the commons. John Wall promoted, after he left as CTO, a woman became CTO is a big engine company. She's dwarfed by all

05:15:05.520 - 05:15:38.880

these big trucks. That, you know, there has been a real change that many more, which is good. I think this is really a good thing that it's, you know, a large number and it's, but it doesn't, didn't always happen that the, in the Trump administration, didn't happen at the higher ranks. Biden is doing a very good job of appointing a lot of women and also kind of underrepresented

05:15:38.880 - 05:16:09.520

minorities. And underrepresented minorities in the physical sciences or in engineering are still more difficult. Though Georgia Tech claimed that when Wengloff, he graduated more black engineers than all the HBUCs, which is something to be very proud of and which is very good, but it's just got a bill on that. So I think, you know, women's role have opportunities have expanded and have

05:16:09.520 - 05:16:36.080

been taking advantage of, but it does take more, you know, you do, and role models become important as to who you see. And I mean, I've, you know, some, Sandia, for example, said, you know, they needed to have some women in the higher positions and Jill Huberie ended up being head of, she's now had a nominee friend and I say had, but the customer wants to see who are, the government

05:16:36.080 - 05:17:02.240

have been faster than industry in many ways of having women in the positions of, in the civil service ranks and those who control the money. The customer wants them to see people looking like you, like them in some way, it's not all, you know, not a group of all white males. So it's, I don't know how well integrated Rice is, it was all male at one point.

05:17:03.360 - 05:17:34.560

Yeah, yeah, I mean, Rice is now wrestling with a lot of those issues, historical as, you know, was founded as a, as a free university or free for white men. So. But Anita Jones is one of your graduates and she's just a terrific person. Yeah, she's great. Yeah, yeah. She's never been on PCAST, I don't know. But partly because she worked

05:17:34.640 - 05:18:00.880

for the government for doing those the whole years of the Clinton, Clinton time. And she's been very active on all the defense boards. Right. Right. Yeah, I'd always was curious about that. There's only been one or two instances when somebody who was employed by the federal government was on PCAST at the time of their service.

05:18:00.880 - 05:18:25.520

I think it's. Oh, yeah, no, no, that's not, you could talk to me. They don't know that. But she even when she left, you know, she went back to UVA, she, but that could be because she's been on the defense science and we don't do many defense, they don't do a lot of defense issues, but she is broader. She and I were on the National Science Board together. Right. She did two terms.

05:18:25.840 - 05:18:55.840

One term was enough. I mean, this was good. I mean, I think six years is just like PCAST. I'll be interested, John, who had asked us if any of us wanted to re, you know, to submit our names to be considered for this PCAST. Yes, all of PCAST. And so I don't know. So I felt that new people, I personally knew people if they did a study, I'd be interested,

05:18:55.840 - 05:19:23.440

but not to be on it. There should be, but there were people like Chuck Vest in Norm Augustine were on both Democrat and Republican PCAST, which were, which were very good. David Shaw was an initial member of ours, but he had been on the Clinton PCAST, had not been on the Bush PCAST. Right. Yeah. It's

05:19:25.360 - 05:19:50.960

interesting to talk to folks that have served on, on two, because the style of these leaders changes so much. And of course, presidents too. So yeah. Well, that's why it'll be interesting to follow your study has to go through the Biden administration's PCAST. You've got this. I guess Eric's the first head who's had so much experience with PCAST. Yeah. Yeah. It'll,

05:19:51.840 - 05:20:23.840

yeah, I'm kind of waiting to see, see who it chooses and how it operates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. As I said, we'll see what practices he does and doesn't do. Yeah, we will see. We will see. So I don't, anything, I don't, you know, something else may occur to me later, but I don't. Yeah. Well, thank you for all your stories and perspectives. Well, I'm glad you're

05:20:23.840 - 05:20:45.280

doing all this. It's really a pleasure speaking with you. I learned so much. Well, it sort of reawakes my memory. So it was sort of interesting, very interesting. And I, I will hopefully get things back to you in less than 60 days, but it just depends how many pay, how many pages of this are there.

05:20:48.400 - 05:21:12.800

Yeah. I'm not sure how long a six hour transcript turns out to be. I would have a request to come in. How much? About a hundred. I would, I would have a request to come in hard copy. Oh yeah, it's a problem. Because I can, I just very interesting technical papers, partly because of my eyes, probably

05:21:12.800 - 05:21:40.720

more than five pages I have to print out. Read, I can read all my books on Kindle, but and we can read reports and things, but like if I have to review a report for the Academy, it's I've got to print it out. Otherwise I miss something. So very good. Okay. So any, that's it? That's, that's it for us, I think.

05:21:41.280 - 05:22:01.840

No, I hope, really hope you get John, because I think he would really give you a good perspective of the two different, different ones. Yeah, I hope so too. Yeah, I think we'll, we'll keep poking them and see. I know he's very, very, very busy. So hopefully we can get him on.

05:22:01.840 - 05:22:21.120

Well, maybe you can schedule like we had an hour meeting every Friday morning at nine o'clock to catch on you for, for our Zoom meeting. Maybe you can get him six one hour Zoom meeting. Then get his schedule fixed. I assume you're going to cover people in the, in the

05:22:23.360 - 05:22:43.920

Trump administration or Kevin at least. Yeah, we're, we're hoping to get Dr. Drogmeyer at least and then we'll, we'll see that at the moment the scope is, you know, the Bush, Bush won through, through Obama. But if we, if we can, we'd love to talk to those folks as well and see.

05:22:45.360 - 05:23:06.240

Did they issue any, they issued one or two reports, one, I guess talking about the five key technologies that had to be done, but I don't know of anything else. Yeah, I think you're right. It was just the industries of the future report. I submitted a FOIA really early on and I'm still, still waiting to see if I get, get anything back

05:23:06.240 - 05:23:29.520

from, from that OSDP. So we'll, we'll see. Hopefully I'll get some, get some more documents and stuff that we'll, we'll then preserve, but. Are you pretty successful getting things back on the FOIAs? Part of it was, it's been, the libraries have been so, through COVID have been really,

05:23:29.520 - 05:23:50.320

really understaffed and short staffed. And I think in some cases, my FOIA requests were a bit too broad. So for instance, you know, at the GW Bush library, they were, at first they told me, they were like, Hey, we don't think there'll be much. And I was like, well, you know, whatever comes up is fine. And then six months later, they were like, we found a hundred thousand documents.

05:23:54.160 - 05:24:10.240

Every travel voucher was part of it. Exactly. Right. And, you know, and going through stuff, I've been to the Bush library, the Bush, Bush one library a couple of times because it's so close, you know, it's the same thing where it'll be like, you know, I requested a box and the whole box is dropping vouchers, you know, like, I don't,

05:24:11.200 - 05:24:33.360

while I'm glad this exists, I don't know how valuable it is to scan. But yeah, no, it's been, it's been mixed so far. It's mostly just getting everything through clearance. I think there's just, they've been short staffed. And so hopefully in the next few months, I'll, I'll get some, get some good news.

05:24:34.080 - 05:25:04.400

Yeah. Well, I look forward to your report. The other, if I hear anything from Maria or anybody, I'll let you know, but Francis did get it. So yeah, thank you so much for sending those along. And of course, I'm happy to talk. If they have questions on PCAST history, I'm happy to pass. Oh, okay. I will, one thing, one, one side, either if I hear back from Maria, I'll send back

05:25:04.400 - 05:25:31.600

that you are, if not once they name it and do everything, I'll, I'll give them your contact information. Thank you. Yeah. So David, you do all these oral histories for lots of projects? Yeah, we have multiple projects going on all at once. The major focus recently, so in addition to the work on PCAST, we've also been doing a lot on science and disability.

05:25:32.320 - 05:25:59.120

That's been a big push. And so not that it's not an official project, but when I first came in to work at the Science History Institute, I evaluated the collection and it became clear that unintentionally, intentionally, I don't know, the way that we were representing science in our oral history collection was as an endeavor that only men did. And so

05:26:00.080 - 05:26:26.480

for the past 14 years that I've been at the Science History Institute, one of my major pushes has been, you know, making sure that the collection actually represents those who are doing science. And so, yeah, it's not a project, but I tried to interview more women, more minorities, right, just to make sure that what we are putting out there is a reflection of science and engineering

05:26:26.480 - 05:26:56.800

itself and not some artificial construct that we want to perpetuate about who's actually doing science, right? It's not just men, white men in some room taking care of all of this. So, that's kind of been a core component of the work at the Institute for quite some time. So, as part of this study, Shirley Ann Jackson, one of the people you would consider interviewing,

05:26:56.800 - 05:27:25.120

I mean, just goes back all the way to her, she was the first African American to get a PhD, and I think bachelor in physics from MIT, and then headed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I don't know where she worked in between, and that was on PCAST just for the one term and been president of RPI for a good many years. Yeah, go ahead, dude. I was going to say we were interested

05:27:25.120 - 05:27:45.440

in Shirley Ann Jackson well before this project. So, she was on our list of, we'd like to interview this person, but I mean, always quite busy, right, understandably so. And it's like, do you have six hours to carve out? No, I do not have six hours to carve out. Well, so she drives, whenever she came to PCAST, coming from the Albany area,

05:27:45.440 - 05:28:09.840

she would come by a driver as opposed to be a plane or something. I don't know how often she's coming to Washington now, but who could arrange while she's in her car. So, I'm sure she's doing work, which is part of the reason she has a driver to have some time. But she, I mean, she just has a very interesting history of what she's done. In some cases, quite controversial.

05:28:09.840 - 05:28:37.840

My grandson, after his junior year in college, worked in Washington at the NGO that was doing transcribing of oral histories from the Manhattan Project. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, that was, that he found, they found interesting. I mean, it was sort of a niche type of area. Yeah, but I mean, that was a very fascinating group of individuals.

05:28:38.480 - 05:28:56.800

Oh, yeah. Who were working on that project, and not just because of their intelligence and their capabilities in science, but they, I mean, from what I've read, you know, they like joking around a lot. And so, it was a, it was a serious, but also comical kind of atmosphere there.

05:28:56.800 - 05:29:17.920

Well, it's a camaraderie. I mean, I think when you're in this emergency situation, and you're, you know, you're, you're spent living together and doing, and you've got to solve this problem, and you're finding this incredible enemy that, you know, it does, you're working hard, but you're also partying in a science somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah,

05:29:17.920 - 05:29:41.760

but he found, he found it interesting. He was not, he was a global affairs manager, not a science major, but he found it very, very interesting. Okay. All right. Well, I thank you all. And if something comes up, I'll get back to you, or if you have any questions. And I look forward to, you know, seeing the transfer,

05:29:41.760 - 05:30:04.960

but then seeing the final product. Yeah, that's good. I think it's good you're documenting all this. Yeah, I mean, a lot of people don't realize, like when, when I say, oh, you know, we want to do an oral history, and a lot of scientists say, well, why don't you just read my publications? And it's like, there's a lot that happened that you don't publish on. And so that's what we're

05:30:04.960 - 05:30:25.840

trying to figure out, right? There's, there's just a lot that's, that happens in rooms and no one records this information. And the only way to get access to it is by talking to individuals. And you trigger by talking to him, you trigger memories or things that happen. Yeah, I remember the first interview I did was with Torsten Weasel. It was part of a project I

05:30:25.840 - 05:30:52.080

was working on related to the Pew Scholars Program for biomedical scientists. And, you know, I went to do the interview. It was extremely fascinating. I was talking to him about his, his early scientific career abroad. And I mentioned the paper that he wrote, published in English. And his first response to me was, to be honest, I don't remember what I did

05:30:52.080 - 05:31:12.000

in that paper. And as it though happens, I had actually made a copy of that paper and brought it with me. And I just handed it to him. And the moment that he saw the paper, like he, he didn't read through it in detail. He was just started stimming it. And the moment he started stimming it, it was like, Oh, now I remember this. I remember that. Oh, there's this funny thing that happened.

05:31:12.000 - 05:31:28.400

And they're like, you know, those memories do come flooding back with these little, little prompts that you can show off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you get used to it being doing the interviews. Yeah. All right. Well, you will have a good summer. You too. Thank you so much for your time. Okay. Thank you. Bye.