This oral history is one in a series that looks at the history of the Toxic Substances Control Act from the perspectives of the individuals involved in its creation, implementation, and execution.

Glenn E. Schweitzer…

James R. Von Ehr, II, grew up in Grand Rapids and New Buffalo, Michigan, one of three children. His parents did not attend college but emphasized that education was important. Von Ehr's interest in electronics was…

This oral history is one in a series that looks at the history of the Toxic Substances Control Act from the perspectives of the individuals involved in its creation, implementation, and execution.

Victor J. Kimm…

Marvin Margoshes grew up in New York City, New York, one of three children. His parents had left the Austro-Hungarian Empire, his father from Galicia and his mother from Hungary, and had met as members of a Zionist…

John R. Ferraro was born and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. He attended Richard T. Crane Technical High School, then worked at General Motors for three years before entering Illinois Institute of Technology, majoring in…

Ronald Macfarlane was born in Buffalo, New York, the oldest of three children. An excellent teacher in high school sparked his interest in chemistry, and Macfarlane attended the University of Buffalo, majoring in…

Uma Chowdhry grew up in Bombay (later Mumbai), India, one of three children. She attended British missionary schools, which taught in English, and became interested in science in high school. Having obtained a…

Peter B. Lederman, an only child, was born in Weimar, Germany. His father was an accountant who spent a week in a concentration camp but was recalled in order to help the state collect taxes. When Peter was seven the…

Emmett D. Crawford was born in Meridian, Mississippi, but grew up in Laurinburg, North Carolina. His father, a minister and director of admissions at St. Andrews Presbyterian College, and his mother, a teacher, divorced…

Harold M. McNair grew up in Miami, Arizona, one of two sons. His parents worked in the local copper mines; they were not highly educated, but they valued education and encouraged Harold. He did well in school but also…

David Pyott was raised in India and Scotland. An early love of languages led him to work and study in mainland Europe, while pursuing a BA in German language and literature at the University of Edinburgh. Later, he…

Nadrian C. Seeman grew up an only child in Highland Park, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. His father owned a fur store, and his mother had been a teacher. He was inspired by his high school biology teacher to focus on…

Arthur L. Babson grew up in Essex Fells, New Jersey. Babson began college and the Army Special Training Reserve Program at Rutgers University but was expelled for missing a single class. He then worked in a laboratory…

Gabriel Schmergel was born in 1940 in Budapest, Hungary. He immigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen shortly after the Soviet Union defeated the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. His parents worked manual labor…

Robert Carpenter was born in San Diego, California, in 1945. He moved to South Bend, Indiana, where his father started a family bakery when he was an infant. When Carpenter was in elementary school, the family moved to…

In his oral history Lawrence Evans begins by describing his parents and early life in New Mexico and Oklahoma. He describes the important influence that his father, a pharmacist by training, had in shaping an interest…

Emma Parmee grew up in Keynsham, England, the youngest of four children. Her father was a banker, her mother a housewife. She had always liked math and science, but she also liked languages. She attended all-girls…

Jean S. Kane grew up mostly in Tenafly, New Jersey. Although her father was an accountant, Jean was the first in her family to attend college. She began at Keuka College, intending to get a nursing degree, but she…

Darleane (Christian) Hoffman was born in Terril, Iowa, one of two children. She grew up "all over" Iowa as her father was a public school superintendent who soon moved to Coon Rapids and then to West Union. Her mother,…

This oral history is one in a series that looks at the history of the Toxic Substances Control Act from the perspectives of the individuals involved in its creation, implementation, and execution.

Don R. Clay received…

James A. McCloskey, Jr., grew up in San Antonio, Texas. He entered Trinity University in San Antonio, where he majored in chemistry; he earned a PhD in analytical chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.…

Mary K. Gall matriculated at Vassar College. Originally she was interesed in bacteriology, but she decided to major in chemistry. She felt she did not have enough 'drive' for medical school, and she always wanted to be…

Penelope Fenner-Crisp grew up in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of two children. Her father changed jobs frequently; her mother was a housewife until Fenner-Crisp was nearly through high school. The family all…

Catherine Fenselau grew up in York, Nebraska. Always interested in science, first archaeology and ultimately chemistry, she attended Bryn Mawr College. The chairman of the chemistry department, Ernst Berliner, became…

Esther Takeuchi grew up in Akron, Ohio, the youngest of three children. After escaping Soviet Latvia, her father became an electrical engineer for Goodyear Aerospace and her mother a home health worker who also had an…