A.R. Ravishankara was born in Shimoga, India, and grew up mostly in Mysore and Bangalore, India. His father was a farmer who died when A.R. was ten years old. Ravishankara attended a private school and graduated from…

Mario Molina grew up Mexico City, Mexico, one of eight children. His father was a lawyer and judge, his stepmother a teacher and housewife. Molina liked music and played the violin seriously. He also loved science,…

Joseph DeSimone began his childhood in Norristown, Pennsylvania, one of three children. His father, an Italian immigrant, was a tailor; his mother was an accountant; there was a large Italian extended family. DeSimone…

George M. Wyman was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1921. Wyman attended the Lutheran Gimnázium in Budapest until World War II threatened, leaving for the United States to become a chemist. Wyman entered Cornell…

Christie G. Enke was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1933. While attending high school, he worked as a stage manager and took electronics classes at Dunwoody Industrial Institute (now Dunwoody College of Technology).…

Peter DeCarlo grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana, the second of three children. His father is a professor of electrical engineering at Purdue University, and his mother is a kindergarten teacher. Both sisters also have…

Jean H. Futrell was born in Grant Parish, Louisiana. He majored in chemical engineering at Louisiana Tech University, and also enrolled in the Air Force ROTC. Futrell attended the University of California at Berkeley…

Rolf Dessauer was born in Nuremberg, Germany, one of two sons of a physician and a housewife. His family fled to the United States after Kristallnacht, eventually settling in Flushing, New York. After service in the US…

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…

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…

Franz Hillenkamp was born in Essen, Germany. Having chosen the science and math track in the Gymnasium Hillenkamp went on to major in electrical engineering at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM). He interrupted his…

Constantine E. Anagnostopoulos was born in Turkey in 1922 to parents of Greek descent. Due to Turkish expulsion of the Greeks when he was three months old, the family left for the Greek mainland. Because his father was…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…