00:00:00 There are many interesting anecdotes to tell about this time.

00:00:14 It was, of course, feverish activity on the part of all of us.

00:00:19 Though I carried the ball through the semester, I was meeting with a group of about ten teachers

00:00:24 in the Bay Area who were teaching with the material as we turned it up, and we'd meet

00:00:30 with them once a week.

00:00:31 Now, we, in this case, turned out to be this co-author of mine on the Hydrogen Bond book,

00:00:36 Aubrey McClellan, who had come back to Berkeley to work at Sheppard Research Labs, and I enlisted

00:00:42 him to be the editor of the teacher's guide.

00:00:46 So the two of us would meet once a week with these teachers and find out what had happened

00:00:50 during the last week.

00:00:53 We told them what was going to happen, or we hoped would happen the next week, and tried

00:00:57 to prepare them for it.

00:00:59 This was an exciting time for them, and for many of them, just a memorable experience.

00:01:06 I have had people come back, you know, as recently as this last year, but continually

00:01:13 over the decades telling me, high school teachers telling me, that that was the most exciting

00:01:19 thing that ever had happened to them in their teaching career.

00:01:23 Let me come back to Berkeley for a moment.

00:01:26 I've had a lot of remarkable colleagues.

00:01:30 You mentioned Gilbert Lewis earlier.

00:01:32 What was he like in those early days?

00:01:35 I had a bit of contact with G.N. Lewis.

00:01:39 He was, by just fortune, in the laboratory across the hall from me when I first started

00:01:45 on the Manhattan Project.

00:01:47 Now, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't—I was like a hick from the sticks as far as

00:01:54 big-time science was concerned, coming from UCLA, had very few graduate students, relatively

00:01:59 little research emphasis, and I didn't have any idea who G.N. Lewis was.

00:02:05 And G.N. Lewis had billowy white hair and a beard and mustache, and looked like a Hollywood

00:02:11 version of a mad scientist to me.

00:02:15 And I used to wonder what on earth that fellow did over there.

00:02:18 Well, it turned out that when I started going to the weekly seminars, I found out that he

00:02:23 was the leader of the department, and the seminars were sort of his hallmark.

00:02:30 Individuals on the faculty, graduate students, postdocs, would be responsible for giving

00:02:34 a seminar, and it was a real dialogue situation in which G.N. Lewis took a very active part

00:02:42 and extremely stimulating person.

00:02:46 You could see how he managed to turn Berkeley from a cow-town university into, as far as

00:02:52 the chemistry department was concerned, one of the leading ones in the world.

00:02:55 I'm going to list a few names here.

00:02:58 Give me some quick, brief sketches.

00:03:01 E.O.

00:03:02 Lawrence.

00:03:03 I had very little contact with E.O.

00:03:05 Lawrence.

00:03:06 I regarded him as, of course, an inventive genius, and having invented the cyclotron,

00:03:13 but an extremely able PR and operator type.

00:03:18 Okay.

00:03:19 Glenn Seaborg.

00:03:21 Glenn was the person I came up to Berkeley to work with on the Manhattan Project, but

00:03:26 as fate would have it, about two weeks before I arrived, he went to Chicago, and I never

00:03:33 met him during the Manhattan Project.

00:03:36 My major contact with Glenn has been in later years as a colleague, and in his most recent

00:03:42 years, he's done absolutely remarkable things in trying to stimulate chemical education

00:03:49 in this country.

00:03:50 Melvin Kenelman.

00:03:51 Melvin, of course, was there all the time I was there as a faculty colleague.

00:03:57 He came to work with G. N. Lewis, and more or less adopted G. N. Lewis's style.

00:04:06 He has always been a very exciting, ebullient person to be around, comes up with ideas as

00:04:12 fast as you can assimilate them, and just an exciting scientist to be near.

00:04:19 So there was a large, creative atmosphere.

00:04:22 Yes.

00:04:23 Yes.

00:04:24 Extremely stimulating environment.

00:04:25 What was that like?

00:04:27 Well, it, I think, provided the optimum place for a young person who had any creativity

00:04:33 to nurture and develop it, and go his own way.

00:04:37 Everyone was encouraged, you know, to develop their own ideas, and new ideas were looked

00:04:44 on with positive attitudes rather than conservative, I didn't think of that, I'll figure out

00:04:51 why it's wrong, type of attitudes you run into in lots of places.

00:04:55 Let me throw another name out who wasn't a chemist but a physicist, but who was part

00:04:59 of that atmosphere here, Edward Teller.

00:05:05 Teller was not at Berkeley while I was, and he had been, of course, a member of the physics

00:05:12 department, and has done some landmark work in spectroscopy that affects the field in

00:05:20 which I work.

00:05:22 But my major contact with him came when I began to get into this atomic bomb stuff.

00:05:30 And that always more or less put me on the opposite side of a fence, because I wasn't

00:05:38 interested in the development of weapons, I was interested in the development of peacetime

00:05:42 uses of atomic energy, including, of course, propulsion applications.

00:05:51 But the thumbnail sketch of Teller to me is, he's got ideas I don't agree with, and

00:06:01 he's so brilliant he's dangerous.

00:06:02 Let's move to the National Science Foundation now.

00:06:03 At the time, you'd just spent three years serving on the National Academy of Science

00:06:04 panel on atmospheric chemistry, leading to the 76th report on halocarbons and the ozone

00:06:05 layer.

00:06:06 And the National Academy of Science committee on science and public policy, you spent a

00:06:26 lot of time in Washington during that time.

00:06:28 Yes, I did.

00:06:29 I was also on a committee called the Lunar and Planetary Missions Board, which was a

00:06:34 group of so-called experts across all the disciplines that NASA put together to advise

00:06:40 them on optimizing the science that came from the lunar landings.

00:06:46 So that was another reason I was in Washington a lot.

00:06:50 But what really got me into the NSF job was something local here at Berkeley.

00:06:59 Some of my poli-sci colleagues decided to run a cross-disciplinary seminar on science

00:07:06 policy, how it's made and how it should be made.

00:07:10 And they got engineers and me as a chemist in, and we'd have biweekly meetings of this

00:07:18 cross-disciplinary group in which we'd talk about the various kinds of science policy

00:07:25 and the world was faced with and the mechanisms by which they were addressed.

00:07:32 About that time, I became so concerned that there were so few scientists involved in Washington,

00:07:38 D.C. in making these policy decisions that I began to make it a flag that I was carrying

00:07:46 that more scientists had to go to Washington.

00:07:49 And as a result of these activities you've mentioned, my name was known in Washington

00:07:54 and I was offered this job as Deputy Director, and I felt if I didn't take the job I'd

00:07:58 have to put up or shut up, and I couldn't see myself shutting up, so I decided to take

00:08:03 the job at NSF as Deputy Director of the National Science Foundation.

00:08:07 So you were there during the Carter administration?

00:08:10 Yes, 1977 to 1980.

00:08:12 What were some of the key decisions?

00:08:15 Well, at the time, the National Science Foundation was just approaching for the first time the

00:08:22 billion dollar budget, which was taking it into a range at which public notice of the

00:08:29 amount of money began to be more significant.

00:08:33 As long as the amount of money was small, modest compared to other activities, the Congress

00:08:40 was willing to let NSF sort of run its own show.

00:08:44 But now Congress began to say, wait a minute, are we getting our money's worth?

00:08:50 And one of the pressures at the time that we were trying to resist was that the money

00:08:57 that NSF spent should be geographically uniformly distributed across the country, whereas we

00:09:03 were distributing according to the principles that were developed in ONR.

00:09:09 So now Congress was doing something quite political.

00:09:13 Right.

00:09:14 They were saying, you should not decide where the best projects are, but let's have some

00:09:20 voter distribution.

00:09:22 Exactly.

00:09:23 Where's the money going, why isn't more money going to Oklahoma, and so on.

00:09:29 So what we had to do was try to persuade them that the principles that we had been using

00:09:36 were the way to get the most money for the, most results for the available money, and

00:09:41 that was to go where there were successful creative scientists and give them the opportunity

00:09:47 to do what they were good at.

00:09:50 So I had a lot of contact with individuals in Congress, including the senators and representatives

00:09:58 from Oklahoma, South Carolina.

00:09:59 What was it like working with them and telling them that maybe Oklahoma wasn't the place

00:10:00 for NSF money to go to?

00:10:01 Well, one had to do this very diplomatically and persuasively, and they were always very

00:10:15 intelligent people.

00:10:17 On the other hand, they didn't give up their point very easily, and it was just a matter

00:10:21 of constantly sounding persuasive and credible, because you had to sound as though you weren't

00:10:29 a salesman, not a used car salesman, but a credible scientist, giving them advice on

00:10:34 something you knew about that they didn't.

00:10:38 What were the other key issues during the Carter administration?

00:10:42 Another key issue was challenges—and this is part of the same thing I was talking about—challenges

00:10:48 to the peer review system, which was the system by which proposals come to the National Science

00:10:55 Foundation and are judged, not by a political group in Washington, D.C., but by experts

00:11:01 in the field.

00:11:02 And that, of course, was always accused of being an old boys' club, but nevertheless

00:11:10 it was the best way we had to find out what were the projects that deserved the support.

00:11:16 So peer review came under challenge.

00:11:18 And then, in the last two years of the Carter administration, the budget crisis became very

00:11:25 severe, and we just had trouble defending our budget.

00:11:28 There were a number of things that I tried to initiate that represented operating procedures

00:11:35 in NSF that I felt would make it a better agency for the support of fundamentals research,

00:11:42 and I tried to influence the operating procedures.

00:11:47 Incidentally, the director at the time was Dr. Richard Atkinson, now chancellor at UC

00:11:54 San Diego.

00:11:55 And he and I formed a very excellent complementary pair, because he was extremely able in the

00:12:02 political scene.

00:12:03 And he liked it.

00:12:04 He was very articulate, quick-minded, and he hated detail.

00:12:12 And so it got to an operating situation in which he was Mr. Outside and I was Mr. Inside.

00:12:18 I made sure that the wheels turned and things operated smoothly in the foundation by paying

00:12:25 attention to all the details.

00:12:26 Are you suggesting that you weren't a very good politician, too?

00:12:31 Well, let me answer this way.

00:12:34 Was I a good politician?

00:12:35 When I went to Washington, I had no idea that it would be a political job in any sense of

00:12:41 the word.

00:12:42 I figured that it was just a matter of going there as a good scientist, helping make the

00:12:49 maximum use of resources to further fundamental research.

00:12:53 Well, it turned out that that was one important role, but equally important was this business

00:12:59 of convincing Congress and, of course, the administration, the president's science advisor,

00:13:06 that we were doing a good job.

00:13:10 And so I testified lots in front of Congress and spent a lot of time in the science advisor's

00:13:16 office doing things that might have intimidated me to the point that I wouldn't have taken

00:13:23 the job if I'd realized that I'd spent so much time in political activity.

00:13:28 Let me suggest we take another break here and—

00:13:40 Okay, we're rolling.

00:13:43 So you came back from Washington in July of 1980 as director of the Laboratory of Chemical

00:13:49 Biodynamics at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

00:13:53 What kind of research did you provide over there?

00:13:56 Well, this is one of the earliest cross-disciplinary labs in the country, originated by Melvin

00:14:04 Calvin, whom we mentioned before.

00:14:07 Melvin foresaw the importance in the biological area of having a cross-disciplinary approach,

00:14:16 and so that was one of my first aims, was to make sure that I maintained that cross-disciplinary

00:14:22 quality.

00:14:23 At the same time, I wanted to introduce some new themes, new directions, and I picked two.

00:14:32 One was to broaden the traditional meaning of photosynthesis from what Melvin had made

00:14:39 it mean, which was natural photosynthesis, to photosynthesis, or what I call photon conversion,

00:14:47 for the storage of solar energy, including natural photosynthesis, but also including

00:14:54 artificial systems that would do the job perhaps more efficiently.

00:14:59 So that was one aim, and to bring in the modern laser spectroscopic techniques.

00:15:06 The other was to move our biological side toward the bioengineering, very obviously

00:15:14 a coming thing, and in both of these I was reasonably successful.

00:15:21 What were you most interested in at that time?

00:15:30 As I came back?

00:15:31 Yeah.

00:15:32 Well, I had, as a result of all the experience with flash photolysis and the rapid scan spectrometer

00:15:40 and the matrix isolation work, I had developed a continued interest in photochemistry,

00:15:47 and so I decided that, of course, photochemistry is what photosynthesis is all about,

00:15:53 and what we needed to know was more about the chemistry of a molecule after it had absorbed light,

00:16:02 this being very different from the chemistry of the ground state.

00:16:06 And so I've devoted myself to my research group, to the study of electronically excited molecules,

00:16:15 that is molecules that have absorbed light, and how their chemistry is unique and different

00:16:20 from that of normal molecules.

00:16:22 Let's talk a little bit about the famous Pimentel report.

00:16:26 What is it?

00:16:27 Well, after I'd been back a year or two, back from Washington,

00:16:36 there was a general move to see if we couldn't find some way, some mechanisms by which

00:16:46 the public and Congress could be awakened to the importance and a positive sense of chemistry

00:16:51 in modern industrial societies.

00:16:55 And the question was raised as to whether we should have a report about,

00:17:01 so to speak, opportunities in chemistry, which turned out to be the title of our book,

00:17:06 that surveyed what chemistry is all about in the modern world

00:17:11 in a way that would persuade people that it's much more important to them

00:17:16 than is merely indicated by saying that, look at all the chemicals in the environment

00:17:21 being spewed out there and killing us all.

00:17:24 The National Academy drew together a group of people and asked me to chair it

00:17:32 to decide whether such a report was needed.

00:17:35 And just at the time that we had our first meeting,

00:17:39 a move was made to have briefings to the present science advisor

00:17:46 on six of the most promising scientific areas for special emphasis by the administration.

00:17:54 This is under Jay Keyworth as present science advisor under Reagan.

00:17:58 And to my irritation, chemistry wasn't even considered.

00:18:03 And I decided right then that that means we've got to have this report.

00:18:08 And so...

00:18:11 President Reagan was not very interested in science.

00:18:14 Well, he was interested in the science that was relevant to his own personal interests,

00:18:23 which had to do with defense mainly,

00:18:27 and those of his science advisor, who was a big science type,

00:18:31 interested in such things as a super collider, big machines, you know.

00:18:36 So while science got some support, it was in different directions.

00:18:44 So this group came to the unanimous agreement there should be such a report,

00:18:49 and the question was who should edit the thing.

00:18:52 And of course I had the experience with chem study,

00:18:54 and I was all full of fire about this issue of chemistry not being well treated

00:19:01 as a result of my experience in Washington at NSF.

00:19:05 So they asked me to be the editor of the book.

00:19:09 The way we operated was to get an advisory group, well, co-authors really,

00:19:16 of a group of 25 of the most preeminent scientists we could

00:19:21 from all the arenas of research, that is to say industrial research labs,

00:19:27 the national labs, and the universities.

00:19:30 And with this group as the kernel,

00:19:36 we tried to assemble this book, Opportunities in Chemistry.

00:19:40 With these preeminent people on the committee,

00:19:44 we were able to go out to the science community, the chemistry community,

00:19:48 and get the leading experts in any particular specialty we wanted

00:19:54 to write essays about what was going on in their field.

00:19:58 And some 300 scientists responded with such essays,

00:20:04 and from that then this committee and I tried to generate a book

00:20:09 that you could lift in the first instance and that had language level and coherence

00:20:16 so that it could be read by science policy people in Washington, D.C.

00:20:20 And that was the Opportunities in Chemistry,

00:20:24 as you say popularly called the Pimentel Report.

00:20:28 Thank you.