00:00:00 The, I'd like to make, I'm not quite sure we make one final comment in reference.

00:00:08 Now you're going, you're going to be doing, oh yes, we're doing, you're going to ask me about research, okay, go ahead, go ahead then.

00:00:30 I wonder what pot they're waiting to boil.

00:00:44 I think we know.

00:00:47 The microwave incidentally is excellent for making one mug of coffee or something of that sort.

00:00:55 It seems to me you don't need that level.

00:00:57 Would you please tell the rest of the air committee.

00:01:27 Okay.

00:01:55 Virginia.

00:02:02 Anna, you've done research at a variety of places other than Mount Holyoke, and I understand you've done it in Canada, in England, and I was wondering if you'd like to tell us a bit about that.

00:02:16 You might notice that all of these are English speaking, which indicates certain limitations on my part, although I guess that really wasn't an overriding.

00:02:26 In connection with the measurement of absorption, one naturally gets involved in the other part of it, which is photolysis.

00:02:42 My first sabbatical I spent at Cambridge University working with George Porter and R. G. W. Norrish, who was the professor of the Experimental Physical Chemistry Department at that time.

00:03:07 Both of whom later shared the Nobel Prize for their work in fast reactions.

00:03:19 At the time that I was there, again, you were dealing with methodologies that depended upon spectrographic means, using a technique known as flash photolysis, in which the radiating light was generated by a flash.

00:03:41 Also, the light that would be used as a detector of the molecules present was another flash, and these had to be coordinated time-wise.

00:03:53 This was before the electronic equipment that would now make that so easy to do developed and was rather a, what in retrospect now seems a rather crude approach, but it was the best game in town.

00:04:15 And very tedious data reduction.

00:04:17 Yes, very, very tedious.

00:04:22 I worked in Cambridge on the recombination of iodine atoms, which actually was, of course, following the flash.

00:04:36 And the work that we did while I was there was instrumental in unscrambling some of the complications that led to a rate constant.

00:04:59 That was not what one would expect from a simple approach.

00:05:06 And, of course, using third body, which were largely the inert gases or the rare gases, etc.

00:05:16 Actually, what we found would rationalize the data we were getting was a much more effective third body, where the iodine molecules that had already recombined.

00:05:36 And for a long time I joked I could give them any rate constant they wanted.

00:05:40 If they just tell me what they wanted, let me choose the experimental conditions, because, you know, you develop the sense of what pressures you needed, etc.

00:05:50 There was also a thermal effect that had not been unraveled before.

00:05:59 I was very pleased that George Porter, now Sir George, was in this country a few weeks ago.

00:06:12 And we had the pleasure of having him on the Mount Holyoke campus.

00:06:17 So you've maintained your relationship?

00:06:19 Sort of often a very cordial relationship, but I'm sure the total number of letters that we had exchanged could be counted on the fingers of one hand or one person.

00:06:31 It's been very interesting.

00:06:36 And you worked with the EWR Stacy as well, didn't you?

00:06:39 Yes.

00:06:41 This, again, I got interested in the photolysis products.

00:06:47 And a lot of which, the name of the game if you're making absorption measurements, is not to be able to get the spectra without being tangled up with the absorption.

00:06:58 On the other hand, you can go the other way and make a virtue of the absorption of the decomposition products.

00:07:09 And Stacy and his group were doing a lot of kinetics in gas phase.

00:07:19 They were not operating in the region of the spectrum that I was interested in.

00:07:24 And it's been a very pleasant year there.

00:07:30 Actually, within a few years following that, I got out of research, essentially, internally.

00:07:43 And I never really realized how closely this had correlated with the time I became chairman of the department.

00:07:53 And just so many things were involved that something had to give.

00:07:59 And I no longer could spend the amount of time.

00:08:02 The flash photolysis I did not ever undertake at Mount Holyoke because using the approach that was being used then,

00:08:13 the high voltages meant that you're working with very high hazard, which I didn't care to have quite as young students handling.

00:08:26 And I just couldn't be there with them the amount of time that I needed to be there.

00:08:31 But you moved into many other things.

00:08:33 I moved into other things, yes.

00:08:35 And I don't regret having made that decision in any sense.

00:08:41 And I think in many ways I have been more successful and perhaps served a useful purpose in the other things than I would have in the research.

00:08:54 Was it about that time that you turned your attention to the question of women in science?

00:08:59 Or had that been going on before this?

00:09:01 Well, in a peculiar sort of way, my professional life has been entirely invested in women going into science.

00:09:17 And it was essentially independent of the women's movement.

00:09:25 As a matter of fact, there had been some very discouraging years in the fifties,

00:09:30 in which it seemed to me that the goal of many of the undergraduates was to be married and have six children in five years,

00:09:45 or something of that sort.

00:09:47 In other words, following World War II, there was the early marriages and the move towards the large families,

00:10:00 which of course is entirely reversed now.

00:10:04 But we had fewer students going to graduate school.

00:10:09 And many of those did come back into graduate school later, after their families were semi-grown,

00:10:18 and did continue professionally.

00:10:22 But there was a period there, and I sort of wondered if this is what the Emma Carrs and the Mary Sherrills and Lucy Picketts

00:10:29 had devoted their attention to opening up for women, and the involvement in science had led to.

00:10:41 And no one could have been more surprised than I was when the women's movement arose.

00:10:49 Now following that, as you might expect, I practically made a profession of being the token woman.

00:11:02 And many committees and boards and things of this sort, which all of a sudden there was one look for women to include.

00:11:14 There just were not many in my age group, and consequently I got very extensively involved in many of those.

00:11:26 It never particularly bothered me, except in the amount of time it took,

00:11:32 in that I never felt that I was discriminated against once I was a part of a group.

00:11:43 And if that which enabled me to be a part of the group was tokenism, that was their problem, not mine.

00:11:53 And I think it's extremely important that more women get involved in the kinds of organizational structures

00:12:04 that are in fact the decision-making.

00:12:06 And in fact you will not have full equality for women in science or minorities in science

00:12:13 until those people are reasonably represented in the decision-making processes.

00:12:22 Did you find that the fact that you were a woman had a great impact on the path that you actually did take in your professional career?

00:12:32 Well, at the time I came into the profession, you really couldn't plan a career in the sense that one would talk about a woman planning a career today.

00:12:43 And I suspect maybe men planned then, but quite frankly I was unaware of it,

00:12:48 because there were so few opportunities for employment within Ph.D.

00:12:58 I felt I was the original person that wrote all those letters of application,

00:13:02 and I might say there were no word processors or memory typewriters or anything else of that sort.

00:13:07 And Henry Bent, with whom I had done my research and was very sympathetic to women going into the sciences,

00:13:24 through his friends worked very hard also, I think, in endearing employment for me.

00:13:31 And there were in the whole of the United States, this is 1940,

00:13:37 two institutions that would really look at my credentials, both of which were colleges for women.

00:13:45 And this is, as Margaret Rossinger has shown, very characteristic that the women's colleges were in fact very instrumental in the employment of women,

00:13:58 and also of the recruiting students into the sciences in those same colleges for women.

00:14:09 But I literally got back letters that were essentially,

00:14:18 we do not have an opening, but we would not consider you if we did, we do not hire women.

00:14:25 And I've had considerable fun telling this in groups, which are still mostly men.

00:14:38 And there's sort of a laugh and then there's sort of a gasp.

00:14:43 And gods, it may have been my company.

00:14:45 And I thought I still had the final letters in the trunk of the basement, but I opened it up last year and they aren't there.

00:14:54 So these letters were not just from colleges, you also had some interest in applying to industrial firms?

00:14:59 Yes, I applied to some industrial.

00:15:01 Also, this would have been true, I think, also at the universities, that you would have gotten this type of reply.

00:15:08 What kept you going in the face of so many obstacles?

00:15:11 Well, I think, in fact, when I made the decision to go into science, I was under no illusions.

00:15:23 And I think you tend to accept it just as a characteristic of the society you're a part of.

00:15:31 One of the things that's extremely difficult to pull apart is whether you're being discriminated against as a member of a class,

00:15:40 or whether you are being discriminated against in terms of the assessment of your own qualifications.

00:15:49 And that was the thing that I found most difficult to deal with.

00:15:56 And I think, to a certain degree, I may still find it difficult to agree with, to adjust to.

00:16:07 And I think it's one of the things that, even today, women going into professions where there may be still prejudice,

00:16:23 that they ought to recognize the two factors and try to pull them apart

00:16:30 in order that they can maintain a more realistic assessment of their own capabilities.

00:16:37 You mentioned that you made the decision to go into science early on under no illusions.

00:16:44 I was wondering what got you interested in chemistry in the first place.

00:16:47 Why did you go into chemistry?

00:16:50 I suppose it would have to be related to my high school teachers.

00:16:56 All of the science I had in high school was one individual, a man by the name of Ross Ferris,

00:17:03 who was an extremely unconventional teacher, but to me a very effective teacher.

00:17:10 Whatever we did, we did.

00:17:13 We dragged in the engine of an old car and we took it apart in a gummy and black and all of those things,

00:17:22 as it might be if we were doing carbonates and carbon dioxide.

00:17:28 We went through line firings and bottling works and all of these types of things.

00:17:36 I also had a very good teacher.

00:17:38 I think on average I had very good teachers across the board,

00:17:43 but of the two that were most important to me was this Ross Ferris and Edmund Bickley,

00:17:49 with whom I had all except freshman algebra and all the math.

00:17:55 I was able to go into calculus directly in college, which at that time was very unusual.

00:18:07 Of course, it's sort of to be expected now.

00:18:10 This is a small town in Missouri.

00:18:15 I grew up on a farm.

00:18:17 When the weather was good, this was in the days before the farm-to-market hard-surface roads,

00:18:26 which came along with Roosevelt years later.

00:18:29 When the condition of the roads were permitted, my brother and I commuted from home with a Model T Ford.

00:18:38 Otherwise, we stayed in town.

00:18:44 He was two years ahead of me after he graduated.

00:18:47 I stayed in town more and did less of the commuting.

00:18:50 I think it's a good reason for that. He took the Model T Ford to college with me.

00:19:03 My early education was in a one-room rural school.

00:19:08 Was that high school as well as elementary?

00:19:10 No, just elementary.

00:19:12 Then we commuted to the high school in Mexico, Missouri, by car.

00:19:18 You must have been one of the first members of your family to earn a Ph.D.

00:19:23 Is that true?

00:19:24 I think that's probably true, certainly in direct line.

00:19:29 Actually, neither of my parents went to college.

00:19:32 They both came from large families in which about 50% of the children did go to college and 50% didn't.

00:19:42 I think the choice of who went and who didn't was not related particularly to interest or to academic abilities,

00:19:56 but more in the question of what the financial mode of the families were at that particular moment.

00:20:02 Clearly, the family was very supportive to higher education.

00:20:06 Yes, there was no question about this.

00:20:08 We were talked about going to college probably before we understood any of the words in the sentences, perhaps.

00:20:19 I don't think it ever occurred to either my brother or me that we would not go to college.

00:20:29 My father died when I was seven, and Mother had considerable ingenuity and was able to make a living with the farm.

00:20:46 While my father had farmed it aggressively, hers was more of a holding pattern and renting barns and fields, pastures, etc.

00:20:57 At the time he died, there was no debt on the farm, and she managed to keep it that way throughout her lifetime

00:21:14 until we sold the farm long after we were out of college.

00:21:18 An uncle who was an M.D. bachelor was very supportive, and both my brother and I borrowed funds from him to go to university.

00:21:35 In retrospect, I think he had remarkable perception.

00:21:46 We borrowed the money with the understanding that as long as we were in school, we didn't pay interest.

00:21:55 When we were working, we did.

00:21:58 If we chose to quit working and go back to graduate school, then we would not pay interest on the money again until we were working.

00:22:07 We signed notes, and this was a semi-business arrangement.

00:22:15 I'm not quite sure about my brother, but with me during that time, he also gave me annually a sum of money, which was a gift.

00:22:35 His request was that I use it anyway that I liked, as long as it wasn't for things I had to have, like rent, books, etc.

00:22:49 His preference was that I use it for traveling.

00:22:54 This literally made it possible for me to start going regularly to American Chemical Society meetings while I was still a graduate student.

00:23:07 I'm sure that all my ancestors were gypsies, and there's this compulsion to meander.

00:23:18 Wasn't this family support rather remarkable in the sense that this was the depths and the aftermath of the Depression?

00:23:26 I think it's a question of where the priorities were.

00:23:30 I think this in a sense reflected both my father's regret and my mother's regret that they had not been able to go to college.

00:23:39 My father had been very much involved in his farming operations, which, as I say, were quite aggressive.

00:23:48 With the Agricultural Experiment Station at the University of Missouri, his hogs and cattle were used in the testing by the faculty and students of some of the early serums that were being developed.

00:24:14 The hogs and blacklegged cattle.

00:24:17 This contingent would come to arrive with their vaccines.

00:24:21 Actually, at that time, although it's only 40 miles since the crow flies, it required two trains and four miles on dirt roads in order to get there.

00:24:34 They stayed over while they were at the farm.

00:24:40 Did your brother go into science?

00:24:42 He was a civil engineer and had a very pleasant, successful career.

00:24:49 He's now deceased.

00:24:55 He worked with various contractors.

00:24:58 He was with the Army Corps of Engineers for a number of years, particularly during the—I shouldn't say particularly during the war years.

00:25:09 He got, as a civilian, involved in building a lot of airfields.

00:25:17 Part of that would have been with private contractors, including airfields in Alaska that were instrumental in that Northern Air Defense proposition.

00:25:32 You indicated that you frequently felt like a token woman on various committees and what have you.

00:25:39 Did you have that same feeling when you went on the National Science Board?

00:25:43 No, I don't think so.

00:25:50 I knew that I was being considered for an appointment.

00:25:57 Well, I guess a guy, Stever, had called and asked if I would be interested.

00:26:03 Then there was a long period and I heard nothing about it.

00:26:08 I knew that they were running a security check.

00:26:12 I was rather surprised on the telephone.

00:26:14 As a matter of fact, I guess the telephone call came from our Office of Public Relations, who had picked it up in the news that I had been appointed before I knew.

00:26:28 Before anyone had bothered to tell you.

00:26:30 Anyone had bothered to tell me.

00:26:32 I knew that there was considerable concern amongst members of the board, particularly those people that were the continuing members of the board,

00:26:43 as to how uncomfortable I might feel and so on and so forth.

00:26:48 Quite frankly, that question never even occurred to me.

00:26:52 One of the things that growing up on the farm probably did for me was that I learned early on to be comfortable with being alone.

00:27:02 One of the things you also learn rather early on in scientific meetings and so on and so forth,

00:27:12 it was to your advantage not to stay associated with another woman or a small group of women,

00:27:24 to move alone, because there's apparently hardly any man that cannot face one woman.

00:27:33 Relatively few that can face two, and practically none that can face three or more at that time.

00:27:41 That was the time I recognized that if I was going to survive in the man's world,

00:27:46 I would have to use a single given name rather than the two that I had been accustomed to before.

00:27:52 There are standard techniques that you can build up.

00:27:57 For instance, there were many times in which at a dinner, the Division of Physical Chemistry used to have dinners at all of the meetings,

00:28:07 I learned that I might be the only woman in the room,

00:28:12 and that the procedure that I could handle was to wait until a large number had been seated,

00:28:22 and then walk in and walk up to a table in which there was one unoccupied chair and ask if I could join them.

00:28:29 There's hardly any group of men that's going to say to a young woman, no, out of just politeness, etc.

00:28:37 But you got to know a lot of very interesting people this way.

00:28:42 You also discovered a number of the older men that went out of their way to see that you felt comfortable.

00:28:57 The chemist from Penn State, I can't think of his name now,

00:29:08 both of us, all three of us would know him, was one of the ones that...

00:29:13 Frenelius?

00:29:14 No, he was president, well I guess Frenelius was president of ACS2.

00:29:24 I don't think of the name now, but there were a number of people that were extremely considerate, etc.

00:29:33 You might be amused at my first encounter with science.

00:29:39 Grade school, one room, and at the time I must have been, I could not have been more than six.

00:29:51 I started school when I was five, but let's call it six.

00:29:59 The teacher announced that we were going to have something new, that we were going to have science.

00:30:08 Since then I wondered what she knew about science, but apparently this was the mood of the day, etc.

00:30:14 Our first assignment was to go home and find out everything we could about caterpillars.

00:30:21 Well, I went home and surely asked my father about caterpillars.

00:30:26 He at the moment was considering the purchase of a tractor.

00:30:31 I got a lot of information about caterpillars.

00:30:35 Caterpillar tractors.

00:30:38 Fortunately, the next day I was not the first person that got called upon.

00:30:44 I think that was the first time in my life that I ever realized there are times you just kept quiet.

00:30:53 After high school, I understand you went to a women's college before you started at the University of Missouri.

00:31:02 What was your experience like?

00:31:04 I looked at the various women's colleges in the area.

00:31:10 The one that I chose to go to was Lindenwood College, a four-year institution in St. Charles, Missouri,

00:31:18 which incidentally has been in existence for a long period of time.

00:31:24 I was fortunate there that there were two women in the chemistry department that were quite good.

00:31:32 One, I think, exceptionally good, Nadia McMasters, who at that time only had a master's degree

00:31:38 and went back to Cornell and finished the—I guess she was just out to earn some money.

00:31:44 At that time, there was no way of financing graduate work except as a TA.

00:31:49 All these research grants and things did not come along.

00:31:54 I was also fortunate in the math and physics instruction that I got.

00:32:06 When it became evident that I was serious about going into chemistry,

00:32:14 that group of people, with I might say the blessings of the administrative structure,

00:32:22 recommended that I transfer at the end of two years to the University of Missouri.

00:32:28 So I did.

00:32:33 In almost all the courses that I was in, in science and math, I was the only woman.

00:32:39 But on the other hand, it just never struck me particularly that there was anything strange about this

00:32:46 because I think I just sort of expected it to be that way.

00:32:52 Did you find the women at Lindenwood helpful in terms of role models as well as encouraging you?

00:33:00 I suppose so.

00:33:02 There had also been an article that Herman Slunt,

00:33:07 who was chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Missouri,

00:33:11 had written for the university alumni magazine on women in science,

00:33:21 which he was quite encouraging.

00:33:23 He had two daughters, I might say.

00:33:25 And he was quite supportive and was, I'm sure, instrumental in helping me get a teaching assistantship

00:33:38 back to the University of Missouri for graduate work.

00:33:41 But I graduated in 1933, which was right after the bank holiday.

00:33:50 Roosevelt had come into office and the state of the economy and the bank structure was extremely vulnerable.

00:34:01 There just were no jobs for either men or women,

00:34:07 but particularly not for a young person and particularly not for a young woman.

00:34:11 And I spent the next two years teaching a one-room rural school,

00:34:16 which was the same one that I had gone to.

00:34:18 At the time I had students ranging from five to twenty-one, and I at the time was twenty.

00:34:25 And it was an interesting experience, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and ninth grade.

00:34:35 And everything including how to tell the age of a horse by its feet.

00:34:40 And I was sort of embarrassed by having a college degree and not being able to do anything else.

00:34:50 But there was lots to be said for that because you're isolated.

00:34:54 And if you got yourself in trouble, you're jolly well stayed in trouble until you got yourself out.

00:34:59 And the parents of the children were really extremely supportive.

00:35:04 And I think many of them didn't really know what an education was.

00:35:08 But they were convinced that it was important for their children.

00:35:16 And I think I could have killed them without the parents biting an eyelash.

00:35:38 Well, this is steamy.

00:35:44 Which otherwise it might be.

00:35:47 If it's still liquid, that's a good sign.

00:35:59 Are we going to women and hobbies?

00:36:01 Are you happy with ours?

00:36:03 We're going to do the international.

00:36:04 What's your decision when you want to leave the audience?

00:36:06 Okay.

00:36:10 So.

00:36:28 It was my good fortune a couple of years ago to be the convener and co-chairman of a UN AAAS panel of experts on women in science, engineering, and technology.

00:36:49 Now this is a creature of the UN Advisory Committee on Science and Technology in Developing Countries.

00:36:59 So this meant that we were really dealing with women in developing countries.

00:37:03 And I wondered what would happen in that conference.

00:37:14 And I had assumed in true parochial fashion that the entry of women into science and engineering in the developing countries would go through sort of the same stages that had been true in this country.

00:37:34 And was quite stunned to discover that in fact it is quite different.

00:37:40 That in a number of the developing countries, the need for technically competent people is so great.

00:37:48 And so accustomed are the women being a part of the workforce.

00:37:54 True, it might be manual labor workforce.

00:37:58 That it has been comparatively immaterial as to whether those people going into science and engineering were men or women.

00:38:07 And there is, so it means that in a number of these countries there are leapfrogging.

00:38:18 What has been perhaps a long period in this country of going into more direct involvement.

00:38:28 Some of the countries such as Egypt, who have had a long history of prejudice against women going into the scientific profession,

00:38:43 have now more women doing science in the universities and graduate work in science than they have men.

00:38:56 And this arose at the time that Mrs. Sadat had considerable influence in the country.

00:39:05 And admission to the universities into graduate studies was purely on the basis of grades.

00:39:12 And the young women out tested the young men.

00:39:16 And consequently there has been a great influx of women into the scientific community.

00:39:27 Some areas such as the Philippines have more women chemists than they have men.

00:39:33 Now whether the term chemist is exactly, means exactly the same thing in the different countries is I think quite debatable.

00:39:44 But in general this conference is addressing sciences in general.

00:39:49 The thing that I found most charming about it was that the very close sense of identity that all of us felt for women from other nations.

00:40:03 Now it didn't make any difference whether they were coming from Swaziland or Japan or India, etc.

00:40:16 There was this very strong sense of identity of women, for women.

00:40:24 And at the end of the week's conference we were almost to the point that in breaking up, you know,

00:40:38 that you would hug each other and practically weep at their departure.

00:40:47 One of the interesting things about holding offices of scientific societies in this country

00:40:56 is that you find yourself getting shipped off to represent that organization in other countries.

00:41:03 And sometimes the people that were sort of promoting that on this side knew more than I did

00:41:10 and were a little reluctant to share with me what they knew.

00:41:18 Now whether this was deliberate or accidental I don't know.

00:41:23 But I went over to Japan to represent the American Chemical Society

00:41:28 at their celebration of the Japanese Chemical Society Centennial.

00:41:33 And in the weird way that things are counted, I came out being in terms of the organization

00:41:43 and the office hell and the age of the organization, etc.

00:41:48 I came out to be the ranking scientist of the various contingencies from abroad,

00:42:00 which meant that I was very much part of their ceremonial occasions,

00:42:06 which was, I'm sure, a great surprise to them considering that there are essentially no women in chemistry at all in Japan.

00:42:17 Biochemistry, yes, but that is, I judge, more related to pharmacology, perhaps, or pharmacy,

00:42:25 than to the meaning of the biochemistry in this country.

00:42:31 In the same sense, well, I didn't come out to be the ranking individual in this one.

00:42:37 I represented the AAAS at the 50-year celebration of the Indian Academy of Science.

00:42:55 And, of course, the intent from this side was to capitalize to the degree you could

00:43:08 in having a woman appear in some of these countries in the formal situation.

00:43:19 Now, I might say that our export of technology, technological transfer to other countries,

00:43:35 has been much more restricted and less foresighted,

00:43:44 in that frequently the groups that are sent over to consult in developing countries

00:43:54 are made up entirely of men, and the decisions are made by men,

00:44:00 and the people that go over to assist in the transfer of the technology are men.

00:44:06 And what this has, in fact, done, although in some cases the technologies may have been proposed

00:44:13 to better the lot of women in the country, they have done just the opposite,

00:44:19 because the new technology may have replaced technologies, primitive technologies,

00:44:28 in which women have been involved, and also they are denied the opportunity to participate

00:44:39 as a means of earning money in the new technologies that are coming over.

00:44:48 So it has turned out to be, in the opinion of some of these women,

00:44:59 that the transfer of technology has, in fact, made their lot harder rather than easier.

00:45:07 Is there any ongoing body that can address these issues?

00:45:13 I don't know that there is a...

00:45:17 Needless to say, the report from this conference, which I think goes back through the UN channels,

00:45:25 addressed some of these issues rather forthrightly.

00:45:30 And there are various ways of circulating information to women in the developing countries,

00:45:42 which essentially is an underground, apparently, that operates through the health facilities,

00:45:47 where they go to these clinics and sit around and wait,

00:45:51 and a good deal of information gets transmitted in a kind of underground fashion.

00:45:58 And here again it's a concern that in these countries,

00:46:03 that women be more involved in the decision-making process,

00:46:07 and greater care be taken in the make-up of units going to other countries from this country.

00:46:17 Were you at all involved in the International Year of the Woman?

00:46:21 No, I haven't been.

00:46:25 I was one of the people that certainly I know was nominated for the one that's coming up in Kenya,

00:46:33 but I judge that will not be included in the decision.

00:46:40 And it would have been interesting to have been part of it.

00:46:46 That I can mention.

00:46:52 But the thing that I was tremendously struck with is this identity of women within women,

00:46:58 and in spite of that, a tremendous difference in culture.

00:47:04 Is there something that the U.S. can do unilaterally, or should they?

00:47:10 Well, I think much could be done through the State Department.

00:47:15 Was UNESCO a force in this? Is UNESCO a force in this?

00:47:20 It had nothing to do with this conference, the panel of experts.

00:47:27 It had nothing to do with this conference, the panel of experts.

00:47:32 That was the UN itself.

00:47:38 I am not aware of it being a forceful agent in addressing the issue of transfer of technology and the impact on women.

00:47:48 But that may be my ignorance. I really don't know.

00:47:53 Well, you've been doing a lot of things. Have you had any time for hobbies?

00:47:59 Oh, yes.

00:48:07 Most of them, well, I guess I'd name three, two of which have to do with outdoor activities.

00:48:15 One is very much involved around horses, of which I grew up on a farm in which the mode of transportation for a child was a critter with four legs.

00:48:28 And early on, I acquired, with the family's blessing but through probably not a very well-managed system, a pony.

00:48:49 Ponies are sort of frowned upon in farming communities because it's a poor form of a horse.

00:48:57 Actually, what it turned out was that it was a very scrawny, very young horse.

00:49:06 And I, at the time, was a very scrawny youngster, so no doubt that we made a very unprepossessing appearance together.

00:49:21 I was scared to death of the beast, but you needn't think I'd admit it.

00:49:27 And after a while, we got along, so I didn't get thrown quite as many times as I did earlier on.

00:49:39 And I've had this great consuming interest in horses.

00:49:47 I don't ride any particular style. I try to ride whatever style, whichever horse I happen to be riding.

00:49:54 And one of the things I've enjoyed very much is to do a number of pack trips with horses in the Rocky Mountains,

00:50:04 above Marshall Wilderness, Eagle Camp Wilderness, either U.S. forests or wilderness areas in New Mexico and Colorado.

00:50:19 And this gets you into terrain that I would be incapable of doing on foot.

00:50:28 Access is restricted. Vehicles are not allowed.

00:50:35 And so you have this fantastic experience of being in a wilderness area without encountering another group for days, actually, if you're far enough back in.

00:50:48 And this I hope to do more of. It's a horse that does the work, you know.

00:50:57 Do you do this on your own or with a group of people?

00:51:00 You need an outfitter because you've got the care of the horse.

00:51:04 And unless you're going to go to a lot of trouble and you have a lot of know-how,

00:51:10 even with their wranglers, they always take extra horses with them on that trip unless they don't manage to get them all collected again.

00:51:20 And they keep outposts at night to keep them from drifting too far afield, etc.

00:51:29 And if you possibly can, you want to be in terrain where the horse lives off of the landscape.

00:51:37 So that's one. Occasionally I've leased a horse for the summer months.

00:51:45 It's usually been one from the college contingent, except instead of being a horse that has been used in the college,

00:51:56 it's a horse that has been brought in for potential use.

00:52:01 And a horse that's been used in the school gets to be a dull horse.

00:52:07 And it's much better to have one that is not dull.

00:52:12 That's not a commentary on the educational system, I hope.

00:52:15 No, well, maybe burnout just comes faster with horses than it does with faculty.

00:52:22 Another hobby is that for more than a quarter of a century now, I've been building up a collection of indigenous wildflowers on my lot.

00:52:36 I had to grow the shade first in order to have shade in order to grow them under, and so on and so forth.

00:52:42 And that I enjoy very much.

00:52:46 The usual types of things that you think of. Trillium, bloodroot.

00:52:52 The lady slippers, I think, are one of the things.

00:52:55 Jack-in-the-pulpit.

00:52:56 Jack-in-the-pulpit.

00:52:57 Jack-in-the-pulpit and trillium can really get to the point of being almost a weed.

00:53:04 Part of my little endeavor is to get the town of South Attaway, plant it down with jacks-in-the-pulpits and trillium.

00:53:13 So I go around, you know, distributing plants whenever I can.

00:53:18 The third has to do with great pleasure, crudging through art museums.

00:53:30 I can't claim to have any great expertise. I've learned some over the years, but whenever I can.

00:53:39 One of the great luxuries of all these trips to Washington has been to be able to see traveling exhibits several times while they're in Washington,

00:53:52 which is quite different from just seeing them once.

00:53:56 I enjoy it very much.

00:53:59 Well, you've explored a lot of terrain, Anna, both physically and figuratively,

00:54:07 and I wonder if there's any advice that you would like to give to those young people coming up now who have yet to explore their terrain.

00:54:19 Well, I think in general I've been more inclined to talk with students that are exploring science as that terrain,

00:54:32 and so I think I probably think more in that direction.

00:54:37 One of the things I find interesting is that I would now say to a young woman considering science as a career,

00:54:45 but I think exactly the same thing I'd say to a young man, namely to assess your intellectual interest and satisfaction in dealing with the science,

00:54:59 to consider what investment they're willing to make in the profession, both in initial entry and in maintaining their position as a professional scientist,

00:55:20 to help them understand that most people that go into any profession, but maybe particularly the scientific professions,

00:55:28 make several career changes during their life.

00:55:35 It may mean changing place of employment, but it may involve, if you're in a large organization,

00:55:42 changing type of activity that you will be involved in.

00:55:49 I suspect that there are a lot of young people that are intellectually attracted to the sciences

00:55:56 that may sometime later discover that they really are not gung-ho on being research scientists themselves,

00:56:06 and there are many other things that are very appropriate for a scientist to do in which they are creative and are equally well needed by society.

00:56:24 Does that say anything about how scientists should be trained?

00:56:28 I hate the word trained in the first place.

00:56:33 I think yes, because I think the image in many institutions is very narrowly focused on the research career,

00:56:46 and that's very important, and we certainly need very able people in that,

00:56:54 but we also need scientists in the communication, management, sales, government,

00:57:12 and a degree in science, as far as I'm concerned, is a launching pad that can go many directions.

00:57:22 One of the things I think that students should realize is that they need to assess their capacity to endure,

00:57:34 and as far as I know, to survive in any profession, you need a certain capacity to endure.

00:57:43 I sometimes suspect that women have a very high level of capacity to endure,

00:57:49 and not to be surprised when they find themselves in situations in which they really must endure,

00:58:00 as well as to consider making changes in career patterns.

00:58:06 What role do you see the liberal arts playing in the future in science education?

00:58:13 Well, our experience is that the liberal arts, our people that do a liberal arts program,

00:58:21 go the professional scientist route quite well, it seems to me,

00:58:27 and it's true that at the time they entered graduate school, they had a large number of courses in science.

00:58:37 As a matter of fact, we are inclined to require rather a minimum structure,

00:58:43 but to make a rich program available to students, including independent work,

00:58:48 and to encourage them to get the brunt, in the case of chemistry,

00:58:55 to build strength in mathematics and physics,

00:59:03 sort of to the limit of their capacities to endure,

00:59:08 and also, of course, the introduction to the biological sciences.

00:59:16 I'm a little curious about your comment about the scientists being narrow.

00:59:22 There are many scientists that are conversant with Chaucer,

00:59:26 but there aren't many English majors that can speak quantum mechanics,

00:59:30 and I wonder if we're not selling scientists a little short on this narrowness a bit.

00:59:35 There's a difference between quoting Chaucer

00:59:44 and in feeling what are the spread of scientific professional opportunities you'd be willing to consider.

00:59:54 I think undoubtedly many scientists do have a broad educational liberal arts background.

01:00:05 I'm not sure to the degree this would be true about people that have come out of science programs,

01:00:12 particularly in the large research universities in recent years.

01:00:18 My impression is that their requirement for the numbers of science courses may tend to exclude,

01:00:27 and the group of people that you and I know who have the broad liberal arts education

01:00:32 are in fact, for the most part, older people.

01:00:37 Even if you look at required courses in a liberal arts college,

01:00:42 you frequently find that in the humanities, 80-90% of their courses are in the one or two departments,

01:00:49 where that's not true in a science major.

01:01:13 I don't know whether we have to thank him or whether he thanks us.

01:01:19 Should we ask him on that point?

01:01:21 Maybe, just to go quietly away.

01:01:24 Thank you all.

01:01:25 Well, I think we just might quietly melt away.

01:01:30 I wonder what the melting point of lupins is.

01:01:35 We're rapidly finding out.

01:01:37 I'll tell you.