Linus Pauling Interview, February 14, 1992

THOMAS HAGER: Good, good. I was glad to see that Linda came down.

LINUS PAULING: Yes. She was just in saying, "Why hasn't Tom called yet?"

TH: I'm sorry I was a little bit late. I got hung up on another telephone call here that took a little bit longer than I thought it would be. But you can tell her that better late than never. I wanted to, when we were talking the other day, I wanted to follow up on the idea that you brought up of yourself as a conformist at heart and use that as sort of a way to approach the question of your getting involved in political questions. Especially after World War II. First of all, am I right in assuming that prior to the end of the war that your 00:01:00political involvement consisted of the one debate that you took part in on the Presidential election where you sort of took the side of the democrats and your activities with the George, with the Streit movement in England, the World Federation.

LP: Well, I did very little about Union Now, I don't remember.

TH: I think you did give a talk or two about it.

LP: Yes, I expect so. Yes, you're right.

TH: And the talks for Union Now, was that basically, I know that Ava Helen was involved with that, prior to your involvement I believe. So your interest in that arose directly from her own interest.

LP: Probably. I remember reading Streit's book and being impressed by the 00:02:00arguments and that it might be possible to avert the World War by Unions and democracies and such.

TH: Once the nation joined in the War though, you were supportive in the War effort, it seems.

LP: Yes.

TH: What was your opinion of Hitler and the Nazi movement?

LP: Well, I don't think I had any special knowledge but just as most other people, I felt that Hitler needed to be defeated in his plans to take over the world. Was that the question?

TH: Yeah, that's basically...I didn't know if you had any special insights. I 00:03:00know that you had correspondence before the war with some scientists who were eager to leave the country among them Zechmeister and it, I wondered if you had, because of your knowledge of how scientists were being treated in Germany, especially Jewish scientists, if that affected your opinion of the Nazi movement or your feelings towards-

LP: Well, I suppose that this was common knowledge.

TH: You were very active in getting Zechmeister into the United States.

LP: Well, the...I had applied with Beadle to the Rockefeller Foundation for a grant to develop Organic Chemistry and biology or molecular biology and I took a 00:04:00tour, certainly after I was made chairman of the division and director of the laboratories, I toured the United States interviewing a good number of organic chemists, looking for people to offer appointments to. And the Rockefeller Foundations, Warren suggested to me that Zechmeister would be a good man because he was doing some interesting work. I think that I was involved in signing letters about his admission to the country to take the job that we had 00:05:00offered. But the motive for that was to get an organic chemist that I thought would be a good addition to our staff, not to save someone from the Nazis.

TH: He had trouble getting his wife, is that correct, I believe, out of Hungary.

LP: Yeah, I don't know that he, well, he didn't ever succeed. His wife didn't ever, I think had died of some illness of some sort, not in the gas chamber.

TH: And of course Zechmeister turned out to be a wonderful addition to the faculty. His chromatographic work was, I think broke some new ground.

LP: Yeah, well, he didn't discover chromatography; he was the most active person at that time in developing the technique. It had been discovered some 35 years before by a Russian named Sven. And I'm not sure if Zechmeister was the first one to have revivified Sven's discovery, I think there was at least one other person who had started using chromatographic methods. But he was very effective in applying it especially to the carotenoids. And he was a good addition to our department. I think this may, well, I think that other organic chemists who came 00:07:00to Caltech made greater contributions than Zechmeister. Paul Neiman was a good professor. He was more effective in teaching and administration than his research. And of course Jack Roberts has turned out to be an outstanding man but he was brought in later, by me in a sense. Because I was still chairman, as you know from Jack Roberts's book.

TH: And from talking to him as well. He told the anecdote of how you smoothed the way to get a female graduate student in.

LP: Well and also to get his NMR apparatus. In his book he sort of thanks me for 00:08:00effectiveness in getting that apparatus that started him out on that part of his career.

TH: During the War itself, of course you were very heavily involved in a number of different research projects but focusing again on the political activity side, the only thing that I saw in my research that was going on during the War years was some interaction that Ava Helen had with the refugees bringing over young children.

LP: Yes, from England.

TH: Yes, from England. And I believe you wrote a few letters in that regard too that I've come across.

LP: Yes, I expect so.

TH: Yes, I thought so. Was there anything else, non-scientific activities during the War years?

LP: Well, none that I recall at the moment.

TH: Yeah and I certainly haven't found anything either until the incident with the Japanese fellow. The Japanese-American fellow that you had on your property. Now, let me see if I have this story right. The way that I've heard it is that this was a fellow who was returning from the Camps, from the Internment Camps and who was between jobs and that you had offered him a place to live on your property and a sort of a tide over job as a gardener until he could find something better.

LP: Well, I don't think any one of those statements is true.

TH: Oh! Well, this is, I've heard this story about three different ways, so why don't you tell it to me.

LP: Well, of course there's plenty of written material about it, the newspaper accounts. Some organization in Pasadena or perhaps Los Angeles telephoned my wife to say that there was an American Soldier of Japanese ancestry, probably never been to Japan, I expect born in the Sacramento Valley or perhaps Southern California, an American soldier who had been inducted two weeks before or a few days before into the American army and had been given leave to come to 00:11:00California on some family business and it may be that his family was interned, I'm not sure, I don't remember. But the main point is that he'd been allowed to return to California and wanted to make a little extra money. So, my wife hired him as the gardener. Nothing about, well so far as I know he'd never been to Japan or there was nothing about housing him, just giving him a job as a gardener. So he came one day, he came the next day I think and probably worked 8 hours as a gardener and got paid for it. And it was that night that our garage 00:12:00door was painted and our mailbox was painted and then for a couple weeks we had the sheriff put up a 24 hour guard on our place. I had to go back to Washington D.C. in a day or two. We got several threatening letters which I turned over to the authorities.

TH: The FBI was called into the case. According to their files they came in and did an investigation as well. But it was you who, after finding the graffiti called up the sheriff's department and notified them of the case and asked for help. Is that the way that that happened?

LP: Well after receiving these threatening letters, I think my wife called the Sheriff's and the sheriff said Well, that's what you get for hiring a Japanese worker. And my wife was an officer of the ACLU I think at the time, at any rate she called the president of the Los Angeles chapter of the ACLU and he put pressure on the sheriff to put up the guard.

TH: Ah, I see. And meanwhile the Japanese fellow himself was long gone. He just worked those one or maybe two days and that was-

LP: No, he worked one day.

TH: Yeah, one day.

LP: Only. And I don't think we ever saw him again. I don't know where he was 00:14:00living. I think for those few days somewhere in Pasadena. Now, he may have gone about whatever business he had come to California for and then went back to the Camp.

TH: Amazing that people would have even known he was there. Whoever scrawled that, those messages.

LP: That's right. I've wondered how, I think that these Right Wingers may have had a spy in that organization, whatever it was that called my wife. So that they passed out the information that this person, whoever it was, to a bunch of rednecks who went ahead with that vandalism.

TH: You don't think that these were your neighbors then, these were people-

LP: Well, I don't have any opinion about that.

TH: Yeah. Was this your first contact, not Ava Helen's, but your first contact with the ACLU or had you been in touch with that agency before or were you a member at that time?

LP: I don't know. I don't remember.

TH: Yeah. This event, sort of seeing this sort of intolerance in a very personal way, did that have a larger effect on you?

LP: Well, I suppose it did. Here I was going back to Washington D.C. just about every month for my work as a member of the NDRC committee on explosives, the 00:16:00U.S. Army Division 8 - the Explosives Division. And of course that was a long train ride each way and I was, as you know, supervising as a responsible investigator, 14 different contracts with OSRD. And doing some odd jobs too. I was the chairman on a committee of internal ballistics that examined, it was an ad hoc committee to examine in particular the question about whether or not to adopt a new propellant or not. And I went to various arsenals to check up on 00:17:00certain points. I was asked to think about production problems of explosives. I took out a patent on the class of explosives.

TH: Yes, right. I think you and spoke about that and I've talked with some of the other men that were helping you during the War on the propellants projects too and about your attack on that problem. And, so being gone at that time I suppose you would have worried about the safety of your family with those kinds of threats.

LP: Yes.

TH: Now that seems a critical period right there between, right around that 00:18:00time, between the Japanese incident and the time when you got involved with the group of scientists who were concerned about the development of the atomic bomb and the uses of atomic energy. That seemed to mark your entry into a more political sphere of life, I suppose. So I'm interested in what happened at that point in time that led you to become more involved with political causes. Was the primary motivating factor the question of the potential of atomic war? Was that the overriding concern that you had or was it a more general concern with the way that the U.S. government was moving at that time toward a sort of a more 00:19:00repressive form of government, the concern about communists and so forth?

LP: Well, you mean after Roosevelt then? First, I think my concern was aroused because of the nuclear weapons project. I knew, I remember having mentioned the words Plutonium to another professor who said You shouldn't use that word, it was forbidden. I don't know how I heard about plutonium. I wasn't involved in the atomic energy; if you remember I turned down the offer from Oppenheimer who 00:20:00gave me a little information rather early and I picked up some bits of information perhaps from people who thought perhaps I was one of the persons who knew. At any rate I didn't know how the Atomic Bomb Project was going until the 7th of August I read about it in the newspapers. Then I received one of the first copies of the Smyth Report. Mimeographed copy of the Smyth Report. Later on I received two or three other copies of it. At any rate in the summer of 1945 00:21:00I read the Smyth Report and got information on atomic bombs and atomic weapons and had begun thinking again about the institution of war and making calculations about what effect nuclear weapons would have. So this started my thinking seriously about, again, about the whole matter of the institution of war. Well, you probably know the whole story about my having been invited to give a talk about atomic bombs to a service club in Hollywood.

TH: Yes. Yes.

LP: And truly about the physics. Thus I don't think I said a word about the 00:22:00institution of war. But, except to mention how partial the bombs were fifteen thousand times I think I said twenty thousand times as powerful as an ordinary, a bomb of, a one-ton TNT bomb. And I gave that talk, popular talk, several times and began to introduce comments about war. And the comments consisted largely of my quoting statements by other people from the newspapers or from Time magazine for example. And that was when Ava Helen said to me that my scientific talks 00:23:00were fine but these talks that I was giving were pretty poor. But the reason was that I knew what I was talking about, I had complete confidence in my ideas when I was talking about scientific matters but when I began talking about these political matters I apparently didn't. Quoting other people...So I probably should stop. But the alternative I decided or probably she suggested, the alternative I decided was that I study social, political and economic questions about the nature of war to such an extent that when I spoke I would speak on my own authority.

TH: And what sorts of things did you begin reading then? What were some of the influential texts or studies that you looked at? Do you remember any that stand out?

LP: No, I don't.

TH: Had the atomic scientists group, the Einstein Group, started up at that point?

LP: I didn't hear that.

TH: The group that Einstein and Urey and yourself were involved in, the Atomic Scientists Group, had that started at that point?

LP: I think so. I'm not sure just when it was started. It was started a little before I became a member of the Board of Trustees.

TH: And how did that come about? Were you approached or did you go to the group?

LP: No, I was approached by Urey. Urey telephoned me and said that Einstein and the other members of the Board of Trustees, and this group didn't consist of 00:25:00anybody except the board of trustees. It didn't have any popular members yet. Well, he said that Einstein and the other members wanted to invite me to become a member of the Board of Trustees. So there were about six. I became the seventh perhaps. There are several members still alive. Hans Bethe, Victor Weisskopf, well, I'm not sure about others, I'd have to check to see. Some of them have died but at least these two and I are still alive. Then of course I was asked to, by Bertrand Russell, to sign the Russell-Einstein Ultimatum. Or Manifesto it 00:26:00was called, Einstein-Russell Manifesto. I think there were 11 signers to that which started the Pugwash meetings after Cyrus Eaton quit attending his invitation, his desire to pay expenses of some meetings, the first one, the Pugwash. And there are two members of the signers; two of the signers of the Russell-Einstein are still alive. Rotblat in London and I are the two.

TH: Was this your first contact with Russell? Through the Manifesto?

LP: I think so. I don't think that I met him until...well, I may have met him in 1947 or 1948 when we were in England both years. 1947 just for a short time but for a longer time in 1948. But later we were with him several times.

TH: Uh-huh. Well, and you corresponded quite a bit too. What sort of impression did Russell make on you? Did he strike you as being a particularly insightful 00:28:00fellow? He is a philosopher after all and I don't know if he would have been your type of fellow.

LP: Well, he's a mathematician and philosopher, his great work was the Principia Mathematica. But he was more of a philosophical mathematician than a practical mathematician who discovers new theorems. His theorems were always of the philosophical kind. A special kind of philosophy. Bertrand Russell said that "Philosophy consists in thinking and writing about something about which you have no facts or information, when you get some facts it becomes a part of science". Well, about my opinion of Russell, I thought that he was a brilliant 00:29:00man and rather lacking in knowledge of, almost complete lack of knowledge of chemistry. And perhaps to some extent, of physics too. So, although he had a very broad knowledge about all sorts of subjects, I would say it didn't include very detailed knowledge of the sciences.

TH: When you were together with him, did he ever try to engage you in conversations about subjects outside of science?

LP: What?

TH: Did he engage you in any sorts of philosophical discussions? Did he, during 00:30:00your, during the times when you were together-

LP: No, I don't suppose that, I imagine that he had no hopes that he'd get anything worthwhile out of me. I don't really have any idea of what he thought of me.

TH: Now during this period too, let's say this immediate postwar period - Let's say '47, '48, '49, in there, the group of students in Pasadena also started up a local chapter of what would become the FAS. They called themselves the Association of Pasadena Scientists. And you were-

LP: Well, that was started by Oppenheimer and me.

TH: Well, okay. I've been looking at the records of the group and I saw that you 00:31:00were and Oppenheimer were invited to the early meetings. I didn't know that you'd been the-

LP: Well, perhaps what I remember was that Oppenheimer and I spoke at the first meeting and it was held in the lecture room that they called the Linus Pauling Lecture room in Gates Laboratory. The chemistry lecture room. Yes, I remember that meeting quite well and when I say that this was started by Oppenheimer and me, the, what I guess I remembered was that he and I were the people who spoke at that--

LP: - I may have given a talk at some later time at the same organization. But Pasadena, I think it was called the Pasadena Atomic Scientists or something like that.

TH: I think it was the Association of Pasadena Scientists originally and then they eventually merged into the FAS organization. And were you a part of the FAS as well from the early stages?

LP: Yes. Yeah, I think I'm down as one of the founding members. But that doesn't mean that I was in at the founding. I was just added since I was part of the Chicago-Los Alamos group that started it.

TH: Now tell me also about the Hollywood Independent Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions. How did you become involved with that group?

LP: Hollywood Independent Citizens-

TH: Citizens. Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions. Yeah.

LP: I don't remember. Well you know that I had been giving popular lectures about, mainly about nuclear war. But I don't remember who invited me. I was chosen as Vice-President. I was vice-president for sciences of the Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions and as vice president I just remember the governing board went to a good number of meetings in Hollywood of the board. I was a member of the committees on policy that formulated policies including Ronald Reagan as a member of the Committee, 00:34:00of that particular committee. I think that's the only time I ever saw him.

TH: What other sorts of, I know that you had told me that you'd gone to dinner at Charles Laughton's house and at one point. I assume that that was through that connection as well?

LP: I suppose so. I think that's how he and also Lanchester learned about Ava Helen and me.

TH: And did you rub shoulders with any other celebrities through that connection?

LP: Well, I'm sure. I knew all of the Hollywood Ten. They were all involved in the Independent Arts, Sciences and Professional Committee. And, well, I was 00:35:00trying to remember the names of...We went to a dinner in Hollywood at a big house, probably a producers house, where there was also a little projection, a little theater that would hold probably, oh, 50 or 60 people for presentation of a movie and Sylvia Fine and her husband, what was his name, Sylvia Fine and her husband were there, I got acquainted with them. Later on he acted as master of ceremonies for a dinner that our Institute put on five or six years ago. Well, I 00:36:00can't recall his name.

TH: You had corresponded with Dore Schary at, there are a couple of letters-

LP: What?

TH: Dore Schary, the fellow who's the head at MGM.

LP: Oh yes, Dore Schary, I remember him. I met him, I think he was involved in the Hollywood Committee for the Arts, Sciences and Professions Committee.

TH: Yeah.

LP: But then reversed his position.

TH: Anyone else? Frank Sinatra or, these are the sort of -

LP: No, we went to the Soviet Consulate when they were...I met Charlie Chaplin 00:37:00who was also at the Soviet Consulate, who was celebrating a certain anniversary-

TH: Oh yes, I think I saw letters concerning that.

LP: The founding of the Soviet Union or the 1918 Revolution. I'm not sure. The founding of the Soviet Union officially was 1924, but I don't think it was an even decade after 1924, so it was something else that they had a party with plenty good foods to eat - caviar and things.

TH: Was Dalton Trumbo, of course he was one of that group.

LP: Yes, we went to his home a couple times. Linda mentions that she was one, at his home too. She just mentioned that to me yesterday.

TH: You know that's funny, I saw a movie just a little while ago that was based on the witch hunts in Hollywood, a fictionalized version, and the protagonist of the movie mentions going to Pasadena to scientists meetings in that movie. In this sort of scientific connection with Hollywood is sort of interesting. You know I came across a piece of information here a little while ago that there was a faculty member at Caltech that was involved in your introduction to Hollywood 00:39:00Independent Citizens Committee and I have a note here to ask you who was the faculty member who got you involved in the HICCASP? Does that ring a bell at all?

LP: No, not at all.

TH: Okay. As your political-

LP: Yes, James Roosevelt was involved in HICCASP. So I got acquainted with him. We were at his home once too. James Roosevelt. So far as I know there were no other Caltech people involved with...But others, someone may have been a member. 00:40:00It had a large membership. When we wrote the policy statements of Hollywood Citizen's Committee, it emphasized the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. So this rather liberal sort of politics appealed to me.

TH: If you, and apparently Truman's politics would not have by comparison.

LP: Yes, I should think that's true. I was rather sympathetic to Truman for having risen to the point of being President of the United States even though I 00:41:00disagreed with some of his decisions but I wasn't an enthusiast for him the way I was for Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

TH: Would you say of all the presidents during your life that you were perhaps most enthusiastic about FDR?

LP: Yes. I think so. I liked Kennedy too, even though I quarreled with him.

TH: I just saw the new movie that's out about him. You may have heard about that. About an assassination conspiracy about Kennedy, it's just come out. A very effectively done movie, brings up a lot of questions about the assassination.

LP: We collected, we bought a number of books that I, and we met Mark Lane and 00:42:00talked with him. We bought a number of books about the assassination and at the time, it was during the year after the assassination, we felt there'd been a cover-up. During the period of the Warren Commission.

TH: So you didn't accept the Warren Commission's finding?

LP: No.

TH: And do you still believe that?

LP: Yes. Oh yes, I think probably it, well, there may have been a number of groups involved but mainly these Texas industrialists, right wingers who would prefer Johnson.

TH: Well, I hope, you should, if you get a chance to see this movie or it'll be out on video pretty soon, you may find it interesting. Now the one thing about 00:43:00the Truman administration was his acceptance of this anti-communist fervor that...his introduction of loyalty oaths, his tolerance of sort of very very strong anti-communist sentiments that led to the witch hunts and that sort of stuff and you became caught up in that. Tell me when you first perceived yourself as being a target, let's say.

LP: I don't know, I can't say.

TH: The meeting of the California Education Board when you were asked to talk about loyalty oaths in 1951?

LP: Yes. Well, I had written a letter to the governor I guess complaining about 00:44:00the loyalty oaths for professors in the University of California and that was why they hauled me in to question. They brought up that letter, they said did you or did you not write a letter to the governor.

TH: Was this the first time you'd ever been in that sort of situation, questioned by a political group in that manner?

LP: Well, that's a very specific question, was it the first time...I can't answer with reliance.

TH: There was also an appearance or a statement you gave to the Industrial Employment Review Board in 1951, I came across a copy of this statement, but the statement exists by itself without any note of why you were asked to make this 00:45:00statement. Can you tell me-?

LP: Well, there hasn't been much published about that matter, I think I have the material here in my safe. But the...I think the hearing lasted four days: two days in California and two days in Washington D.C. I was a member of the Executives Committee at Caltech after Dr. Noyes death. When I became chairman I was also on the Executive Committee as the chairman of an important division. And after the war there was a project called Project Vista set up which took 00:46:00over the old hotels the Del Aroyo and they were this group of people mainly Caltech professors, mainly scientistsI guess. I don't know too much about it. I wasn't asked, I knew that this existed but I didn't know much about it and it was a top secret project to make recommendations to the government about nuclear weapons and perhaps military activities in general. So the, someone in the executive council, I don't know who or just how it happened, suggested that the 00:47:00members of the executive council ought to be cleared to receive confidential material. That is a low level of classification. And I signed an application for access to classified material to that degree I thought. And it was turned down so I appealed and the appeal went to this board.

So they came to Los Angeles and I met with them and had a couple of witnesses and then back in Washington D.C. it was continued for two days, this meeting. 00:48:00And it ended when I said actually I don't think it was even classified material, I think it was restricted material. I ended it myself. It ended an hour or two after I said "It seems to me that the government is wasting an awful lot of time about an application for me to see restricted material." And they said "Well, no it says Top Secret material." And I said, "Well, the application that I signed didn't say top secret material and someone in the office, someone had typed in this Top Secret". So the affair was just dropped. No action was taken, I didn't continue to appeal, I just thought it was nonsensical. Anyway, nothing had come 00:49:00up before that board executive council that required that I access classified material. I wasn't interested in having such access. Anyway, I thought I could clean up for it, this restricted material wasn't very important. So I wrote a letter to Millikan saying "Here's the bill I've got from my lawyer for $4,000, I think the Institute should pay this." So they did. So that was that affair. It 00:50:00was pretty amusing. It was, that hearing, when the prosecuting attorney was going over a list of organizations that we belonged to. The extreme one was "Are you or are you not a member of the Save the Redwoods League".

TH: Yeah and certainly a preview of a lot of ridiculous things to come. You said in your statement to that hearing, you noted that there was very strong pressure to cease your political activities from Caltech. Do you remember anything about the nature of the pressure that you were receiving at that time?

LP: Well, perhaps the important parts were, at least the one that I remember 00:51:00best is DuBridge called me and asked if I would stop my political activities saying that the Institute is losing millions of dollars because of it. And he said "And the Institute can't fire you as professor but I can remove you as Chairman of the division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering." So I said, "You remember a couple of years ago I said I'd like to resign as Chairman of the division, because I had 20 years on the job, and you asked me to stay on. But 00:52:00I'm perfectly; I'm quite willing to resign." So I sent in my resignation.

TH: This would have been in '56 or so? I believe that '56 was when your resignation took place. '56 or '57.

LP: Yes. Well, that's right. It was '36 or '37 when I became chairman.

TH: Right. Right. Exactly. But prior to that time, going back to 1951, five years before that, you had said that there was very strong pressure at Caltech to cease your political activities. Anything that you remember at all at that earlier date about DuBridge or Millikan or anyone who-?

LP: No, no I don't remember.

TH: Yeah, okay.

LP: Of course there was a member of the board of trustees, perhaps about '57, I'm not sure when this happened, who gave an ultimatum saying that he was, either I left CIT or he would quit his connection. So he resigned.

TH: This was the Standard Oil guy? What was his name?

LP: Yes. Union Oil, I think.

TH: Union Oil.

LP: President of Union Oil. I don't remember his name even though I have at least one letter from him about another matter where he said Dear Linus and scientists. So...but I've forgotten his name.

TH: Certainly DuBridge was unhappy, let's say, with your growing stature and 00:54:00activities in the political sphere. Do you feel that he was adequately supportive of you during that time or not?

LP: Well, I suppose he was, see I don't have much information. The committee that was set up to see if they could hire me as a professor, I'm sure he supported that, the principles of academic freedom. And the information that I have about DuBridge is mainly from Judith Goodstein's book where she mentions that he supported me.

TH: Yes. Well it's certainly, you know, the activities went on a lot of years 00:55:00before he finally started leveling threats, I guess.

LP: Of course I've seen DuBridge a number of times in the last 10 or 15 years and he seems to feel that he's one of my best friends. I was, so I kept that, he was in a hard spot the way the president of the school.

TH: Yes, he certainly was in a hard spot.

LP: His job is to do what the Board of Trustees orders and to do...And the alternative is to resign.

TH: And he didn't do that.

LP: No. Well, perhaps there was no need in that there was no real overt action 00:56:00being taken by the Institute against me except to keep my salary low.

TH: Were you, when Millikan retired and they were looking for a new president, did you support DuBridge's candidacy?

LP: Didn't know anything about it.

TH: Oh, you weren't involved-?

LP: Well, that's probably not really a true statement. I wasn't a member of the search committee and I can't remember that I was involved in any discussions as to who should be President.

TH: You were not interested in the Presidency yourself. In 1948.

LP: No. No.

TH: You know it seems as though given your stature at that time and position within the University, if they were looking at in-house candidates, you would have been the likely choice.

LP: It came from my lack of interest in administration. I think that I may have been suggested as president of Stanford. A member of the search committee for Stanford came to see me at Caltech. I remember talking with him with extraneous questions about various things. Probably, I don't remember the details, but there may well have been some time when I made it clear that I wasn't very interested in being President of a University. The main discussion as I remember it was his asking my opinion on the professor of History, a Canadian, who became president of Stanford. Wallace Sterling. Well, I knew Wally Sterling quite well, 00:58:00he was a member, his building was just adjacent to Gates Laboratory. And he was a member of the Executive Committee which is where I saw him mostly. So I knew him quite well and was able to discuss with this man with the Stanford search committee on what I thought his qualifications were.

TH: But do you think that might also have been a sounding out of your own interest?

LP: Yes.

TH: Yeah. Finally, you've been great today and I just have one last question and I want to come back to the idea of your being a conformist. And we've covered a period of time here where you certainly moved, at least in the public's eye, from being a fairly straight arrow scientist to a position where you were 00:59:00firmly positioned as a gadfly and critic of public policy. So during, as, what's your opinion in terms of characterization of yourself as a conformist, would you say that you had stopped being a conformist then?

LP: Well, you know these are rather new ideas to me that've come up in conversations with you. But when I think back of myself as a boy, even a youth, it seems to me that I was a conformist. I did my best to do what I thought I was supposed to do, as I mentioned today I don't think of myself as being x or y in any respect. I tried to keep a low profile by behaving, by 01:00:00conforming, by behaving in the accepted manner. So there are probably two aspects to this problem that work in opposite directions. One is my desire to conform. And I had mentioned that DuBos had said that even in science I worked in the mainstream of scientific discovery but 20 years ahead of other people. Well, the other aspect of my character that was developed later was this feeling 01:01:00of confidence in the results of my own ratiocination. So that probably started to develop while I was at OAC. I'm not sure if I can give good examples to illustrate it. For the most part I had conformed at OAC. But I was developing, I'm sure, I was developing a feeling of confidence in myself. I remember perhaps around 1940 or thereabouts or '45 or perhaps even a little later Harold Urey and I, he was visiting CIT. He and I were walking along. He may have come to give a 01:02:00talk about his ideas about the origin of the moon. I remember hearing him give a talk about, I think it was at CIT. And he said how fortunate we were for each of us to have gone to the college we went to. In my case OAC and in his Montana State where he said we were considered-

LP: -Our abilities, in our academic efforts. And that this gave us self-reliance, gave us confidence in our own abilities which stood us in good 01:03:00standing later on when we came in contact with other people who had similar abilities, this didn't cause us to lose our self-confidence because it had been developed at this earlier period. So here I was faced with the necessity of deciding my actions when there were two qualities of my personality pushing in opposite directions: the one to conform and the other to rely on my own assessment of any situation.

TH: And it's obvious which one prevailed.

LP: Well, I think that one would prevail under one circumstance and the other under another circumstance, it depends, I think the decision I would make and probably did make over and over again was how important is it? How important is this matter? Is it of such minor importance that the thing for me to do is conform, not raise a fuss about something that after all isn't very important. But if it's of major importance, I'm sure this came about during the McCarthy 01:05:00period. There were many other scientists and other people too but among scientists, there were a great many scientists who had been saying perhaps not so vociferously as I was, saying the, expressing the same opinions that I was expressing and when it came to the McCarthy period, the possibility of getting into real trouble, they decided that this was a situation where it was better to conform. Ava Helen's comment about this, my decision not to conform, by saying that she thought I was just too stubborn to give in to peer pressure. But I 01:06:00think that my explanation is right that with these important matters it seemed to me that I should stick up for my beliefs. And there are some other scientists probably who we could pick out but there are other people who, or in the political field, who did the same thing. Who made the same decision - to stick to their beliefs even if they got into trouble. So there's my rationalization of my history.

TH: Did you think-?

LP: I've said, you probably remember, I've said that the reason that I didn't just give in was that I had to keep the respect of my wife. That she always knew why I did anything that I did.

TH: Had you, did you guess, did you have any idea early on, say in the early fifties or so, when the pressure first started, that it would become as intense and as-?

LP: Well, I suppose not. I don't remember having to look forward to the future with foreboding.

TH: This has been wonderful, this has been a great talk-

LP: You know, the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, Einstein's Committee, broke up after five or six years because of dissension among the members. There were those, well on one side there was Einstein and I and possibly one or two 01:08:00others and on the other side the people who thought that in this difficult period, the committee will have trouble from now on and will be attacked and we've done our job of bringing to the American people the message that here's an important question that they must be thinking about. So it's better for us just not to be involved in a fight.

TH: And who would have been prominent on that other side? Where would Urey fall?

LP: Well, I think that Urey, see I don't know if this can come down to a struggle in the, among the trustees. There was just gradually, gradually there was a feeling that developed that the committee had served its purpose so I don't have sound facts based on statements. But I think Urey was sort of in-between. Half and half. Sort of worried about his own reputation. I think there was a time when his, I don't think that this has ever been published but I think he began to have more passport troubles too. But kept it confidential too.

TH: That's a whole untold story about how passports were used for political purposes.

LP: So...And I don't criticize other members of the committee that I think were more conservative. It's alright to be sensible. In fact I think I myself would say in that case that I agreed that the committee had done its job and that it was a sensible thing to bring it to an end.

TH: So when you say that you and Einstein...I thought you'd said that you and Einstein were in favor of continuing the activities.

LP: Yes, well you see Einstein didn't come to the meetings. Urey served, he was the vice chairman and he conducted the meetings of the board. And I guess he had discussions with Einstein and other members, perhaps to some extent had discussions with Einstein, but Einstein always invited my wife and me to come and see him in the evening when we were in Princeton. And I can't remember that he and I discussed this matter of bringing the Emergency Committee to an end.

TH: The meetings with Einstein, you would talk about scientific and political topics or mostly political?

LP: Mostly political.

TH: And of course I have the anecdote about one of your last meetings with Einstein when he had talked to you about his own feelings, this was just shortly before he died, when you saw him last. The question of reputation, this is so critical to understanding people's motivation. The idea that, right or wrong, the idea of being tarred with the brush of being a communist sympathizer say, was enough to ruin people's reputations. And yet I guess in the balance, did you consider the serious possibility that your reputation would be damaged or was that inconceivable.

LP: Well, I don't know. It's hard to answer questions of that sort. What was I thinking about 50 years ago, 40 years ago.

TH: Yeah, it is difficult. Listen, Linus, this has been a terrific talk and I thank you for your time. I know you're going to go up to Palo Alto on the 20th and spend some time up there and after that spell I hope to get a hold of you again when you get back down. Tell Linda hello for me and tell her I'm sorry I called a little late. But I will talk with you again.

LP: Very well.

TH: Bye.