Linus Pauling Interview, October 16, 1992

LP: ...Prince or Cane. And he may have founded the university.

TH: Well I'm a fan of Thai food, so I talked Linus Jr. into going there, and we had a good talk.

LP: I forgot to bring my hearing aid.

TH: Well I will speak up. That's a new thing, isn't it, a hearing aid?

LP: Well I got one about a year ago from UCSF, but I've never gotten out of wearing it. The one I have now - the two, for each ear - were given to me by a company that makes them. Four thousand dollars they had cost, $2000 each. They're very fancy and effective.

TH: They work well.

LP: Yes.

TH: You know, but I've never noticed in the time that we've been talking, I've never noticed a loss of hearing.

LP: If people talk loud I don't have any trouble with them. If I go to lectures 00:01:00I'm apt to miss much of it. I haven't yet gone to a lecture wearing my hearing aid, though. I've only had these a week.

TH: That'll be the test when you attend a lecture. I just had breakfast with Jimmy LuValle.

LP: Well, that's fine.

TH: He said to say hello to you. So we talked about the 30s in the department.

LP: Yes, I've never seen anything I think that he has written about.

TH: He said that he has now moved into cell biology. You know, he worked in private industry for many, many years, but he said that he's now developed an interest in cell biology, and he's been listening to a lot of lectures and so forth. I don't think he's publishing a lot, though.

LP: He's been retired for a few years now, Harvard, Stanford.

TH: Very interesting fellow, though. Okay, some quick questions.

LP: I remember one episode with him, similar, little different in nature but similar to other episodes involving my students when I would give them advice. I asked him a question perhaps at the end of lecture, and it was here when he was confabulated. That is he didn't know the answer, but he didn't admit it, but just talked around the questions. Afterward I took him to one side and said, 'You're not supposed to know everything, you know. If someone asks a question you don't know the answer, just say you don't know the answer. That gives a better impression than for you to try to hide the fact that you don't know the answer.'

TH: It was funny because he.... Oh, go ahead and finish the anecdote.

LP: Well that also reminds me of this episode with an Oregonian who was a student who had got his Ph.D. just before I came to Caltech, but I think you know this episode. His wife had been my sister Lucile's music teacher, too. And they were both, he and his wife, were graduates of Reed. So he was one of the first half-dozen Ph.D.'s from Caltech, Bozorth, Richard Bozorth. And the episode, do you know the Bozorth episode?

TH: No, tell me.

LP: Tolman, at the seminar that Bozorth was attending, too, or a course that Tolman was giving. Bozorth was a post-doctorate fellow but he of course came to 00:04:00Tolman's course because it was such a good course. Tolman asked me a question, perhaps about electromagnetism. And I said, 'I don't know the answer, I haven't had that yet.' Do you remember that?

TH: Yes, I remember. And then Bozorth took you aside.

LP: You're a graduate student now, you're supposed to know everything. So that's the other side of the coin from this story with Jimmy LuValle.

TH: Actually Jimmy LuValle told me that when he was defending his dissertation, E. T. Bell had asked him something about mathematics that he didn't know, and he tried to get it. He worked for a half an hour, and Bell kept reformulating the question, and then it became clear that he didn't know the answer. Finally LuValle said, 'It doesn't matter how you ask the question, I don't know the answer.' And Bell said, 'Well if you had told me that half an hour ago you would have saved a lot of time.'

LP: Well Jimmy apparently had forgotten for a while my advice.

TH: But then he said Tolman was also on the committee, and Tolman started the same way, and he admitted much faster that he didn't know the answer to that question.

LP: Jimmy, you know, was the president of the graduate student's organization at UCLA when he was working for his master's degree. And he, I think, he got a medal in the Olympics as a-

TH: Yeah, a bronze medal in the 400m. Yeah, he's a very interesting fellow, very interesting fellow. I asked him, you know, about being a black man at that time in science, very rare. He mentioned that you had told him when he first came that you had, that your only comment about his race was that you had said that he might have trouble finding a job after he graduated, that it might be difficult to get an academic position, which in fact it was for him.

LP: Yes, things are different now.

TH: Yes, now he would be very highly prized and would be able to go anywhere probably. Anyway, now let me ask a few quick questions-

LP: I just saw an ad for a faculty member in the last issue of Nature which I have here. And I thought that this university might get into trouble because there are advertising for a staff member in the field as assistant or something like that. And then it says, a woman with a Ph.D. might be given a higher title.

TH: Oh really?

LP: That's discrimination.

TH: That's pushing affirmative action a little far.

LP: That's in this issue of Nature.

TH: Well in fact, whether they say it or not, that is a factor now in so many places that receive federal funds. They're very interested in, essentially, quotas.

LP: A woman who is a Jew and black has very good prospects.

TH: Probably doesn't even need a Ph.D., can just go right in and start teaching. That was one of the questions I was going to ask you was about the change after World War II when the kind of funding that you were accustomed to (private foundation funding, Rockefeller Foundation, and funds from the school for research), the whole funding paradigm shifted to federal funding after World War II. Gradually, you know, NIH and the NAS became very, very important funding sources. How did that affect your research when the funding became switched-

LP: Well in the 1930s my main support was from the Rockefeller Foundation, and millions of dollars had been raised for chemistry and for biology, too. Beadle 00:08:00and me making joint applications toward the end, the last one I think.

TH: Yeah, that big one.

LP: In the 19...during the war of course we were supported largely with defense contracts for much of the work I was doing, but I think we also had some research funds. I continued the antibody work and the x-ray crystallography. I think we were still getting money other than from the government. Then after the war much of our work was supported by...we had a good grant from the Infantile Paralysis Foundation, a million dollars or something like that, and the Office of Naval Research. And then after NSF was set up I had a big grant from the 00:09:00National Science Foundation. You know, I was a member of the committee who wrote the Bush Report. I didn't play a very prominent part. In fact I was involved in recommendations that were rejected because they weren't bold enough. Medical committee, I was the lay member of the medical committee. That committee was dominated by the physicians. They were all physicians except for me, but the deans of the medical schools were all opposed to federal money coming to the medical schools and opposed to federal support of research generally. And I went along with this, not being experienced enough in the field of medicine. So when 00:10:00the National Institutes, NIH, were set up in accordance with the Bush Report but going much beyond what the Bush Report recommended, I began getting a good bit of money from NIH, too. And then of course my NSF and NIH grants were canceled suddenly.

TH: Now I remember, at that time were they...the NIH site, was that called the Public Health Service.... Was that the Public Health Service grant that was canceled? Is that the same thing that you're talking about now?

LP: Yes, the NIH. Yes, Mrs. Hobby, Oveta Culp Hobby. When I received the Nobel Prize, I think I told you this, in 1954 and the Chemistry Department put on a party - a big party - they interrupted to read the telegram saying, 00:11:00'Congratulations on your success. Love, Oveta Culp Hobby and Ruth Shipley.'

[Laughter]

LP: But we weren't really damaged by this because someone in NIH or NSF, I'm not sure who it was, said over the phone when I telephoned to find out what happened. He didn't say what had happened but said, 'Why don't you split your grant application that's already been approved,' you know. It was supposed to be operated just after the fiscal year. 'Why don't you split it and resubmit applications. You submit an application for part of the work, and your 00:12:00colleagues, your two principle colleagues, Corey and Dan Campbell submit applications.' So we did that. Well my applications never were approved, they were just ignored. Corey's and Dan Campbell's were approved, and the period was longer than they had asked for and the amount per year was more than they had asked for. So these junior people in these two federal agencies managed to protect us.

TH: What year was that? Do you remember what year that was?

LP: Well it was before 1954. Two or three years before 1954, I don't remember.

TH: Now the-

LP: But other people, I heard there were forty scientists who had their grants 00:13:00canceled. But this may not be reliable, but I heard that. I went to see one of them at Columbia University, and he was just miserable because the university wouldn't support him, and he didn't have any alternatives. He was just very downcast. And I'm sure many of the 40 suffered a great deal in their search for grants.

TH: Yeah. You know, and I had heard about the - under the name Public Health Service - I had heard about the Public Health Service, but I hadn't heard about NSF.

LP: Oh yes, they canceled. They did the same thing. The forty, the number forty I think perhaps refers to the Public Health Service and doesn't include NSF. I don't know how many NSF there were. But it's interesting, there were people in 00:14:00each of these organizations that were willing to put themselves in jeopardy.

TH: Did the fellow that you spoke to who offered you the solution, did he tell you anything about the reasons for -

LP: No, I asked about it. I said to him, he may have said, 'Well, let me see,' then I said well, then he said, 'Split the application, your application, into three parts and resubmit them.' And I said, 'Well here you remember a few months ago you were in Pasadena and in fact were out at our house and said at that time that the National Institutes of Health were considering, or NSF, I think it was 00:15:00NIH were considering instead of a number of smaller grants, making one large grant to an institution. Now you are asking me to split this rather large grant into smaller ones. Is that a change in policy?' He said, 'Well yes, in a sense it was.' He still didn't tell me. And a week later I was telling Beadle what had happened during the preceding week or two, told him that. He said, 'Don't you know what's happened?' And I said, 'No.' And he said, 'They just don't want you, your name on the list of grant recipients. That's all.' You see how unsophisticated I was even at that time, in '51 or '52 or '53, even at that time.

TH: You know, I haven't seen anything written from a historical standpoint 00:16:00reviewing that incident where people's federal grants were cut. That seems to me a significant part of the McCarthy era story.

LP: Oh yes.

TH: Do you remember the name of the man that you spoke to?

LP: No.

TH: But Oveta Culp Hobby was the person who was in charge of the Public Health Service at that time?

LP: Yes, she was a member of the cabinet.

TH: Did you ever deal with her directly?

LP: No. I did of course with Ruth Shipley.

TH: Yes, yes. Okay.

LP: Although usually when I was at the passport... it was some underling who was questioning me and not Ruth Shipley herself. But I talked with her a couple of times....

TH: How long was it until you next got a federal grant?

LP: I don't remember how long.

TH: Yeah. I want to go back-

LP: Then I got a grant from the Ford Foundation, too, a big grant, $500,000.

TH: The mental health...?

LP: Yes.

TH: During the same postwar period, you supported Henry Wallace, the Progressive candidate.

LP: Yes.

TH: And you spoke at Madison Square Garden?

LP: No, I spoke at Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Ten thousand people there...just before Henry Wallace spoke. After my talk he came in, came out to the center of the field and gave his talk. We were sitting, I just mentioned to 00:18:00Linda, reminded her, she was 15 or thereabouts, and was sitting beside me on the sort of stage in the center of the park. And beside her was Hepburn, was that her name?

TH: Katherine Hepburn?

LP: Katherine Hepburn, who was quite impressed by Linda, and said, 'Why aren't you in the movies?' Linda had a beautiful profile, no doubt would have been, I think probably would have been successful if she had been interested in that sort of career.

TH: That must have been thrilling for Linda at age 15. So you met and spoke with Wallace at some point?

LP: I guess I was introduced to him. I don't think I had a discussion with him. 00:19:00That probably is the only time that I had seen him. His family money came from agriculture, of course he was Secretary of Agriculture, came from agriculture. It was a business of preparing hybrid corn and selling the hybrid corn seeds to farmers.

TH: He understood a little about science.

LP: Yes. Well, I think his father had formed this company when the value of hybrid corn was recognized by Shaw at Princeton, I think, is given the credit for it.

TH: So you didn't form any personal impression of Wallace? You judged him on a political level rather than as a person, I guess.

LP: Well yes. Well I formed a personal impression of him, but not from personal contact, an impression of him as a person on the basis of what I had read in the newspapers.

TH: Tell me what your opinion of him was.

LP: Oh, I think it may be that his scientific training, whatever it amounted to, was partially responsible. I think he was a good rational person who may have had some difficulty even the way scientists have in being a politician. He may have been too honest, basically, to be a successful politician. This meeting was set up to emphasize his forcefulness. There was a fanfare, I don't remember whether there was any fanfare music or not, but at any rate, the chairman said, 00:21:00'And here comes the candidate, Henry Wallace.' And he strode in a very vigorous way across the park for perhaps a 100 or 150 feet. He was impressive, too, because he was rather bulky, good-sized fellow. And then gave a vigorous talk. Well this, these facts supported my feeling that I should vote for him.

TH: Yeah. Was that the largest group that you had spoken to up until that time? Ten thousand people, that's a big crowd.

LP: Yes. It may be. Let's see I did, I think I said a few words in Madison 00:22:00Square Garden once, but I don't remember just what the occasion was. I wasn't the speaker. I was sitting with the Annenbergs, I remember, in Madison Square Garden. But what the occasion was I don't know. Carnegie Hall, I'd spoken about world peace in Carnegie Hall. That was when Tom Lehrer was the opening act, playing the piano and singing his song about the atom bomb.

TH: Do you remember - this is going to be an odd question - but just on the question of speaking to large crowds like that...I've never done it, but I understand from people who do, it can be quite thrilling to get a response from a very large crowd. Did you enjoy speaking in front of large groups?

LP: Well I guess I preferred speaking to small groups, 100 or 200 and under conditions where I can keep my eye on the auditors, too. I don't like speaking with bright lights shining on me and the television camera working and blinding me so that I don't see anybody in the audience that I'm speaking to. Well with a large group, I don't think I enjoy speaking, outside of the United Nations. I gave a short talk with a number of other speakers and some demonstration, and I remember that I didn't have any feeling of satisfaction at that. It was a very short statement that I made, with no response of any sort as I recall. Well it 00:24:00may have been sort of perfunctory applause but nothing special. I like to look at the audience and see people listening intently. In fact it pleases me to give a talk lasting fifty minutes, say, and have the audience perfectly quiet during the whole period of the talk, so intent on what I was saying. In San Diego once I spoke about sickle cell anemia to the San Diego Medical Society, a batch of doctors and their wives. And during my talk there were conversations at the table, a lot of background noise.

TH: Yeah, disappointing to a speaker.

LP: Yes. Well they just weren't interested because they thought this sort of highbrow scientific stuff doesn't have any significance to the clinical practitioners.

TH: Still a problem.

LP: That was the time when at the cocktail party after my talk in the home of the president of the San Diego Medical Society, Ava Helen overheard one member of the committee - there must've been just a dozen people - say to another, 'We didn't have to pay this speaker anything this month, so next month we can have an MD.'

[Laughter]

LP: But I've told you that story before. She said to me afterwards, 'I'm not going to allow you to speak to a group of doctors again.'

[Laughter]

TH: You know, it struck me - I was looking over the transcript of the Dodd Committee hearings. At one point there you said something along the lines of, 'The only person who tells me what to think is Mrs. Pauling.'

LP: Yes, yes. I thought that was a good one-liner.

TH: That was a great one-liner, a very good one. Tell me about the Red Dean of Canterbury's visit, how you got involved with that.

LP: Well of course I had the reputation in Southern California. I was vice president for Science of Hollywood Independent Citizen's Committee for the Arts, Sciences, and Professions. The Red Dean of Canterbury, when I met him I wasn't especially attracted to him, but the Red Dean of Canterbury was scheduled to come to Los Angeles. So the committee asked if I would serve in some way as a 00:27:00sponsor, welcoming chairman of the committee to welcome the Dean of Canterbury to Los Angeles. So I said yes. And I didn't go to the airport to greet him, but later probably the same day, there was a reception where I did meet him.

TH: Yeah.

LP: Well he seemed to me to be a stuffy old enthusiast. But I didn't have a chance, you know, no opportunity of a heart-to-heart talk with the guy such as I could have and did have with Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell is in a different category so far as I am concerned. He's an outstanding intellectual. A 00:28:00few months ago, Karl Popper...I had a phone call asking if Karl Popper could come and talk to me. And he was staying for a few days, I guess somewhere in Pearce Mitchell just a few houses away from where I am. So he came over, and we talked for an hour perhaps.

TH: Oh really? What was he interested in?

LP: Sir Karl Popper?

TH: Yes.

LP: Well I guess he thinks that I am an outstanding scientist practicing science, and he's the authority on the scientific method, so he ought to meet me.

TH: Oh, so this is the first time you'd met?

LP: This was the first time we'd met. He's ninety now, so I think he was 89, and I was 90. And I don't remember what we talked about. Well, you know, I'm not 00:29:00very interested in philosophy. I quote Bertrand Russell, who said that philosophy consists in discussing things about which we have no fact. When we get facts then that subject becomes a part of science. Even as a scientist I am more interested in the details than in the general. Well, this gives the wrong impression, but in the basic principles I am more interested in the details. Well part of my contribution, of course, to science, to chemistry, has been to formulate generalizations. But nevertheless I formulate the generalizations by 00:30:00considering individual facts. I have a feeling similar to Einstein's and other theoretical physicists about the importance of beauty in a scientific equation, mathematical expression of a basic principle. I have that feeling alright, and I'm very pleased when I am able to write down some simple relation that has a large number of applications, that clarifies my understanding of the world. But 00:31:00a problem such as finding some equations that reconcile quantum mechanics, Schrödinger wave equations, with general relativity just doesn't interest me.

TH: Yeah. Did you think about theoretical physics as a career path during the time that you were just finishing graduate school and getting ready to go to Germany on your post-doc? Was that ever an option?

LP: I don't think that it was, but I accepted my first academic appointment, well my first academic appointment by a university was as a research associate at Caltech. I got $1500 paid to me to help us to go to Germany because the 00:32:00Guggenheim Fellowships hadn't been awarded yet.

TH: So that wasn't-

LP: I think Noyes had had assurance from the Guggenheim Foundation that I'd get the fellowship, but it wasn't awarded for three or four months, the end of April I think. So that was my first academic appointment. Then a year later I got a letter from Caltech offering me appointment offering as Assistant Professor of Physical Chemistry and Mathematical Physics, which I accepted. When I came to Pasadena, I realized that I was Assistant Professor of Theoretical, of Physical Chemistry. And Noyes...Millikan, I think, had sent this letter to me, offering 00:33:00me that joint appointment. And Noyes, I think, my surmise is now...Noyes was eager that I should stay in chemistry and just changed the appointment to be in physical chemistry. But I still spent as much time in physics as any theoretical physicist at that time, young one. You know that book on, I think mentioned it to you, quantum mechanics in the United States?

TH: Yes, yeah, Sopka's book, I think was her name. Right.

LP: And he emphasizes 13 young theoretical physics. I am one of the 13 in the 00:34:00tables or the tables about what the 13 were doing. There was also a discussion of some others, but the emphasis is on the 13. So I was considered, in a sense I considered myself, too, to be a theoretical physicist. In Denmark when I told...and I still do consider myself to be a theoretical physicists. In Denmark when I told Beck, the young Dutchman who, I think he's still alive; he's been at Rockefeller University for quite a while.

TH: The one who did spin with you?

LP: Yes,. When I told him that I was to be appointed Assistant Professor of 00:35:00Physical Chemistry and Mathematical Physics, he says, 'Mathematical physics? That's not for you. You could perhaps be a professor of theoretical physics.' He distinguished between them. I guess he tended to downgrade mathematical physics as compared to theoretical physics. The difference being that theoretical physicists attempt to discover and apply ideas about nature, physics. And mathematical physics are applying to physics ideas about the construct that's called mathematics, the logical subject based upon axioms that's called mathematics, applying mathematics to physics whereas the theoretical physicist 00:36:00makes use of mathematics but....

TH: Now wasn't Tolman's title Mathematical Physics, too?

LP: Yes.

TH: Yeah, so I am guessing at Caltech they didn't make that distinction.

LP: No, I think not.

TH: When you went to Germany, when you decided to go to Germany for your post-doc instead of trying to get to Berkeley finally on your NSF grant, you had written in one letter that G. N. Lewis had also influenced you to go to Germany, had told you that it was a good idea to go to Germany. Do you remember that?

LP: No, I don't remember that.

TH: When you had planned your NSF - or sorry, not NSF, your NRC fellowship - when you had originally wanted to go to Berkeley, what had you planned to study with Lewis? Was it the same question on the chemical bond?

LP: Well, I don't know. I don't know what I said in the application or even what I had in mind. I knew that they didn't have any x-ray crystallography going on at Berkeley, except that there was one man in Botany who was taking x-ray diffraction photographs of cellulose of plants. But in the Chemistry Department, there were just no x-ray crystallographers, so I was leaving x-ray crystallography, at least for a time, just as I did when I went to Germany. So I just don't know what I had in mind to do.

TH: Well it would have made sense. I guess you were thinking about the chemical bond certainly at the time because that's what you'd started to do in Germany.

LP: Oh yes.

TH: And G. N. Lewis certainly would've been the logical guy to-

LP: Well I'd read his 1916 paper back in 1919 along with the Langmuir papers, 00:38:00and I was very much interested as shown by what I was thinking about at Caltech, too. So it may be, I was writing theoretical papers. I wrote one paper that was essentially a reconciliation of the static model and the dynamic model. Molecules, atoms and molecules.

TH: Was that the benzene paper? I'm trying to remember in your earlier papers....

LP: Yes, the benzene paper. And I made some models, two models illustrating that. They were good sized, more than 2 feet, 3 feet perhaps, with a piece of wood, wooden cube and then eight-inch stainless steel wires bent to represent 00:39:00the orbit. And then the static model emphasized the fact that the centers of these orbits were in tetrahedral positions around carbon. And the dynamic model showed us that here were these highly elliptical orbits. And Sommerfeld remembered that I had shown these models at a physics seminar.

TH: Yeah, well that shows that certainly you were thinking hard about reconciling those two models, and that was the central problem of the chemical bond-

LP: Well the benzene paper which of course was quite wrong included this point. It didn't involve even the tetrahedral carbon atom; I had abandoned that. But I 00:40:00was thinking alright, thinking hard. And one thing I did, I read a paper by Lawrence Bragg perhaps in 1922 already on atomic radii, and I began collecting information about interatomic distances immediately.

TH: So you read-

LP: Of course I didn't think much of Bragg's idea or his, the values of the radii that he assigned to everything. I thought they were wrong. So in 1927 I wrote my paper on ionic radii and a little later with Huggins the paper on 00:41:00covalent radii. Huggins was a good, smart fellow who had many ideas, Maurice Huggins.

TH: Yeah, sure.

LP: The trouble was that he didn't follow them up, his ideas.

TH: Yeah. Well he came up with the idea of a helix, but it was the wrong helix for proteins. So your careers were sort of crossed?

LP: Well he came and worked in my crystal structure group. And there he introduced a simplification in the analysis of Laue photographs. He had an idea which was useful. We used a ruler to go from the positions of the spots on the photograph to a gnomonic projection. And the distance out from the center on the 00:42:00photograph was graduated in millimeters. Instead of millimeters he changed to the cosine of the Bragg angle so that-

TH: Oh okay, yeah. You eliminate a mathematical step.

LP: Yes, in all calculations. So we immediately had the instrument maker make us rulers of that sort, the Huggins sort.

TH: Very clever. You know, there was a story, and it's only told by Art Robinson, so I discount it partially because of his history. But Art Robinson says that he spoke to Huggins and that Huggins complained about your having stolen ideas from him with that first paper. Were you aware of that?

LP: Yes, well I was aware of that. Well what happened was that he and I wrote a 00:43:00paper together which incorporated his ideas and my ideas. And some of his early papers were, had no foundation really. His ideas about covalent radii were alright; I amplified them somewhat. But then I published a short paper, a couple pages on a special problem - the bond lengths in nitrous oxide - and included the radii, the table of radii, because I needed them. So this was, and I didn't think that I was. I was anticipating the publication of our joint paper because I was interested in the problem. Why are the NN and NO distances in the nitrous 00:44:00oxide molecule what they are?

TH: I see. And so he thought that by publishing the table, which was joint work, within a paper that came out only under your name...that was the complaint.

LP: Yes, I think that was the complaint. His son Bobby is a professor at Stanford, Bobby Huggins. He's been in the news because of cold fusion. He has contended that....

[Knock on the door]

LP: Come in.

Unidentified Male: Time's up!

LP: Hi there. Come on in.

TH: Time's up! Can I get one more question, one last question?

Unidentified Male: Alright.

LP: Why don't you come on in?

TH: Yeah, you can certainly come in, it's a quick question.

LP: Have you looked at what I wrote for the newsletter? Mrs. Munro typed it, but I haven't seen it yet. The opening article-

Unidentified Male: I haven't seen it.

LP: You can get it from her. Why don't you read that while I answer this question?

Unidentified Female: [?], new column.

Unidentified Male: Alright.

TH: You were just talking about Bobby Huggins working on cold fusion.

LP: Yes.

TH: The last question I have is also just a last one that-

LP: Bobby is responsible for a little scar on Linus's face.

TH: Oh really?

LP: The Huggins, when Bobby was about 3 years old, Liny about 5 years old, the Huggins had a little dog. And when we visited them here in Palo Alto, the dog bit Linus on his arm. No, the scar on his face came from another accident, but the dog bit him on the arm, Linus.

TH: Really?

LP: So we took him to a doctor, who said, 'Well, you know this vaccine...the chances that that dog has rabies is so small. The vaccine is...to administer for that is terrible. Better just not do anything.'

TH: Yeah. How was that Bobby's fault in that the dog attacked him? You said that Bobby was responsible for the scar-

LP: Well probably they wouldn't have had the dog if they didn't have this kid.

TH: Oh, okay. Alright.

LP: Linus probably was at fault. He perhaps pulled the dog's ears or something like that. Linus said, 'I'm going to get me a steamroller and flatten that dog.'

[Laughter]

TH: Okay, last question is also just a last one about G. N. Lewis, who I'm fascinated with. I think-

LP: He was about four, I guess, Linus. G. N. Lewis?

TH: Yeah. When you got the Harvard offer in 1928, '29, Harvard was interested in bringing you out, and you sort of got the Harvard offer and then the Caltech 00:47:00executive group promised you a promotion and a raise sort of as a counter-offer, I guess. And this all happened at the same time. There's pretty good documentation that-

LP: Well it wasn't much.

TH: Right. Then you went to Harvard, and then you didn't give them an answer. You came back again, and you asked for one more thing according to the executive minutes. You asked for the leave to go to Berkeley to teach one time a year or every other year up there, and they gave you that, and then you turned down the Harvard offer. And what I'm interested in is, where did the idea for going to Berkeley every year...? Was that G. N. Lewis's idea or was that your idea or how did that come about?

LP: Well let's see. This was 1929; I'd already been at Berkeley....

TH: Right. You had gone once, I think.

LP: Once. So I went four more years to Berkeley.

TH: Right. But did G. N. Lewis encourage you to make that part of the negotiations or was that your idea-

LP: No, I don't think I talked to anybody about that offer.

TH: Oh okay.

LP: And of course what happened then was that Conant said that he could arrange that I would be a full professor.

TH: Ah.