00:00:00 Inversion layers are usually not evident, are they?

00:00:07 You're probably right.

00:00:30 Okay, if you could just turn around, please.

00:01:00 Oh, there was no reason for my going for that.

00:01:06 Yeah, I got an invitation to go,

00:01:08 but I unfortunately came to exactly the same conclusion.

00:01:11 I got an invitation to go,

00:01:13 but what they wanted me to do was completely nonsensical for me,

00:01:17 and my feeling was it was a courtesy.

00:01:20 Now, why don't we wait just one second for the helicopter to arrive?

00:01:23 Once this helicopter arrives, we'll start.

00:01:26 Okay.

00:01:30 Okay.

00:01:48 Well, as an officer of the American Chemical Society,

00:01:57 there were three things that I wanted to work on particularly.

00:02:03 One was the regulatory.

00:02:05 Another was on the perception that chemists have of themselves,

00:02:10 and it seemed to me that chemists and the American Chemical Society

00:02:17 had defined chemistry very, very narrowly,

00:02:24 which essentially was in the traditional disciplines

00:02:29 of organic, inorganic, physical, analytical.

00:02:33 And as a matter of fact,

00:02:35 the earlier history of the American Chemical Society,

00:02:41 it wasn't at all hospitable to biochemistry,

00:02:46 and it still has a tendency to,

00:02:55 particularly at that time,

00:02:57 it had a tendency to negate the great number of fields

00:03:03 in which chemistry is an essential part

00:03:08 because of the chemical phenomena is so essential to them.

00:03:14 It seemed to me that what we were doing

00:03:17 was defining chemistry in such a way,

00:03:21 and the way chemists looked at the types of jobs that they might take and do

00:03:28 was that we were rapidly moving towards being very highly trained technicians

00:03:39 working for other scientists who were having the fun,

00:03:43 for instance, the field that developed into molecular biology,

00:03:47 as compared to being the people that were instrumental in its development

00:03:51 and making the decisions, etc.,

00:03:53 and taking the leadership there.

00:03:59 I consider the chemistry, along with physics,

00:04:04 to be extremely difficult to conceptualize

00:04:10 because it has to do with the type of phenomena,

00:04:13 and I felt that we had really cut off ourselves

00:04:19 from many of the exciting problems

00:04:22 and also the many opportunities for employment.

00:04:28 So in a sense, going back to professionalism,

00:04:31 in the sense of the economic well-being of scientists,

00:04:36 it seemed to me that we ought to be more concerned

00:04:39 on making the pie bigger

00:04:42 rather than worrying about who got what fragments of the slices of the pie.

00:04:52 This is a matter of attitude.

00:04:54 It's one of the things that you make gradual progress on,

00:04:57 and I think there is.

00:04:59 One of the fields, for example,

00:05:01 is negating the importance of chemists going into communications.

00:05:06 We just need knowledgeable people in communications as well.

00:05:11 There are a lot of people that have the talents

00:05:14 and respond to those challenges,

00:05:17 and they should do it with pride in what they're doing

00:05:23 as a creative endeavor

00:05:26 and the satisfaction of the contribution that they're making.

00:05:29 The third had to do with trying to focus attention

00:05:34 on chemical education for the general student.

00:05:42 It's a little hard to remember

00:05:44 to what degree the emphasis on science for the general student

00:05:50 has developed in the last few years.

00:05:54 At that time, the American Chemical Society

00:05:59 did not give particular attention to the pre-college programs in chemistry,

00:06:05 and it did not do anything that would encourage the universities

00:06:12 to develop programs for the general student in chemistry.

00:06:18 This all becomes very crucial

00:06:22 because the derision directed at individuals

00:06:29 who did devote their efforts in those directions

00:06:36 was destructive,

00:06:40 and it had a great deal to do with how Browning points

00:06:45 were given out for various and sundry kinds of activities.

00:06:53 Really, the only people that could afford

00:06:56 to get extensively involved in the university community

00:07:01 with education for the general student

00:07:03 were those people who were already well-established

00:07:06 and had tenure,

00:07:08 and their jobs were not on the line.

00:07:13 Do you see that that attitude has changed?

00:07:16 I think it has changed a lot,

00:07:18 and I think there are many things that contribute to it.

00:07:21 For instance, we now have an office of pre-college chemistry teaching,

00:07:29 the high school teachers, etc.

00:07:31 The number of high school teachers

00:07:33 that are involved in the Division of Chemical Education

00:07:36 and who come to the national meetings

00:07:39 has certainly increased very significantly.

00:07:44 In 1971, when I was chairman of the Division of Chemical Education,

00:07:51 we spent our time worrying about what we could do for high school teachers.

00:07:55 Of course, the best thing you can do for high school teachers

00:07:59 is facilitate their getting together

00:08:01 and let them decide what they want to do for high school teachers,

00:08:06 and there's a great deal more vitality.

00:08:10 What is the membership status of high school teachers in the ACS?

00:08:14 I don't really know,

00:08:16 but I'm sure it has increased very markedly in the last 10 years.

00:08:22 But it is infinitesimal in comparison to what it ought to be.

00:08:26 Part of this is inherent, I think,

00:08:29 in the manner in which the ACS defines membership.

00:08:36 That's what I was concerned about.

00:08:38 This I worked hard on.

00:08:40 I think the requirements are not quite as rigorous as they were,

00:08:46 and that is not as much of a barrier.

00:08:50 Any high school teacher, of course,

00:08:52 can become an affiliate of the Division of Chemical Education.

00:08:56 There's a section in the Journal of Chemical Education now

00:09:00 that has a former high school teacher as the editor for that segment.

00:09:08 And I think we now have someone coming into the Washington office

00:09:16 whose concern will be chemistry

00:09:21 in the curriculum of the pre-high school students.

00:09:28 And so this is a tremendous difference.

00:09:31 We had a haggle for years over getting a motion through

00:09:36 that the various committee structures at Central

00:09:40 that had to do with facilitating the development

00:09:49 and use of programs

00:09:55 that students that were not professionally oriented to chemistry

00:10:03 would find rewarding.

00:10:05 And that thing would eternally come out at the end of the pipe

00:10:10 to developing programs that the general student should find rewarding,

00:10:19 which was looking at it in a kind of dictatorial sense

00:10:26 that we knew without really considering.

00:10:32 May I take you back to your comment earlier?

00:10:35 In your work in the ACS with the regulatory agencies,

00:10:38 you provided an expert base of one variety to these agencies.

00:10:44 How do you view the role of the expert in society, the scientific expert?

00:10:50 Well, it seems to me that the chemist has acquired competencies

00:11:00 in the investigation of chemical phenomena,

00:11:10 a familiarity with a wide range of methodologies,

00:11:15 and a wide body of knowledge,

00:11:18 certainly an understanding of the uncertainty

00:11:26 associated with the results of those investigations.

00:11:33 Any question that deals with those qualities of the individual

00:11:39 seems to me to be in the domain

00:11:42 in which that individual has special competence,

00:11:51 which then would essentially have to do with the assessment

00:11:55 of the nature of societal problems from a scientific point of view,

00:12:02 the assessment of the magnitude of the problems,

00:12:06 the development of technological options,

00:12:10 which might assist in ameliorating the burdens of technological practices

00:12:20 and articulating those to the public or to communicators

00:12:25 in such a way that they can be understood.

00:12:31 Those are essentially the roles that are in the realm of the expertise of a chemist.

00:12:39 Some chemists have no expertise in some particular phase of that, of course.

00:12:46 And it is in those realms that the chemist can speak with authority

00:12:53 and what they have to say should be considered.

00:13:00 That is the prestige that is commensurate with their attainments.

00:13:09 The other part of a resolution of societal issues

00:13:16 have to do with the value judgment side.

00:13:21 And in those realms, the scientist or engineer

00:13:28 has all the rights and privileges of any other member of society.

00:13:33 Any more rights?

00:13:35 I don't think so.

00:13:42 In general, when you get right down to it,

00:13:46 the decisions that get made are value judgments.

00:13:51 If an individual comes to a societal issue

00:13:58 on the basis of a value judgment

00:14:02 and wishes to become a proponent for a particular option

00:14:07 consistent with their values,

00:14:09 that is certainly the right of the individual.

00:14:11 But that is the right of an individual as a member of society.

00:14:18 To me, they have forfeited their right of credibility as an expert.

00:14:27 Now, this isn't a question of integrity,

00:14:30 although it could be a question of integrity,

00:14:33 in that if you have reached a value judgment,

00:14:39 then you can selectively present information

00:14:44 that would support that point of view.

00:14:47 You can do this deliberately and negate other knowledge

00:14:51 which you might give that would be contradictory to it.

00:14:54 But without consciously doing that,

00:15:00 I suspect that the manner in which one would present

00:15:07 the evidence to support a particular value judgment

00:15:12 will be filtered.

00:15:14 At least it can be perceived as being filtered.

00:15:19 To me, there is a very strict dichotomy

00:15:27 between the individual as an expert

00:15:31 and the individual acting as a citizen

00:15:34 in resolutions that have to do with the value judgments,

00:15:39 which have to do with quality of life.

00:15:42 And we all have different concepts.

00:15:44 Not all have different concepts,

00:15:46 but there are many different concepts for quality of life.

00:15:49 And in a democratic society,

00:15:53 hopefully the public or the surrogates of the public,

00:15:58 those elected by the public,

00:16:00 will make those decisions, at least on the average,

00:16:03 that are consistent with the mores of the society.

00:16:07 One of the things I find very startling

00:16:09 is the degree to which our capacity

00:16:17 to detect toxicity problems, social problems,

00:16:25 our ability to create and develop technological options,

00:16:35 and the degree to which the value judgments of a society change,

00:16:40 all three change rather rapidly.

00:16:43 So we're eternally in the discussion of societal issues

00:16:47 on a very mobile environment.

00:16:57 And one of the things, of course,

00:17:01 that we need also to realize and appreciate

00:17:04 is that the value judgments, the mores of another society,

00:17:09 another culture, may be quite different from ours.

00:17:12 And this I think we've trampled on seriously internationally.

00:17:15 How does the general public deal with the observation

00:17:18 that there are always experts on all sides of any societal issue

00:17:24 that are presumably offering expert advice?

00:17:29 Well, I think you have to be very, very careful

00:17:31 about who is entitled to be designated as an expert.

00:17:37 And one of the places that this becomes a very serious problem,

00:17:44 as far as I'm concerned, has to do with courts,

00:17:48 which is a formalized setting.

00:17:53 My feeling is that any scientist,

00:17:57 regardless of their competence as a scientist,

00:18:02 as soon as they become a witness for either the plaintiff or the defendant,

00:18:07 is no longer free to fulfill the role of an expert.

00:18:15 The expert has to do with being able to tell what is known, what is not known,

00:18:24 the degree of uncertainty or certainty associated with what is known,

00:18:29 to indicate perhaps what other knowledge could be obtained,

00:18:34 and to assess to some degree what investment it would take

00:18:39 to obtain that knowledge.

00:18:44 In the practice of our courts,

00:18:47 if an individual is called as an expert witness by the plaintiff,

00:18:54 that which the individual is free to say

00:18:59 is only consistent with whichever side he or she has signed on with.

00:19:09 And our adversarial system,

00:19:13 which has to do with getting to the writer of the truth, so to speak,

00:19:24 the process of being a witness is, to me, untenable,

00:19:34 in that it's demeaning,

00:19:38 and it certainly gets you in trouble with your peers.

00:19:42 Because if you have information that you withhold,

00:19:50 then there's the question of, from the standpoint of your peers,

00:19:58 whether you're just stupid and don't know,

00:20:01 whether you're accepting money to present a particular position.

00:20:07 In other words, you're for hire.

00:20:10 And it is very damaging to the professional status of that individual.

00:20:19 Now, I'm told that there is no reason

00:20:29 in our court structures that a witness cannot be called by the court.

00:20:35 This is what Sirica did in reference to the tapes, Nixon tapes,

00:20:39 in which he called his own expert witnesses.

00:20:43 And then they have complete freedom in what they can say

00:20:49 and their total support of information.

00:20:56 And I think it's extremely important that we recognize the difference

00:21:06 between when an individual is exercising the role of an expert scientist

00:21:15 with all the credentials that are associated with that,

00:21:22 and when one is exercising one's rights as a citizen.

00:21:26 Well, it seems to me you've made a clear distinction there.

00:21:29 But is that distinction appreciated by the general public?

00:21:34 Or how could we get the public...

00:21:35 I don't think the public has thought about it, really.

00:21:38 And I don't think many scientists have thought about it.

00:21:42 One of the great problems, of course, is to get scientists

00:21:48 of considerable attainment to appear as expert witnesses.

00:21:53 And for exactly the reasons that I have given,

00:21:56 they are not allowed to be expert witnesses.

00:22:00 And I think there are individual lawyers and judges that recognize the problem.

00:22:10 And there are individual scientists that do.

00:22:13 But I don't think the scientific and engineering community

00:22:17 really recognizes the problems that are inherent.

00:22:22 And I was very much fascinated by an individual

00:22:28 that really did a great deal of appearing as expert witnesses.

00:22:37 And the point of view was that this question of the restrictions in place

00:22:44 was no problem because, after all, that individual would not sign on

00:22:51 with one of the contending parties unless they were right.

00:22:58 And that, after all, is what the court proceeding is concerned with,

00:23:03 not the decision of an individual who will then actually accept money

00:23:09 to testify for one side or the other.

00:23:14 The AAAS has a small group, or is involved in a small group,

00:23:20 known as the National Conference of Science and Lawyers,

00:23:24 which is a joint venture between the American Bar Association and the AAAS

00:23:30 in which it brings together on a continuing basis,

00:23:37 I think it's six individuals from the American Bar Association

00:23:43 and six from the AAAS.

00:23:46 And they're beginning to address some of these issues.

00:23:51 They're the kinds of issues that I think should also be addressed

00:23:54 by committees dealing with scientific freedom and responsibility.

00:23:59 You've been deeply involved in these issues lately.

00:24:02 Have you always been concerned with them,

00:24:04 or is there a time in your career that you decided to become more active?

00:24:11 I don't think there was ever any particular time

00:24:14 when I knew there was a possibility that I would be running for office

00:24:22 in the American Chemical Society.

00:24:27 There were some things that I knew that I knew very little about

00:24:31 or had thought very little about,

00:24:33 and I'd jolly well better start doing my homework.

00:24:42 My approach is a pragmatic one, not a scholastic one,

00:24:48 as I'm not a scholar in any sense whatsoever

00:24:51 in the issues related to the relation of science, engineering, and technology to society.

00:25:00 But I think the world needs both.

00:25:03 One needs the people that are involved in the process

00:25:12 and those people who make it really a part of their profession to study the phenomena.

00:25:21 One of the things that's very difficult to do is, for instance,

00:25:27 in the AAAS there should be some structure,

00:25:31 which in that organization would be a section,

00:25:34 that would be there for only one reason,

00:25:38 is to address the questions of societal impacts of science and engineering

00:25:50 and also the reverse of that, the impact of the public on science and engineering.

00:26:03 Now, every section gets involved sporadically with this

00:26:07 in some of the symposia they put on for national meetings,

00:26:12 but there is no place that a flag flies for individuals to identify with

00:26:18 that will bring together individuals that have a particular concern.

00:26:23 And this is one of the things I think is extremely unfortunate,

00:26:28 and I hope it will get rectified.

00:26:30 Anna, prior to your involvement with the societal issues

00:26:35 as an officer of both of these prestigious organizations,

00:26:40 you yourself were contributing to the body of knowledge of chemistry

00:26:44 through your own research and were involved with some very interesting people.

00:26:49 Would you like to tell us about some of those experiences?

00:26:53 I was attracted to science, as I suspect most people that do go into science,

00:26:59 by its intellectual content, there's no question about it.

00:27:03 And the process of research, as far as I was concerned, was fun.

00:27:11 And I suspect that I could quite happily do research

00:27:17 in any numbers of different kinds of phenomena,

00:27:23 that that in itself didn't have a particular dedication to a particular one.

00:27:31 It so happened that I think all the research that I did

00:27:37 happened to be involved one way or another with the absorption of light,

00:27:42 and that was accidental rather than any deliberate intent.

00:27:49 Most of the papers that I have published

00:27:58 have been in the field of the absorption of small organic molecules

00:28:06 in the vapor phase in the 2300 to 1600 angstrom region,

00:28:15 which gets into the vacuum UV.

00:28:20 As far as I remember, the cut-off on the Beckman d-mu

00:28:24 was about 2100 or something of that sort.

00:28:28 The kinds of groups that lead to absorption in these areas

00:28:37 are unshared pairs of electrons, or pi-bond electrons.

00:28:42 And this meant that we did a lot of work on water, alcohols, ethers.

00:28:53 I worked almost entirely with the acyclic compounds,

00:29:01 similarly for ammonia and the amines.

00:29:06 And with some of the unsaturated hydrocarbons,

00:29:12 whether the absorption coefficients for the pi-bond molecules

00:29:25 is an extremely high factor of ten to a thousand times

00:29:32 that it is for the absorption of the unshared pairs of electrons

00:29:39 in the alcohols and the amines and the oxygen atom and the nitrogen atom.

00:29:47 Who were some of your colleagues while you were doing this work?

00:29:51 Well, that work was done at Mount Holyoke College,

00:29:57 and there had been a great deal of activity.

00:30:04 Emma Carr, who was one of the women of very unusual stature as a chemist

00:30:15 and as a role model, was chairman of the department at the time I went to Mount Holyoke.

00:30:23 As a matter of fact, she was just on the verge of retiring.

00:30:28 And Lucy Pickett, who was another physical chemist at Mount Holyoke,

00:30:37 would just become chairman of the department.

00:30:43 My primary contribution was to use the facilities that were available

00:30:52 to get quantitative intensity measurements,

00:30:56 where the work that had been done there previously—

00:31:00 See, this was in the days when the Beckman DU, I guess, was just a new instrument.

00:31:06 It was in 1945, and the level of instrumentation was so different,

00:31:13 and all your measurements were spectrographic in nature.

00:31:18 And by internal calibration of each spectrographic plane,

00:31:24 you can, in fact, measure extinction coefficients.

00:31:28 And insofar as I know, there was a period of years there

00:31:33 in which the results which we were obtaining were more reliable

00:31:50 and also much greater precision than any of the other work being done in that particular area.

00:31:57 The reliability, in part, was derived from the fact that we were working

00:32:02 with very low vapor pressures and very long absorption tubes

00:32:07 of the order of 20 centimeters or something of that sort.

00:32:11 Well, vacuum ultraviolet work is always difficult, and it certainly was then.

00:32:15 How were you able to do this in an undergraduate institution?

00:32:18 Well, my graduate work, I had gotten a fair amount of competence

00:32:24 working with a hand torch, shall we say.

00:32:27 And so the building of vacuum lines and the things that go with it was no particular problem.

00:32:39 The students that we have that would be doing independent work are young

00:32:46 and to certain degrees inexperienced,

00:32:49 but they're very capable and very committed.

00:32:55 And as long as they understand what's involved,

00:33:03 they, in fact, turn out to be, as far as I'm concerned, more reliable operators than I was

00:33:11 in the sense that they could keep their attention focused on what they were doing

00:33:16 and, quite frankly, I was not above not watching the clock as closely.

00:33:30 I had more misadventures, I think, literally, than the students.

00:33:39 What would you say the future of undergraduate research is?

00:33:43 Oh, that type of work, of course, would be completely superseded by different types of instruments.

00:33:52 The question of the research, I think, is just absolutely essential for the development.

00:34:03 And it particularly, I think, was very important for our students who were young women

00:34:13 who went into graduate school with the experience of having done independent work

00:34:18 and the security that comes with that.

00:34:23 And it's expected in the department that at least the great majority of the members of the department

00:34:31 will supervise independent work.

00:34:34 And we've been fortunate in being able to maintain a summer group that is involved with independent studies.

00:34:46 How have you been?

00:35:08 Well, Anna, thank you very much for taking this time to share some aspects of your career with us today.

00:35:13 Well, I would say thank you, Virginia, and you, Kat, for being so patient to come to Boston

00:35:23 and to sit through these lights and enjoy talking with you.

00:35:34 It would be nice if we could meet under such pleasant circumstances again someday

00:35:40 without having to work in the process.

00:35:42 Thank you very much.

00:35:44 Appreciate it very much indeed.

00:35:52 Now we can chat about anything, isn't it?

00:35:54 Unless, of course, there's an Uncle Don.

00:35:57 Oh, what?

00:35:58 Remember the Uncle Don? He thought he was off the air.

00:36:01 Oh, well, that's all right.

00:36:02 Stay there.

00:36:04 All right.

00:36:09 What exciting are you doing this afternoon, Kent?

00:37:39 What are you doing?

00:38:08 What are you doing?

00:38:32 Wildflowers that grow in this shade are protected from competition by grass because grass does

00:39:01 not grow in the shade.

00:39:02 So the woodland wildflowers are there not because they wouldn't grow in full sun.

00:39:09 Many of them would be perfectly fine in full sun except they would have the competition

00:39:14 of grass.

00:39:15 How far away do you collect from to produce your garden?

00:39:24 It's been well known in the community that I was doing this.

00:39:29 So the best source has been when road cuts were going through some place.

00:39:33 You just don't go out and dig up wildflowers.

00:39:36 I understand.

00:39:37 And I have purchased a few.

00:39:39 And as a matter of fact I was sort of naive and for instance I have some trillium that

00:39:47 are not the indigenous trillium.

00:39:49 And I never felt really moved to dig them up and throw them out.

00:39:54 And so that's just one of the stupidities of it.

00:39:57 So it is indigenous if you don't go and bring one back from India for example.

00:40:02 No.

00:40:03 No.

00:40:04 Interesting enough though I was very much amazed in Kashmir to see the lady slippers.

00:40:13 And there are many of these plants now.

00:40:17 Whether the English got them there or not or whether they are indigenous there I don't

00:40:22 know.

00:40:23 What's the difference between a lady slipper and an officer slipper?

00:40:27 I think they are the same as far as I know.