Illustrated Daily; 19; Library Footage, Interview with Dr. Seaborg with Hal Rhodes. Dr. Seaborg - Discovery of Plutonium. Interview with Wilson Hurley. Shots of Art.

but But, yes, all right, we're getting ready to start this commentary. I'm sorry I wasn't able to focus on this. The answer to your question is yes. Dr. Seaborg, you were not yet 30 years old when you were engaged in the research that led to the discovery of plutonium. Here we have in excess of 500 junsters who are the finalists and a lot of competition that brings them to this international fair.

Is it your impression that that old saw that is sometimes bandied about, that creativity and the great idea that an individual might carry around in their head, gets explored and explained by the time they're 30? Well, for the more theoretical aspects of science, mathematics and theoretical physics, that seems to be the case, maybe not 30, maybe I'd go to 35 or 40. But in many areas of science, chemistry and biological science and so forth, there are certainly examples of discoveries by people who are a lot older than that. Otto Hahn, for example, when he discovered a fish and was nearly 60 years old. So you're not exactly attractive the idea that that's an iron law of creativity? No, that isn't.

Is it conceivable that out of this 500 plus youngsters here that within a decade and a half, there will be a young Glenn Seaborg who will win the Nobel Prize and not in a decade and a half, you have to give them about three decades. They have three decades before? Well, I think so on the average, because a decade and a half, you would add to what, 17, that'd be 32. That's a little, I'd certainly think that it'd be more likely that this young scientist, however you characterize him or her, would be in the 40s or 50s and even the 60s. But 40s or 50s, perhaps. You were hot 39 when you won the Nobel Prize? That is right, 39. What's it like at the age of 39 to discover that you have won the Nobel Prize and let's just be overwhelming? It's very satisfying. I say that my mother and father were certainly pleased.

I'm from 100% Swedish background. My mother was born in Sweden and my father's parents were born in Sweden and my mother told me about the Nobel Prize, since I was about that size on up, so that was a special satisfaction. Did they accompany you to Stockholm to? They didn't, only my wife Helen, not even our children because at that time we had four children of which the oldest was five years old. Well, you've probably had a much better time leaving them at home and they probably did as well. Let me ask you about the 100,000 youngsters who did not make this science fair. Would it be safe to say that some of the greatest talent in the future of the world of scientists out there are not necessarily here? Well, I suppose, yes, statistically the 560 here are only a small fraction and our screening procedures are not perfect, so statistically you would have to say yes, there's a greater

chance there. Also, there is a large complement of potentially young scientists and engineers who, for one reason or the other, perhaps due to lack of opportunity, did not enter the science. Never even entered the competition, did not enter the international science and engineering fairers. Let's talk a little bit if you don't mind about the career of Glenn Seaborg. How did you find out that John F. Kennedy wanted you to be chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee? That's a rather interesting story. I was chancellor of the Berkeley campus of the University of California at that time and I had accepted the chancellor's ship under the condition that I would be allowed to be up in my laboratory at least a half a day per week and it was on one of those occasions when I was back in my old haunts in the radiation laboratory that someone said that I was wanted on the phone and when I went to the phone, I heard that familiar New England twang, I think

he called himself Senator Kennedy. He was president-elect at the time, right? He was president-elect, yes, actually was, it was January 9, 1961. Just before the inauguration? Just before the, yes, 11 days before the inauguration. And how long did it take you to make up all the lines? This is an interesting story too. I asked how long I had to make up my mind and with a smile as voice, he said, take as long as you want, let me know by tomorrow morning. Actually another interesting story behind this is when I went home that night and told my family about it, by this time we had six children, Mrs. Seaborganized, so that we were eight of us in the family. They demanded that it be put to a vote whether they should leave their pleasant surroundings in California and go to Washington and so I put it to a vote and they voted seven to one against my accepting the chairmanship of the atomic energy system.

Who voted in favor of it? I voted in favor of it. But I exercised the right as, you know, you're doing a democracy and I vetoed the vote and we went. You had the veto power in this? That's a famous variation, that's actually a variation of a famous Lincoln story, it's about Lincoln cabinet meeting where he said, how many are in favor of an action everybody was against? There's something like that, he says, the eyes have it and he carried the thing, I think it's the idea. Very nice to say. You became chairman of the atomic energy commission in the period following the tenure of Lewis Strauss and the Oppenheimer hearings, the Teller testimony and all of that which left America's scientific community terribly divided for a very long period of time. And suspicious as I, nearly as I can tell, of the atomic energy commission most especially, was that a problem during your administration at the commission? Not very much, of course, John McCone was a chairman in between.

No, I wouldn't say so, well, perhaps to some extent, as you probably know, we awarded the prestigious $50,000 Fermi Award to Oppenheimer in 1963. Can you tell me how that decision was made? It was seen at the time I know as a kind of restitution for a long time. There might have been a little bit of that in it, but the recommendation was made by the nine member general advisory committee as it, that's a statutory requirement. And they made the choice, basically, on the basis of the merit, on the basis of Oppenheimer's scientific accomplishments and Oppenheimer as a scientist.

Well, it was perceived by good many people as a kind of national apology to Robert Oppenheimer for what many of his, at least, partisans had felt had been a wrong inflicted upon him during those hearings. But there was some of that aspect in it. I would... Do you feel that was what was going on yourself? Did you feel there was any element of that at the time? I think so. I think a number of us had a strong desire to do something along those lines. But as I say, he earned it. He was an outstanding brilliant scientist. I did a program not long ago with Dr. Edward Teller. He made a very interesting observation that not only was Oppenheimer hurt by those hearings, but many people were hurt by those hearings. Interestingly, he said, including himself, that he was grievously wounded as a consequence of that whole thing. Are those wounds anywhere close to being healed today? Oh, I think so.

Not completely. I would say that there are still scientists who perhaps are retained a little bit of resentment against Edward Teller for having taken the stand. That's interesting. The scientist at Los Alamos told me not long ago that he really did not think that that whole chapter in America's scientific history would be closed until the death of Edward Teller. Is that a fair way to put it, do you think? Well, I wouldn't put it so much completely on Edward Teller. There were four or five other scientists who held his views that Oppenheimer was a security risk. In my view, these were sincere views. They felt that way were convinced of it and felt that they should move in this direction for the good of our country. I didn't have to agree with them. Yes, I know you did.

That was their views. How did Edward Teller become symbolic of those other scientists who held this view? How came he to be the symbol of that? Well, he was the most articulate and in the sense the most influential, and that would be the reason. So it's who he was and what he represented, that's right, that there's more of not known by any means to the extent that Edward was. How about a year ago in an interview with US News and World Report, as I recall, you made an interesting observation that there is a 1% chance per year of a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. How do those probabilities add up as the years go by? Do they remain constant or do they increase? To begin with, and of course, this is a very, very qualitative assessment. It is based on the assumption that we continue going as we are, and we can reduce this 1%

per year by making meaningful steps, taking meaningful steps towards arms, cutback and arms limitation, including a comprehensive test plan. Test been treated. But to answer your question, if we didn't take those steps, yes, they'd be cumulative. That is 1% than 1 and 1 and 1 and so forth, and 50 years that would mean there would be a 50-50 chance of having a nuclear war. Is that your prognosis? Without an intervening act set of actions, limitation on arms, comprehensive test-band treaty, within 50 years there's a 50-50 chance of a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Yes, I have to emphasize that that's a very qualitative, but there's no way it can be quantitative. Oh, obviously, obviously. You were chairman of the AEC at the time of the limit to nuclear test-band treaty. Yes.

You've written it rather personally. Can we go back in? Yeah. Could I show this? Sure, sure. You were a Dr. C. Borg, you were chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission at the time of the negotiations and the signing of the limit to nuclear test-band treaty. And in your book, you say something to the effect that you wish now that you had gone the full distance and secured that comprehensive treaty. Yes, sir. Why didn't you? We didn't because at the time we felt, I would say the country felt, the Senate felt that we needed some onsite inspections, the right to go into the Soviet Union and assure ourselves that they were not violating the test-band, such a comprehensive test-band, with underground tests through clandestine underground tests.

However, the Soviets felt that the only reason we wanted those onsite inspections was for a speech reasons. So we could never bridge that gap and we had to settle for the limited test-band that allows underground testing. Could that be? Looking back, is there a way to achieve an agreement on onsite inspection? No. I don't think we could have achieved an agreement that the United States Senate and President Kennedy would have agreed to at the level that Prushev was willing to come up to, which was only two or three onsite inspections per year. We came down at one stage tentatively from 20 to about eight onsite inspections per year. However, in retrospect, I think it would have been to our benefit. Had we accepted Prushev's offer of two or three onsite inspections per year, I don't

know that we would have gotten the two-thirds vote in the Senate, but had we done that, I don't believe they would have been able to make any meaningful advances by cheating and the world would be in a much better position than it is today if we had stopped testing 20 years ago. The politics, notably the domestic politics in this country of arms, limitations, negotiations, are they such impediment? Basically, what you've told me is the politics were not right. You could have gotten a treaty ratifying the President wasn't willing to go that far out on a limb to make a deal that you think now in retrospect would have been better for the United States than the one we got. That's right. Now, those same kind of politics continue today in various forms and shapes, right? Yes. Are they permanent inhibitions to effective arms negotiations? No, I don't think so.

I think that actually we could probably, as one example, negotiate a comprehensive test plan treated today, actually, back at the time of the Carter administration, we came very close to doing that. Our negotiators and the Soviet negotiators came to an agreement on all the issues including this matter of onsite inspection. We agreed that we could handle it without obligatory onsite inspections through national means, national size detection devices and satellites, and perhaps a espionage. A little espionage here and there, a little bit like that, which is under these conditions. Well, I mean, like Russians telling on them if they violated it, coming forth, which there is a greater possibility today than it was 20 years ago, as you will remember. I think that this had solved the problems, but President Carter lost his nerve and didn't

submit it. Why he lost his nerve? I understand that there were some scientists of another mind who felt that national security demanded continued testing. And who are those signs? Who came to him and persuaded him, I don't really know. You really don't know? You don't want to say. Well, it's a combination of the two. I am not sure enough to say. And if I did know, perhaps I wouldn't say. You still wouldn't tell me. All right. Well, you still have salt, too, that's unratified by the sense of the United States. That's purely a reflection of politics, is it not? Yes, yes. That was the ratification of that was stopped by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, essentially. All right.

Now, then, is there any way to proceed, Dr. Seaborg, with effective negotiations that lead to ratification of agreements, given the fact that international politics continues while this goes on and domestic politics continues? It's a case history of that. All right. If you have a president, by the way, this book is based on the diaries I kept when I was chairman of the AAC, if you have a president who is so completely committed, almost came into office with his main objective, the attainment of a test-band treaty, if you have a president like John Kennedy, yes, you could do it. Well, the question then becomes, Dr. Seaborg, how do we get that kind of president? Because we have not had that kind of president, apparently, for a period of time, that probably is true, I suppose, that this involves the democratic process, and there certainly is a lot of movement in the United States now towards taking this into consideration. Well, actually, it has never really been an election issue.

That's right. It's the momentum that is apparently down at the grassroots level today for some kind of action to freeze nuclear weapons at present level into all of the kinds of things. Are we to take that seriously as a political movement? Well, yes, I think so. I'm not convinced this is the right direction, the freeze. The philosophical thrust is right, but it's so complicated that I believe we're going to be arguing for years as to what level you freeze and do you build up first and which kind of weapons do you freeze, and so forth, and that's why I advocate putting first priority on a comprehensive test ban that has such a simple concept behind it, so you just stop testing and which would have a dramatic effect on slowing the arms race because it would stop the qualitative improvement of nuclear weapons. And yet you argue in that very book that ironically, the limited nuclear test ban treaty

of 1963 removes some of the urgency for society in the long run, or the limited test ban did. The limited test ban made testing underground respectable. You see, the fallout was eliminated and so forth. But my point now is that if we could get the comprehensive test ban that we fail to get due to these reasons in 1963, how do we, all right, let me go back to the question. Let me go back to the question. Can you subtract all right, I guess we're about a minute into that, wouldn't you, minute about anyway. And you ready for me, okay.

And yet you argue in the book Kennedy, Khrushchev and the test ban, that it was precisely the limited test ban treaty which removed some of the urgency for future negotiations. How would a comprehensive test ban treaty do anything else? Well, the limited test ban treaty made testing underground respectable, unfortunately, because they could be conducted without nuclear fallout. But we now understand that the original objective, which we didn't obtain in 1963, is still very desirable, stop testing so that we can stop the qualitative improvement of the nuclear weapon. I was going to ask you about that. There is a point of view in this country as you well know among some scientists that the Soviet Union is in fact not observing the 63 test ban, that it is over-testing and

that they are getting a leg up as a consequence in the quality of the weapons they are developing. The allegation is not that they are violating the 1963 test ban. They only do that by testing in the atmosphere. In the atmosphere, I'm sorry. Or underground or outer space, that they are violating the so-called threshold test ban treaty that limited tests to 150 kilotons or under and which was never ratified. Are we? And which we said we are going to keep. But here, I believe, it's more difficult to establish whether a test is a little bit below or a little bit above 150 kilotons than it is to establish whether a test has been held at all, as would be the case with a comprehensive test ban. All tests would be prohibited. And the indications are that seismic means and so forth can monitor that down to a level of one kiloton now due to improvements in detection that have been made during the

last 20 years. Well, I suppose the question I'm trying to reach here is this business of the qualitative difference in the weapons that are being tested. Should we take seriously those American critics who argue for want of testing in this country at the same level as testing is taking place in the Soviet Union, that somehow we are in jeopardy with a limited test ban, we would both sides would stop testing completely. So we would be in an equal position and we mean it with a comprehensive test, excuse me, with a comprehensive test ban, both sides would stop testing completely. So it would be in an equal position neither could have the qualitative improvements in our weapons. Before we run out of time, I just want to ask you your opinion, many of our allies in Europe and elsewhere around the country and potentially, potential adversaries as well,

notably the Soviet Union, have made a great deal of noise about the proposition that the United States really isn't interested in any kind of nuclear arms limitations, disarmament or anything else, may political hay out of that argument as a matter of fact. Are they right? Well, President Reagan has the philosophy that it is necessary to negotiate from strength to make any progress with the Soviet Union. He says that his aim is towards a limitation in a cutback in arms. I suppose it's very difficult to be able to assert or in any sense prove that he's wrong. Well, I suppose we'll have to wait for time to pass, but we know, sir. Thank you very much for talking with us here this evening, but it's been a pleasure.

And thank you for joining us. I'm Hal Rhodes. Good night. How's your time? I'm sorry. I didn't see you at the end. That's McCombra. Yes. Well, I don't know that that so much happened, because I noticed that I had to buy a new car recently and it increased about the same amount, so. Last what has not increased is our time. It has decreased. Oh, okay. This hasn't been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Past few minutes with this. And not all critics are ignorant. I understand. But a lot of them don't paint, and it's apparent when they start criticizing. I understand that. Okay. Thanks for joining us. I'm Hal Rhodes. Good night. Actually, that does raise a lot of questions about criticism, not only in— I had a perfect example. This gal is the Museum of Modern Art Wantsor.

She runs the Museum in Denver, the Denver Art Museum, and we had a show up there of photographs from the Park Service. And so they put Thomas Moran on one side of the entry, and me on the other side, both of us painting the lower falls of the Yellowstone. Now where Thomas Moran is better than I am, is in Bravura, in texture, in color. In detail, where I'm better than he is, in composition, in atmospheric perspective, and total effect. She wrote a critique, and she said, Wilson Hurley, a contemporary, has the hard-eye camera effect, and does not have the mysterious atmospherics of the Moran. So Thomas Moran had taken a wet plate of the lower falls.

There's a picture of him with the mule and the camera packing in there to take the picture, and it is an exact replica of the camera. And I had moved the terrain around to make a composition. Of course, she's never been to see the fall. Second of all, my atmospherics were correct, and his weren't. And it occurred to me that this poor lady can accurately criticize representational art. She is not educated enough to be able to look and give me what I call a constructive criticism because there were a lot of things about my painting, that when I looked at it next to the Moran, God, I wanted to take that foreground out and have another pass at it, because he wet me so badly. You know, that's admitted. There is constructive criticism, but we usually don't get it from the professional critic.

Is there an art critic whose judgment you really value? Well, he did now, but O'Robert Lockheed, the painter. He'd tell you what was wrong and he was right. And that's what I really value, because it makes you a better painter. Thank you. That's a kind of criticism in the knee. Let's help Wilson out of his harness. In many hours of trying very hard to build his residences in a particular, which still have a sense of place, which I don't want to geological to take, but still fit in New Mexico. Some fascinating things are taking place all the rest of the time. And the future probably lies there, I imagine. You like it, it loves very much. I like it, the individual parts of it, and I like the whole idea of it, the use of land, the way the image are grouped together in the system, of course.

It's there. Are we all right? Okay. I went out very tight on handles, so you should have a good transition to go close. I don't know if you can find your residences. Make sure you give me one big wide one. How many of them? How many of them? How many of them? How many of them? How many of them? How many of them? Just go ahead and look at it for a second. Yeah, let me give it a second. I'll start wrapping. Are you through with us? Yes.

I'm sorry. I might miss under the table. I'm sorry. You know, I might miss under the table. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know. You know, I might miss under the table. I might miss under the table. You did it himself. Is it all right? That's fine. It's good parking. You got all the sectors down here. Get the table out of here. Get the table out of here.