Interview with Arthur W. Galston - Caltech Oral Histories

Galston–16liberties and whatnot. So I did a lot there. And you may know that I was the first Americanscientist invited to the People’s Republic of China. And I was invited to the Leaders of Americaseries that was run by the Caltech Y. And I visited the campus.COHEN: Meaning later on? Because you went to China in the seventies.GALSTON: Yes, this was in the seventies. I think I visited Caltech in ’72. I had gone to China in’71, in the midst of the Vietnam War.COHEN: So you actually were quite political while you were at Caltech.GALSTON: Yes, I’ve always had a gene for politics. And since I retired—which is twelve yearsago now—I haven’t been doing biology, but I’ve been doing bioethics. I have sparked theformation of a huge bioethics group. [Shows photographs in a book.] This is an early version ofbioethics at Yale, but you see me there. There’s a much fatter volume now, but I don’t knowwhere it is.COHEN: That was always an interest of yours? To do this sort of thing?GALSTON: Yes. I think growing up in the Depression, with [Franklin D.] Roosevelt as president,growing up when Hitler took power—I had just been bar-mitzvahed when Hitler becamechancellor of Germany, in April of ’33. A lot of things coalesced. My father had been out ofwork in the Depression. There were fascist regimes in Europe. I felt threatened in all sorts ofways. And I guess a lot of genes were activated that dealt with the political process.COHEN: But you must have been rather unique in the Biology Division then. Those people wereprobably in their labs.GALSTON: That’s right. I remember trying to get Went and Bonner interested in the things I wasconcerned with and they would have none of it. Delbrück was a bit more political. The youngerpeople—Sam Wildman and George Laties, George especially—were very sympathetic with whatI was doing.http://resolver.caltech.edu/CaltechOH:OH_Galston_A