Seaborg and Kennedy

[nibot]

Glenn Seaborg on John F. Kennedy:

His Charter Day speech was as eloquent as every speech I ever heard him make. His eloquence was matched with an unfailing wit. He received a tremendous reaction at the White House dinenr he held for Nobel Prizer winners when he made his famous ad-libbed comment: "I think that this is the most extraordinary [collection of] talent that has ever been gathered together at the White House"—we all puffed up our chests proudly—"with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

I'm reading Seaborg's autobiography, Adventures in the Atomic Age (I picked it up for $5 at the UCSD bookstore.. a steal!). It's an engaging read — snappy and to the point yet full of interesting history of Berkeley and the Manhattan Project and all that. He makes it all sound so easy, like "I started graduate school at Berkeley, discovered Plutonium, and then four years later we started four national laboratories to mass produce the stuff." He was something like 29 years old when he discovered plutonium. Time to get busy!!

(I just encountered the line, "Kennedy lent us Air Force One for the trip, and we flew eight and a half hours nonstop... Kennedy lent us Air Force One for the trip. Yeah. "Kennedy once said that anyone who wonders why a person would want to be President hasn't traveled on Air Force One, and after the comfort of that flight -- including taking a nap on the President's bed! -- I understood what he meant." ... "And so I became the second American whom Leonid Brezhnev ever met..." Makes being a Chemist sound not half bad, eh?)

Kennedy lent us Air Force One for the trip. I can't get over that line.

"One evening on the way home, I stopped at the University Club for some exercise. As was customary there, I was swimming in the nude when an attendant told me that the President was on the phone..." You just can't make this stuff up.