November 1988

Nehru and America Memories and Tributes

SPAN 2 Remembering Nehru

by Jim Shevis

7 A Tribute From the Past

8 The American Consulate in Bombay: 1838-1988

by Dennis Spencer Wolf

13 The Origins of the U.S. Presidency

16 Profiting From Wastewater

by Jane E. Brody

18 The Marsh That Arcata Built

20 The St. Louis Science Center-An

Indian Inspiration

24 Nehru Science Centre

26 Are Women Better Doctors?

32 Family Business Is Big Business An Interview With Ivan Lansberg by Ronald E. Berenbeim

37 On the Lighter Side

38 Focus On...

40 Quantum Physics-Now

You See It Now You Don't

by James Trefil

43 The Scientific Temper An Interview With S. Ahmed Meer by Warren W. McCurdy

46

Art as Therapy

Publisher Editor

Leonard J. Baldyga Warren W. McCurdy

Managing Editor

Himadri Dhanda

Associate Managing Editor

Krishan Gabrani

Senior Editor

Aruna Dasgupta

Copy Editors

A. Venkata Narayana Snigdha Majmudar

Editorial Assistants

Rocque Fernandes Rashmi Goel

Photo Editor

Avinash Pasricha

Art Director

Nand Katyal

Associate Art Director Artist

Kanti Roy Hemant Bhatnagar

Circulation Manager

Y.P. Pandhi

Photographic Service

USIS Photographic Services Unit

Photographs: Front cover---{;ollage by Nand Katyal. I-R.K. Sharma.

2 bottom left-A vinash Pasricha. 3 top, center right and bottom right-J.D. Beri. 5-R.N. Khanna. 17 right-Avinash Pasricha. 18-19-Terrence McCarthy, The New York Times. 20-21---{;ourtesy St. Louis Science Center, St. Louis, Missouri. 22-23-illustration by Hemant Bhatnagar. 24-25courtesy Nehru Science Centre, Bombay. 28 top & 29 center left---{;ourtesy U.S. Department of Health & Human Services; The Heart, Lung and Blood Institute; 28 bottom---{;ourtesy National Institute of Child Health and Human Development; 29 top-Ken Heinen; center right-Merck Sharp l\nd Dohme International; bottom-Deborah Heart & Lung Center. 32 left-T. Charles Erickson, Office of Public Information, Yale University; right-Š 1987 Ron Sherman. 34 top-Hagley Museum and Library. 4042-illustrations by Gopi Gajwani. 43-Avinash Pasricha. #---{;ourtesy S. Ahmed Meer. 45-R.K. Sharma. 46-48-Don Lambert.

Published by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001, on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana.

Use of SPAN articles in other publications is encouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine, one year's subscription (12 issues) Rs. 30; single copy, Rs. 5. For change of address send an old address from a recent SPAN envelope along with new address to Circulation Manager, SPAN magazine, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001. See change of address form on page 48b.

Front cover: Sketches of the old offices of the American consulate general in Bombay, celebrating its 150th birthday this month, are superimposed on a view of the building that presently houses the consulate. See story starting page 8.

Back cover: These glimpses from the Democratic Party convention illustrate the celebratory mood that marks the penultimate stage of the presidential election. See also inside back cover.

Ambassador John Gunther Dean presents a copy of A Common

Faith: 40 Years of Indo-U.S. Cooperation1947-1987 to Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. and calls on Mother Teresa during a visit to Calcutta.

In early November, after three years and three months in India, I am relinquishing my duties as Ambassador to India, and I must reluctantly say good-bye.

I took up my duties in 1985. Since then, I believe we have opened many new doors in many different fields, leading to cooperation and friendship between the people and governments of the United States and India. It is the sum of all these various relationships which makes up the bonds that link us.

I have learned a great deal about India and her contributions to the world we share.

I am grateful for this experience and it will remain always a part of me.

We are living at a time when concepts that may have been valid in the 1940s and 1950s are being challenged by changes in various parts of the world. Issues that used to be national in scale have become of regional, and sometimes even of global, inportance.

Problems of the environment, disease and hunger know no frontiers.

I would like to think that in the past three years we have seen the dawn of a new relationship in world affairs, a dawn that includes a steady strengthening of Indo-U.S. relations. A great deal remains to be done to insure that this new relationship is a better one.

I am confident that the people of India and America and our succeeding governments will work harmoniously together toward making a better world.

I would also like to believe that the confrontation of past periods will be replaced by increasing efforts toward diffusing conflict and disruption. The expanding cooperation that has now become a key factor of our relations helps achieve our mutual goal of bringing the greatest amount of good to the greatest number of people. Here, too, much more needs to be done to build on the work so well begun. I think our two peoples can and will meet this challenge in the years to come.

I depart with a certain sense of accomplishment, gratified that, through the combined efforts of so many people with whom I have been privileged to work over the past three years, I have helped to lay foundations on which others can now build.

With all the best wishes to each and everyone I remain,

of you and to the nation as a whole,

Remembering Nehru On the eve of the birth centenary of Jawaharlal ehru (November 14, 1989), SPAN asked a Dumberof the first Indian Prime Minister's Aoleriean friends-ineloding the Bowles family, John Keuneth Galbraith and Norman Cousin&-to leJDinisce about the man they knew. Recorded hele are their memories and tributes.

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"No one who knew lawaharlal Nehru would attempt to describe him in a phrase. " -Chester

T

Bowles

here is a consensus among those who knew Nehru that he was an enigma. Some who thought they knew him found they did not. Nehru knew himself, however. Adored by the people of India, admired by intellectuals and political leaders the world over, he knew where he was going. And Nehru meant to take India with him, a goal he magnificently achieved.

On the eve of the centenary of Nehru's birth, nearly a quartercentury after his death, the man is widely remembered as a towering giant on the world stage.

In America, where Nehru is highly esteemed to this day, "old India hands"-writers, academicians, journalists, former ambassadors and other diplomatic personnel who spent time on the subcontinent-recall encounters and conversations with him, however brief. From interviews with about a dozen of them, this American perspective of Nehru is drawn.

Chester Bowles's widow, Dorothy, known affectionately to all as Steb, now 85 and recovering from a broken hip at her home in Essex, Connecticut, remembers his passing this way: "When Jawaharlal Nehru died, someone said of him, 'A great tree has fallen in the forest and can never be replaced.' That beautiful description still holds true."

Like a sentinel tree that stands out on the side of a mountain, Nehru lived a life of haunting loneliness. He would talk about this loneliness only rarely. Author and editor Norman Cousins, who served as an aide to Nehru at the 1955 Bandung Conference on Afro-Asian Unity in Indonesia, recalls such a time: "Nehru had a lively, intellectual curiosity about him. One day he confided in me he was starved for intellectual conversation. He said, 'There is no loneliness in the world as the loneliness of leadership, and the higher you go in leadership the more lonely it gets. That's because the only people who come to you usually want something.' " Cousins, now a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles School of Medicine, has other reminiscences of the Indian Prime Minister's human side also.

During the Bandung Conference, Chinese leader Chou En-lai invited Nehru to his villa one evening for dinner. The two were the major leaders of the conference.

"Normally, you might expect serious conversation," Cousins says. "There was, but the serious conversation was on the best way to prepare rice. Do you steam it, boil it, or what?"

Later, Chou En-Iai and Nehru engaged in animated discussion about a particular conference resolution. Delegates had agreed on the sense of the resolution, then turned it over to the two men to write a draft.

"Chou suggested that Nehru do the first draft since the conference was in English," Cousins says. "Nehru agreed, but when Chou read it he shook his head and said it was not his understanding of the sense of the resolution. Nehru said to him, 'Then write your version, please.'

"When Chou turned in his draft, Nehru said it wasn't even close to what the conference had agreed upon. They discussed it between themselves for three or four hours before reaching agreement.

"Nehru later took me aside and said, 'Can you imagine what Karl Marx might be like in Chinese?' " Many years in prison for his role in the fight for independence accustomed Nehru to isolation from society and a life of contemplation.

Adversity and loneliness served him well, as they so often do unusually gifted people. Between 1921 and 1945, he was imprisoned nine times by the British. But instead of languishing in jail, Nehru used the time to write a remarkable series of letters to his young daughter, Indira. The correspondence, later published under the title, Glimpses of World History, traces world history from its beginnings through 1938.

Most scholars and book reviewers see the work as a tour de force. "It was an educational, intellectual feat," Cousins says.

"His was such an all-encompassing education, he was able to do it without reference works. None were available to him in prison."

Chester Bowles's daughter, Sarah (Sally) Bowles, now 50, remembers the introspective side of Nehru. "He was very, very contemplative. He always seemed to be thinking," she said in an interview just before she left for a six-week vacation in India last month. [Sally, who directs the medical assistance program for the state of Connecticut, comes to India "as often as I can" to meet old friends and travel around. "I save my money and my leave for this trip."]

Only 13 at the time her father went to India in 1951 on the first of his two ambassadorial stints in New Delhi, she recalled an evening with Nehru at dinner at their residence: "There we were, in the garden, just he and the family, and there was this long period of silence. I thought to myself, 'This is terrible.' The silence was so painful. I couldn't understand why my parents weren't making conversation with the Prime Minister. No one was saying a thing.

"So I chimed in with some talk about what I had done at school that day and about my friends. Just small talk, you know. After Nehru left, I asked my father why he had left me to carryon the conversation. He said he wished I had been quiet because my talk had interrupted Nehru's musings."

If Nehru had a serious turn, he also had his lighter side, others recalled. The man who came to dinner had a keen sense of humor, liked to play practical jokes, loved children, enjoyed music and, yes, even admired female company.

"There was always, certainly, a reserve in his personality. But that could be broken down an¡d he would find much in personal relations to enjoy," John Kenneth Galbraith, U.S. Ambassador to India from 1961 to 1963, recalls.

"I once had a visit from the American actress, Angie Dickinson.

Like everyone who came to India, she wanted to meet Nehru. This was always a problem for me, because if I took everyone who wanted to see him to his office there would be little time for him to be Prime Minister.

"Anyhow, one afternoon I called his office and said I had one of the most engaging and beautiful Hollywood actresses visiting me and would he like to see her. I knew he was busy, and left word for him not to have any hesitation in saying, 'No.' "Almost immediately I got back a note saying, 'I am extremely busy, but in times of great emergency I can always make an exception.'

"He talked two hours with her about Hollywood and filmmaking. I particularly remember one exchange between them. "'Well, Miss Dickinson,' Nehru said, 'when you are featured in

Afamity portrait in India (ii-om left to right): Chester Bowles, Jr., Dorothy (Steb) Bmrles, Chester Bowles and Sally Bowles.

a movie that takes two months or more to film, I suppose you become deeply involved in the role you are playing. Does that have a lasting effect on your character or personality?'

"He was delighted with Angie's reply: 'In my last three movies,' she said, 'I have played the part of a woman of questionable morality. I hope that has not permanently affected me.' " Samuel Bowles, the late Ambassador's son, was only 12 when he went to India in 1951. Now an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Bowles says what impressed him most about Nehru when he first met him was his warmth and energy.

"I had read parts of Glimpses 0/ World His/OJ'Y in the quiet environment of our home in Essex, before we came to India. It was a wonderful book, a remarkable thing to have done while a prisoner, and I looked forward to meeting this world giant.

"And then to meet him and discover he was also a very accessible human being was very moving. He took a great interest in me and my sisters. I remember in particular how he went up the stairs two at a time with us and thinking it wasn't customary for a head of government to clim b stairs tha t way. Yet it was the child in him that took the better part of him."

Sally Bowles's recollection of that first family visit with Nehru is equally vivid-and tinged with humor. "Soon after we arrived in India all of us were invited to the Prime Minister's house at 7 p.m. one day. Being used to American dinner hours we thought it was fordinner so after we arrived my father asked the driver to go back and return at 10 p.m. We were very excited about the visit because we had read Discover)' o/India and the Prime Minister was such a hero to us. 1 remember that we were received by Pandit Nehru, Mrs. Indira Gandhi and Mrs. Vijaylakshmi Pandit. There were just the three of them and the five of us.

"I remember being very impressed by how elegant he was; I couldn't imagine him having been in prison! But what struck all of us most about that evening was that he spent almost that entire hour or so talking¡to the children-instead of, as we had thought, discussing international diplomacy with my father. His interest was entirely focused on us. He seemed genuinely interested. He asked us about ourselves, where we had been to school, what we knew about India, what we'd seen so far in the country.

"He was extremely interested in our decision to go to an Indian school [Delhi Public School]. The American School hadn't yet started but most Americans sent their children to Woodstock (in Mussoorie). But neither us nor my parents ever thought of our

going away from home to study. Besides, my parents felt they owed it to their children to make them really get to know India during our stay here. And Pandit Nehru was very impressed with that. He said he wanted to meet us again after we had started going to school to find out how we were liking it.

"After that he took us on a sort of a tour of the house, telling us in great detail the history of each painting, each sculpture .... But then as the evening wore on, we found that he was leading us closer to the door! By then we had realized that we had been invited for tea not dinner!"

During his own visits to the Bowles house, too, Nehru would make it a point to chat with the children. "He would talk to each one of us individually, whether it was about Cynthia being a vegetarian or Sam going on a trek or how scared I was of the traffic when I rode to school on my bicycle. Once my mother told him that I was a bit homesick and he talked about how lonely he had felt when he was in school in England. Almost each time he came, he'd find the time to talk to us. He seemed to be both listening to us and educating us. He made us feel terribly important. That wasn't only because he was the Prime Minister but also because children just aren't used to having adults so sincerely interested in what they are saying or doing."

Sally also remembers that her father and Nehru shared "a very warm personal relationship that went beyond their official positions." They didn't find it unusual since Chester Bowles associated with very influential people in the United States too.

"But we came to regard Pandit Nehru not just as an important person but as a good friend of our parents.

"Later," she says, "as we grew up we realized how extraordinarily privileged we had been to know him."

Cynthia Bowles was an impressionable 15 years of age in 195 I. After her father's tour as Ambassador and her return to the United States, she wrote a book entitled At Home In India in which she recalled Nehru's pull on a crowd.

"I n J an uary of 1952, India held her first na tional elections. One Sunday in the middle of the month, Steb and I went to a Congress Party election meeting in old Delhi. When we arrived, Nehru, who was to speak, had not yet come," wrote Cynthia, now a nurse in Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts.

"At very nearly the expected time, Nehru's car drove up. A murmur went through the crowd. There was no clapping or wild cheering, simply a quiet acknowledgment of the great man's arrival. Nehru spoke in Hindustani.

"Since I could not understand Nehru's speech, it was the members of the crowd and the behavior of the crowd as a whole which interested me most.

"The individuals that made up the crowd were of different social and economic classes, different religions and, moreover, different castes, who were united by their common interest in Nehru, or Panditji, as he was commonly called. To the city public, I realized, caste had little importance."

Anyone who spent more than a few minutes in Nehru's presence was drawn to him, as toward a magnet. It was the nature of his personality. An affable, charming and engaging man, he took a deep, direct interest in everyone he met.

Paul Wallace was a member of a student study group at the University of California in Berkeley that visited India in the summer of 1953. Twenty-one at the time, Wallace, now a political science professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia, recalls how Prime Minister Nehru, with all his preoccupations,

found time to give a private audience to the group and the awe they all felt on meeting him.

"He talked about cultural exchanges and a host of other serious matters," says Wallace. "Later, I asked one of our group, a bright, eager young girl, for her impressions of the man for a newsletter I was doing. And she said she remembered only two things about him-the rose in his lapel and what an enchanting and captivating personality he had. Nothing at all of what he said. She became so overwhelmed and entranced by him she forgot everything else."

According to Wallace, "He was an inspiring person. He and Winston Churchill were probably the two finest politicians and writers of the English language in this century, even though their political views were opposite. Churchill was an elitist, an imperialist, Nehru was an anticolonialist, a populist."

James Roach, a professor of government at the University of Texas in Austin, who came to India in 1956-57 on a Ford Foundation fellowship, reflects on the Nehru magnetism: "A few weeks after arriving in New Delhi, I took part in a weeklong orientation program for foreigners sponsored by the Ford Foundation at the Delhi School of Economics. Nehru appeared after lunch one day, in spotless white achkan and Gandhi cap, and talked and visited with us for nearly three hours.

"He sat behind the desk, sat on the desk and wandered back and forth across the front of the room. He alternated between quietude and emotional speech, asked and answered questions and managed personal greetings to many of us during a tea break.

"He exuded great charm and grace, and it was amazing that such a busy man could find so much time as this. He liked the teacher's role, with both Indian and foreign students."

Nehru was never condescending. He had the common man's touch. That was part of his charm.

Roach also reminisces about a performance of Shaw's Major Barbara in New Delhi in 1956, which Nehru also attended: "I had an aisle seat. Just before the first act started, Nehru came in with another man and sat opposite me. He took offhis cap, and it was my first glimpse of his bald h.ead. At the end of the act, he leaned over, put out his hand and said, 'I'm Nehru. Who are you?'

"We had a brief conversation, and I was captured by his personal manner."

Nehru loved the theater, particularly musical theater. Says Sally Bowles, "I remember one day hearing him happily sing a tune from 'Call Me Madam.'"

Another theatergoer, journalist John F. Barton, recalls an instance of Nehru's ability to mesmerize people. It occurred during the Prime Minister's official visit to the United States in 1961. Barton, a young newsman then with United Press International in New York, was asked to cover Nehru's stay in the city.

"Thanks to Nehru, I got to see Camelot, the smash Broadway musical," said Barton, who now works with the United States Information Agency (USIA) in Washington, D.C. "During the day, I had covered his meetings with various Indian student groups, urging them not to forget India but to return home and use their education and skills for the benefit of India. Later he went to see Camelot with his daughter, Indira Gandhi, and this was one play I also wanted to see very much. Somehow, I was able to con_vince the manager of the St. James Theater to let me in free so I could cover the event, as they watched the play.

"When the standing-room-only crowd saw Nehru with his familiar white cap, as he and Indira made their way back to their seats following the first intermission, a great buzz went through

the theater and then everyone stood and gave him a standing ovation.

"After visiting Julie Andrews, Richard Burton and other members of the cast, they left by the stage door only to be confronted by such a massive, cheering crowd that police had to be called to make a path for him and Indira so they could leave the theater.

Word had spread up and down Broadway that Nehru was at the St. James, and crowds from the other theaters flocked to see him."

Bernie T. (Tom) Marquis, Jr., also with USIA now, first saw Nehru in late October 1963 when he and his wife took their four children to a mela in New Delhi.

"We had not known Nehru would be present, but suddenly there he was, strolling through the crowds. He looked just as we had expected him to look from seeing him for years in photos and newsreels-white Congress cap, long gray coat upon which was pinned his signature red rose, and leather sandals. Unbelievably, here we were face to face with this great man.

"When he reached our son, Eric, then six years old, Nehru stopped, put his hand on Eric's shoulder, asked his name and ifhe was an American. Then he asked him whether he liked India.

Eric's response was unhesitating and not informed by a knowledge of who his questioner was. He said he liked India very much because there were lots of tombs for children to play in.

"The answer seemed to delight Nehru. He told Eric he was glad to hear that he liked India, patted him again on the shoulder and resumed his walk."

Marquis saw Nehru again a few weeks later. But this time the circumstances were quite different. The occasion was a memorial service at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi for slain American President John F. Kennedy.

"Both Nehru and President Radhakrishnan were dressed in white, the color of mourning in India. As he bowed his head during the singing of' Amazing Grace,' Nehru had the look of a man who had suffered a great personal loss."

Injust a few short months, on May 27, 1964, Nehru himself was dead. In his memoirs, Ambassador Bowles recounted that, when Nehru died, by his bedside were found in his own handwriting the lines from Robert Frost's "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening": "The woods are lovely, But I have promises to And miles to go before And miles to go before

dark and deep, keep, I sleep, I sleep."

"It is a very telling connection," Samuel Bowles said from his office in Amherst. "Frost was a quintessentially New England poet. When you think that what Nehru held dearest to him at the time of his death was a fragment of verse by a very American poet, when there was a wealth of Indian poetry from which he might have chosen, it suggests the internationalism of his heart.

"Nehru was truly a global person.

"When the day comes that an American President will have a poem in Sanskrit lying on his bedside table, we will have made great progress toward peace and international understanding."

D About the Author: Jim Shevis is a writer-editor with USIA in Washington, D.C. He has written articles/or The Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, World Affairs and other periodicals. He is also a doctoral candidate in international relations at the American University in Washington, D.C.

A Tribute From the Past In November 1964, SPAN produced a special issue commemorating Jawaharlal Nehru and John Kennedy, two world leaders who had passed away within a year of each other. Below, we reproduce excerpts from the tribute to Nehru by Chester Bowles, then American Ambassador to India.

the f world remembers Gandhi as the man who led the Indian people to independence without violence, it will recall Nehru as the man who breathed life and confidence into the fragile structure of this newborn nation during its first difficult 17 years.

No one who knew lawaharlal Nehru would attempt to describe him in a phrase. He was many-sided, complex¡, full of conflicting enthusiasms and burdened by many sorrows.

A man of changeable moods, Nehru could be on one occasion warm and witty, leading the conversation brilliantly over the wide range of his concerns, and, on another, aloof and preoccupied.

In a personal conversation he was the most articulate man I have ever met. He always seemed to talk fully and freely, to say just what he thought, to make every effort to see that his listener understood his viewpoint, regardless of what he might think of its merits. His conversation often consisted of literally thinking aloud, and he explored all sides of a problem until its full complexity was felt.

With lawaharlal Nehru the world was never painted in harshly contrasting blacks and whites but in subtle intermediate shades.

He encouraged divergent views and welcomed a free and full discussion. Sometimes he seemed to reach a conclusion almost reluctantly, as though hesitant to give up the good that lay along other paths.

Nehru's ability to combine political flexibility with an overriding sense of moral purpose not only helped liberate India from colonial rule but also established the framework of the freedom struggle in much of Asia and Africa. Yet he knew that political independence is a means and not an end and that only through dedicated effort, education, and respect for the rights and opinions of others can a people become truly free.

Nehru's political 'power was supreme to the point where he could easily have pursued the course of "one man rule" which the leaders of so many developing nations have taken. Instead, Nehru used his immense personal influence constructively to strengthen India's democratic institutions.

In 1952, less than five years after independence, his advisers argued that India with her massive illiteracy was unready for democracy and that a national election would be disastrous. But Nehru insisted that India's national ~nd state governments could never be fully effective without the freely given support of the people.

When the election was held a higher percentage of the people voted than in most American elections. It was followed by a second national election in 1957 and a third in 1962, each orderly and free.

As a political leader he understood the need for steady economic expansion; the Indian people, he often said, were awakening from their long slumber under colonial rule. Freedom would be meaningful to them only if there were tangible progress to go with it.

In the last decade of his life lawaharlal Nehru saw much to give him confidence that in spite of India's appalling problems such progress is possible.

I

by Chester Bowles

In the long perspective of history, however, I believe it will be seen that Nehru's greatest contribution was to weld this vast and complex subcontinent into a single nation.

For the people of the world as well, Nehru left behind a rich bequest. For, under the shadow of nuclear weapons and a tensely divided world, Nehru taught us all that only through the exercise of patience, hope and an open mind could we begin to remove that shadow.

He saw that the end of colonialism was a prerequisite for a peaceful world. He saw, too, that the economic and social development of the emerging nations was equally necessary for a stable world.

His strong early support for the United Nations grew, in large measure, out of this perception. It provided the forum in which the voices of the remaining colonial peoples could be heard. it also helped to initiate, plan, finance and administer the great economic development efforts which are now arousing man's hopes in all the awakening countries. Few people foresaw these broader implications of the United Nations as clearly as lawaharlal Nehru did.

Nehru attempted to bridge the dangerous gulf between the communist bloc and the West and to help clear away the clouds of mistrust and suspicion which made fruitful negotiation difficult, if not impossible. He was an early supporter of the disarmament negotiations which continue today under United Nations auspices in Geneva. He welcomed with particular satisfaction the nuclear test ban agreement which the United States concluded with Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

Some American critics have criticized Nehru because he failed to see our complex world quite as they saw it and in several instances Nehru was no doubt profoundly mistaken. But in others r believe that history will give him credit for insights into current developments that escaped many of his contemporaries.

In this regard I am reminded of our first long conversation in late October 1951 when he outlined in remarkably precise terms why the USSR would gradually be forced to ease its internal controls, modify its approach to world affairs and at some stage split with Peking.

When I saw Nehru on my return to India in luly [1963] it was clear that the pace of the past decade had begun to tell. Despite flashes of his old wit and incisiveness, his energies had diminished and his concerns had narrowed. Yet until the very end he maintained his focus on the central issues. In the last weeks of his life he devoted most of his ebbing strength to the task of improving Indo-Pakistan relations.

Like most men who knew lawaharlal Nehru I shall continue to think of him in many roles. One of these is on Independence Day as India's national leader addressing a crowd of nearly one million people from the walls of the Red Fort in Delhi.

I shall remember him as a distant, graceful figure wearing his long, white Indian coat, buttoned up straight to his collar, with a brilliant red rose in his buttonhole. Stretched out before him the people sit silently as he criticizes, provokes, admonishes, jokes, inspires, touching almost visibly their pride and hope, awakening their minds to what India has accomplished, what it can become and what they must do.

But there is another memory which is more intimate and personal. It is of the lawaharlal Nehru with whom I had luncheon just one week before he died. I saw him then as a frail but great and gentle man who had at long last come to feel at peace with himself and with all mankind.

0

The office of the American consul general in Bombay is gearing up for a major celebration at the end of this month-its sesquicentennial jubilee.

It was a century and a half ago, in 1838, that the United States of America appointed its first consul to Bombay. In those 150 years, the offic~ has grown and traveled far, literally and figuratively. The location itself has shifted four times in the past half century alone (see cover), the staff has increased from one to 140 today.

But, most important, the role of the consulate general has enlarged greatly from what it was in the last century, reflecting the times and the state of Indo-American relations.

The beginnings of the U.S.-Bombay diplomatic connection were somewhat shaky even though commerce between the two countries had been active for more than 50 years.; American ships, in search of Indian cotton, ,spices and other goods, had appeared in India shortly after the successful American Revolution (1776-83). The Chesapeake out of Baltimore, for example, headed for India in 1786; four Massachusetts ships were trading in Bombay, Surat and Calcutta in 1787; and by 1788, an increasing number of American vessels were frequenting Indian ports. All this commercial activity led to the 1792 appointment of the first American consul to the East Indies, Benjamin Joy, who was posted to Calcutta. Joy's name, however, was not particularly descriptive of his tour of duty: He appointed a consular agent to Madras, but could not find any suitable ~

. THE dYAMERICAN CONSULATE IN BOMBAY ~ I

gland. But trade in goods merely limped along during this period. Although the East Illdia Company's commercial monopoly was abolished in that same year, and the trading company was expressly forbidden from interfering with the trade of nations friendly to Britain, it was not until 1835 that the companY's commercial power diminished sufficiently to allow the door to open on i.~;: " u/\r " '- " ./(,j increased Indo- U ,So commerce. ,."';}.~), Sensing these improved possibil{ ~u," ities a,nd choosing Bombay over Calcutta for the re-establishment of relations, the United States appointed Philemon S. Parker as the first actual American consul to Bombay on October 12, 1838.

Parker, unfortunately, had little more person to serve in Bombay, which he regarded as already an important port. In success in Bombay than Joy did in Caladdition, he was continuously rebuffed in cutta. Arriving in August 1839, he received his attempts to secure recognition from the permission from the governor to act only as British authorities, finding himself to be a commercial agent. Consular status was being denied, Parker. wrote back to his officially a consul, but without a consulate.

After one more unsuccessful attempt, in superiors in the Department of State, because Bombay was a military center and 1802, the U.S. Department of State did not send any more consuls to India until 1838. the British feared "a precedent that might Trade, however, continued on a limited lead to similar applications from other scale, and it turned out to be a commerce in nations," there being no other consuls at both goods and ideas. The ideas came in that time in Bombay. Because of British the form of American missionaries, such as difficulties with its China trade, trade in India, including that with American vesGordon Hall, who worked in Bombay sels, slumped drastically to the point that from 1813, and also in the form ofIndian only five or six ships per year from the philosophers, whose works, such as EnUnited States came to Bombay. The situaglish translations of the Bhagavad Gita, tion moved Parker to write to the State Vishnu Purana, Kathopanishad and the Department that "without any business Manusmriti, were very much in vogue in whatever to detain me" he was leaving his the United States, especially in New En-

1838 -1988 ~}i,~

post. On his departure, January I, 1840, he authorized an American resident, E.A. Webster, to act as vice-commercial agent of the United States.

The next dozen years brought few more bighlights to the annals of Indo-U.S. relations. Although Agent Webster could send a dispatch back to U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster in July 1841, reporting that the East India Company was trying to introduce American cotton and to improve the cultivation of Indian cotton by the use of American seeds and machinery; and that Americans had been induced to enter the service of the company for that purpose, by 1842, he had abruptly left his post under charges of dishonest conduct. A subsequent appointee had no money to pay for his passage to Bombay, received none from the U.S. government, and refused to take up his position. Another consul-designate simply never showed up in India. Yet another, claiming that it was impossible to live on the $200 in fees he obtained each year as a commercial agent, went to work as superintendent of cotton cultivation for the East India Company at $5,800 per annum.

It was not until 1852 that the United States finally had its first consul in Bombay duly recognized by the British governor.

His name was Edward Ely. He too grumbled about the low pay and left the post in charge of Dassabhoy Merwanjee as viceconsul until the fee structure was revised to his liking. Back at work in 1854, Ely could report that U.S. commerce with India was almost entirely confined to the port of Bombay. American ships brought in tobacco, naval stores, ice, copper, pitch, rosin and lumber (worth $637,000), and carried away wool, oilseeds, hides, medicines, sandalwood, gums, spices, horns, indigo, ivory and saltpeter (totaling $5,400,000).

Now officially and finally in place, the American consulate in Bombay grew and changed. Bilateral trade slumped because of the American preoccupation with the 1861-65 Civil War, but rebounded in the 1880s. The Bombay District's first consular agency was established in Karachi in 1864, but an attempt in the 1880s to create a consulate at Alleppey faltered and ultimately failed. Upon the sudden death of the U.S. consul in 1889, Bombay citizen Hormusjee E. Bode assumed consular duties until 1890. A consular agency was established in Cochin in 1893, and in that same year Consul Henry Ballantine succeeded in arranging at the Chicago World

Fair an Indian exhibit, with products and artifacts graciously donated by various princes and merchants. Further attempts were made at "acclimatizing" American cotton to Indian conditions. Direct U.S.India steamship travel by the late 1890s reduced both travel time and the costs of transshipments for commercial enterprises.

Bombay consuls were finally spared the "indignity" ofliving on consular fees, when annual salaries were initiated in 1899. Two eminent American professors, one of psychology, the other of sociology, were brought to India by the consulate for research and lecture tours. The AmericanIndian Famine Relief Committee in 1900

In the 150 years of its existence, the office of the American consul general in Bombay has been witness to some exciting times-from the country's First War of Independence to the birth of independent India.

The history of this office reflects also the history of Indo-American relations.

was chaired by the U.S. consul, who arranged the delivery in Bombay of 5,000 tons of U.S. corn. (The same consul later oversaw the shipment of mango grafts to the United States for propagation and cultivation.)

By the turn of the century one U.S. consul reported: "Many American tourists come here, and the consul is called upon to carryon an extensive correspondence with American [business] houses in reference to Indian business, as well as with individuals on many subjects, all of which takes up much valuable time." Another consul reported that the port of Bombay was "one of the few in all the East where the United States sells more goods than it buys," an apparent turnaround from the position of the balance of trade in the 1850s.

Along with the 20th century came additional changes for the American representative in Bombay. From 1914 until the United States entered World War I in

1917, the American consulate took on the burden of representing the interests of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey in western India. In 1924, the decades-old practice of appointing consuls on the basis of business, political, collegial or familial ties came to a close with the establishment of the career American Foreign Service in which officers are trained for and subject to assignment anywhere in the world. During World War II, the consulate assisted in coordinating the Allied war effort in India and provided necessary services for U.S. soldiers stationed in the region. And in 1945, the American consular office in Bombay was elevated to a consulate general, which, next to the embassy, is the highest level of diplomatic representation in any country.

Among other places, the U.S. consulate has been housed in the Jehangir Wadia Building, Mahatma Gandhi Road (before 1935); in the Bombay Mutual Building, Dadabhai Naoroji Road (1935-40); in the Construction House, Ballard Estate (194058); and for the past 30 years at its present location at 78 Bhulabai Desai Road in the lovely Wankaner Palace, built in 1938 by the Maharaja ofWankaner and situated on the Breach Candy seaface. Since Indian independence the following officers have served as Bombay consuls general: John J. Macdonald (1946-48), Clare J. Timberlake (1948-50), Prescott Childs (1950-52), Everett F. Drumright (1952-54), William ,T. Turner (1954-60), Robert M. Carr (1960), Milton C. Rewinkel (1962-67), Daniel M. Braddock (1967-71), David M. Bane (1971-75), William F. Courtney (1975-80), J.B. Amstutz (1980-83), Harry Cahill (1983-87) and John J. Eddy (I 987-present).

Vastly changed from its beginnings as a one-man, diplomatically unrecognized .commercial agency attending to the needs of the occasional Yankee trader, today's U.S. consulate general plays an important role in western India. Responsible for the area and population of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Goa, Daman and Diu, the "Con Gen" has a current staff of 26 Americans and 114 Indian Foreign Service National employees.

Its functions, too, have grown. The visa section issues both "nonimmigrant" (NIV) and "immigrant" (IV) visas to Indian nationals and citizens of other countries.

NIVs (almost 43,000 annually) go to tourists, businessmen, students and professors, and IVs (more than 10,000 in 1987 alone) are issued to people intending to live per-

manently in the United States, whether as trailblazing new settlers or as family members seeking to rejoin loved ones already established there.

The American citizens services section, as its name implies, assists the 3,000 U.S. citizens residing in western India, as well as the hundreds who are just passing through the consular district as tourists on any given day. It registers their presence, issues worldwide travel advisories, provides income tax and customs information, assists with absentee voting, facilitates government benefits payments, prepares informational handouts on living and working in India, locates missing persons, transmits emergency messages, visits prisoners and ensures their appropriate treatment and assists with arrangements in cases of death.

The commercial section promotes IndoU.S. business ventures, organizes trade shows and exhibits and provides businessmen with the services of its commercial library. The Drug Enforcement Administration cooperates with Indian authorities, especially in the area of public education and awareness about the menace of the international drug problem.

The U.S. Information Service, located in downtown Bombay at the American Center on New Marine Lines, offers Bombavites and "outstation" members an American library with 15,000 volumes and 200 current periodicals, in addition to press information services, and speaker and seminar programs; it also houses the U.S. Educational Foundation in India, which counseled 52,000 students in the past year.

The consulate also analyzes for the U.S. government any political, economic and social trends, in addition to performing those myriad ceremonial functions that "striped-pants" diplomats the world over are noted for.

These days, of course, the office of the consul general is playing a new role-as the host of its own sesquicentennial celebrations. A gala party is planned for November 29 when Bombay's leading citizensgovernment officials, journalists, businessmen, artists, diplomats-will gather to say "Happy Birthday" and "Many Happy Returns" to an organization that has become an integral part of Bombay and its environs.

D About the Author: Dennis Spencer Wolf is a program officer with the American consulate in Bombay.

The following items, which offer glimpses Ofearly Indo-American links, are excerpted from The United States and India: 17761976, by M.V. Kamath, former editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India, who spent 12 years in the United States as a correspondent of the Press Trust of India and The Times of India.

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In 1925, the Reverend John H. Holmes journeyed to India where, in Western clothes but wearing a Gandhi cap, he addressed the annual meeting of the Indian National Congress. Dr. Holmes was a great admirer of Gandhi and was responsible in making the latter's name known and loved in America. A Unitarian, he had founded the non-Sectarian Community Church in New york ....

The Indian leader's nonviolent resistance campaign in South Africa made a profound impression on the American liberal. Later, he was to write, "Gandhi came into my life. At the moment I most needed him, I discovered there was such a man. He was living in the faith I had sought.

He was making it work and proving it right. He was everything I believed but hardly dared to hope. He was a dream come true." The same year he preached a sermon, "Who is the Greatest. Man in the World?" in which he extolled Gandhi's virtues.

DALIP SINGH SAUND Congressman From India Only one American of Indian origin has so far made it to the U.S. Congress.

He is Dalip Singh Saund who was often referred to as the Congressman from India, Saund, who would often say that "my guideposts were two of the most beloved men in history, Abraham Lincoln and Mahatma Gandhi," came to the United States in 1920, traveling from Southampton to New York in steerage.

He was not sure of the reception he would get at Ellis Island and he had heard of ill-treatment of immigrants. Would he be admitted or would there be difficulties in his way? While he was standing in a

long line to have his passport examined, Saund was to write in his autobiography, a kindly inspector, who obviously saw him, took him out of the line, ¡had his papers stamped, shook his hand warmly and told him with pride: "You are now a free man in a free country!"

Then the inspector whispered into his ears: "You do not have to worry about the CID either!" Saund went to California, worked in the Imperial Valley as a foreman of a cotton-picking gang, studied in his spare time and took his doctorate in mathematics from the University of California at Berkeley, with his thesis "On Functions Associated With the Elliptic Cylinder in Harmonic Analysis."

During his years of study he received

Lala Lajpat Rai arrived in New York in 1914 and founded the India Home Rule League of America. The Lala spent almost five years in America, lecturing widely and attracting many American leaders to sympathize with the Indian nationalist position.

In 1931 Time magazine chose Mahatma Gandhi as its Man of the Year, reflecting the supportive American attitude to Gandhi's nonviolent movement.

The active group among the Indians Vivingin the United States] called itself the Ghadar Party, taking the name from the newspaper. Ghadar which started publication in 1913 under the editorship ofHar Dayal, a native of Delhi, who had come to the United States in 1911, taught briefly at Stanford and soon involved himselfin revolutionary activities. He had the support of Jwala Singh, a wealthy farmer known locally as the Potato King ....The weekly [Ghadar] was issued in Gurmukhi, Urdu, Hindi and later periodically in Bengali, Marathi and some other Indian languages as well.

considerable help from his instructors in getting jobs to maintain himself.

In 1928 he married an American. It turned out that he had met the young lady, then all of eleven, on board the S.S. Philadelphia, which had brought both him and her parents to America!

The girl's parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kosa, had befriended him on board the ship, but the event had been forgotten until Saund met the couple again in Los Angeles, by sheer accident, when he was invited to speak before the Masaryk Club of which the Kosas were members.

At that time Marian Kosa was 19.When Saund met Marian, it was practically love at first sight. Saund won his citizenship in December 1949, 29 years after

coming to America. He was elected a judge in Westmoreland township in 1953, after losing a fight in an earlier election. He served as a judge for four years. In 1956he was elected to the U.S. Congress-the first Indian-born American ever to enter its portals.

Saund never forgot the country of his birth. He was always in demand as a speaker and never ceased to press India's case for independence. Shocked

by Katherine Mayo's book [Mother India, a book written, according to Kamath, "with malice aforethought," and which Mahatma Gandhi referred to as "a drain inspector's report"], he researched and published a reply to it aptly entitled My Mother India.

MARK TWAIN "What a Garden Bengal Is!' When Mark Twain died in 1910, he was widely regarded as the most characteristic American writer of his generation. His curiosity was immense as was his zesffor travel. In the course of his worldwide wanderings, he came to India, arriving in Bombay on January 18, 1896,to be feted by the Governor of Bombay, Lord Sandhurst.

He attended a gathering in honor of a Knighthood conferred upon a Maharaja and noted in his diary that "Huzzas outside announced arrival of Prince, large stately man, ropes of pearl and green rubies around his neck-the very ideal of an Indian prince." The younger prince with him, the author found, had visited the United States to attend the Chicago fair.

From Bombay, Mark Twain went to Baroda where he gave a lecture at the Durbar Hall and, again, with a journalist's penchant for the unusual, learnt that the Jewel House of the local Prince had a superb collection. "It is claimed here," he wrote, "that no monarch in the world can match this mass of magnificence." He visited the library in the palace and mischievously wrote in his diary: "Good Library in the palace-my books, there, you see!"

He also visited Allahabad and his comments are typical Mark Twainese: "If we had got to the Mele [fair] this morning, we might have seen a man who hasn't sat down ¡for years; another who has held his hand.s above his head for years and never trims his nails or hair, both very long; another who sits with his bare foot resting upon a lot of sharp spikes-and all for the glory of God. Human beings seem to be a poor invention.

If they are the noblest work of God, where is the ignoblest?"

Mark Twain was charmed with Bengal.

He marvels: "What a garden Bengal is!"

Again: "And this is India! Tropical, beautiful and just alive with villages!"

Like all tourists, he went to Agra to see the Taj Mahal. He was impressed. There was a clear sky and a "splendid full moon."

He adds, with a chuckle, and tongue firmly in cheek: "At that moment, to our surprise, an eclipse began and in an hour was totalan attention not before offered to a stranger since the Taj was built. Attempts were made to furnish an eclipse for the Prince of Wales in 1876 and recent years to 20 other princes of that House, but without success. However, Col. Lock, Political Agent, has much more influence than any of his predecessors have had."

Mark Twain left India by boat from Calcutta and as his ship sJid down the Hooghly, he recorded his last sight of the country: "For six hours now it has been

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impossible to realize that this is India and the Hooghly [river]. No, every few miles we see a great white columned European house standing in front of the vast levels, with a forest away back-La 'Louisiana] planter? And the thatched groups of native houses have turned themselves into the negro quarters, familiar to me near forty years ago-and so for six hours this has been the sugar coast of Mississippi."

India, said Mark Twain, is "the only foreign land I ever daydream about or deeply long to see again."

Twain's fascination for India encompassed people, flora and fauna and religion.

He was totally taken in by what he called the Bird of Birds, the Indian Crow:."1 came to know him well by and by, and be infatuated with him. I suppose he is the hardest lot that wears feathers. Yes, and the cheerfullest, and the best satisfied with himself. He never arrived at what he is by any careless process, or any sudden one; he is a work of art and 'art is long.' He is the product of immemorial ages and of deep calculation; one can't make a bird like that in a day. He has been incarnated more times than Shiva; and he has kept a sample of each incarnation, and fused it into his constitution. In the course of his evolutionary promotion, his sublime march toward ultimate perfection, he has been a gambler, a low comedian, a dissolute priest, a fussy woman, a blackguard, a scoffer, a liar, a thief, a spy, an informer, a trading politician, a swindler, a professional hypocrite, a patriot for cash, a reformer, a lecturer, a conspirator, a rebel, a royalist, a democrat, a practitioner and propagator of irreverence, a meddler, an intruder, a busybody, an infidel and a wallower in sin for the mere love of it."

No bird this side of paradise has had this much said about it before or after!

WILLIAM ALANSON BORDEN: An American Librarian in Baroda Baroda State in western India had a reputation for being progressive in many fields, not the least in education and social reform. Sixty years ago, the then Maharaja of Baroda invited an American to assist in the establishment of a complete, modern library system. That American, William Alanson Borden, accepted the invitation and stayed on as Director of State Libraries .inBaroda for three years.

Borden was a student of the great Melvil Dewey who invented the library classification system in 1873-a system that has continued to this day to be a "trusty key to treasure chambers" and is still used- in modified forms in many parts of the world.

He was born in the heart of New England-Massachusetts-in 1853, became one of America's first professional librarians and taught library science at th~' Columbia University School of Library Science. The School of Library Science there was founded in 1884 by Dewey himself.

Borden had considerable inventive ingenuity and is known as the designer of the cantilever steel bookstack for libraries and of a special type of tray for library catalog cards. That the Maharaja of Baroda should have sought him out to establish an efficient library system in his State is a tribute both to the Maharaja and to Bor-

den. Borden labored hard, arid in the great Central Library he insisted on open access shelves, a real innovation in those days, and devised a special cataloging plan, based on the Dewey system bVt adapted to the special needs of the Baroda library. He supervised the establishment of a network of free, state-aided libraries and reading rooms in all parts of Baroda. He organized traveling libraries as well as an agency for providing visual instruction for illiterates.

Just as importantly, he was the prime mover in starting India's first school of library economy and stimulating the publication of a periodical, The Baroda Library Miscellany.

The Origins of the U.S. ~!~~!~ency The power of the office of the American President as we know it today was not attained by sudden flight.

As America goes to the polls to elect a new chief executive and head of state this month, SPAN traces the origins of the Presidency and the long and fervent debate that went into the shaping of the office.

The United States, whether known as "The Congress" (until 1781), or as "The United States in Congress Assembled" (under the Articles of Confederation), or as "The United States of America" (under the federal Constitution), has always had a "President." Of course, that functionary possessed far less authority and prestige before 1789 than he did subsequently, but he was a prestigious figure nonetheless. In all, from the first Continental Congress (1774) to the last session of the second Congress (1789), 14 different Presidents from nine of the 13 states were elected, serving an average term of a year each. One of the 14, John Hancock, held two widely spaced terms but never appeared in Congress on the latter occasion.

Since these Presidents exercised the first glimmerings of executive power under the central government, and since six of them preceded the actual formation of executive departments, their role foreshadowed, however dimly, the Presidency under the federal Constitution, which assumes a separation of powers unknown to the Congress of the pre-confederation or the confederation years.

Whatever authority the President exercised emerged out of the necessities of the case and rested on slight legal foundation, but what they did and hall' they did it depended in no small measure on their personalities, their own conception of their roles in office, and the political situation which confronted the incumbents.

From the start, Congress had assumed the executive power.

Soon that power was shared with the President as commander in chief, and then portions were parceled out to ad hoc committees.

However, without express delegation but from the necessities of the case, a degree of executive authority had always been exercised by the President of Congress from that very first session on September 5, 1774, when Peyton Randolph, the Virginia aristocrat, was unanimously elected to that post.

The President was not only a presiding officer. As a delegate, he had the power to vote and to serve on committees like every other delegate. He received and answered letters addressed to the Congress, and carried on communications with the state governors, the military commanders in the field, and American diplomats abroad. On occasion he was authorized to draft resolutions or addresses on behalf of Congress, and even when they were drafted by others, they were invariably issued under his signature.

He was in effect the administrative head of state although no

executive powers were ever formally conferred upon him either by Congress or under the Articles of Confederation.

As Congress's social functionary, the President was its undisputed first member. Protocol demanded that the dais on which he was seated was elevated above that of all other government officers. It was the President who was expected to receive official guests, such as foreign notables, and extend hospitality. Their frequent dinners, levees and balls established the President as the ceremonial head of state, and, indeed, foreshadowed the high tone set by President Washington under the federal Constitution.

Lacking specific authorization or clear guidance, the Presidents of Congress could, with some discretion, influence events, formulate the agenda of Congress and prod Congress to move in directions they deemed proper. Much depended on the incumbents themselves and their readiness to exploit the peculiar opportunities their office provided. All of them were sturdy individualists, with strikingly diverse traits, and some of them held strong convictions about the need to enhance executive power.

Despite differences, however, they do lend themselves to a composite portrait. Except for the Scotsman, Arthur St. Clair, all the Presidents were native-born Americans. All were mature, experienced politicians who had, in addition, been actively involved in the creation and functioning of the revolutionary infrastructure which underpinned the movement for independence and the call for the first Congress.

The majority of the Presidents were well educated by the standards of the time: Peyton Randolph, the first President, and Cyrus Griffin, the last, were Middle Templars, whose attendance at the Inns of Court in London had given them their basic legal training.

Griffin, in addition, had attended the University of Edinburgh, as had Arthur St. Clair, who also had been exposed to a brief term as an apprentice to a London anatomist.

Of the remainder, most had the benefit of private tutors or had studied at the newly emerging academies. Least exposed to any sort of formal education appears to have been Nathaniel Gorham of New Hampshire, who early in life was apprenticed to a merchant. Mostly the Presidents were men of inherited wealth, which they enhanced by their own industry as planters, merchants, or lawyers. Nearest to being a self-made man was Samuel H untington of Connecticut, who found the expenses involved in maintaining his social position as President especially burdensome.

Prior to the adoption of the Articles of Confederation three Presidents decisively shaped events either because of the special situations that confronted them or by virtue of their activist personalities. The first was John Hancock; the other two, Henry Laurens and John Jay. Although the initiatives toward independence were taken by Richard Henry Lee (a later President), and John and Samuel Adams were the chief actors behind the arras, it was President Hancock who first affixed his bold signature to the Declaration of Independence, to which Charles Thomson, Congress's permanent nondelegate secretary, attested. It was Hancock who provided the necessary authentication to a declaration of treason, thereby singling himself out for the special animus of king and parliament. The other signers were more dilatory about subscribing their names.

Although the Declaration of Independence stands out as the climactic achievement of Hancock's term of office (indeed, of his entire career), it must be recognized that under his Presidency Congress had, more than a year before, initiated and asserted powers of external sovereignty. It had commissioned General Washington and set up a military establishment. It had emitted bills of credit. It had set up a secret committee to secure aid abroad.

It had called for the colonies to organize state governments.

Granted that Hancock was not the active instrument in any of these initiatives, and that he would have preferred the role of commanding general to that of President, yet they were all taken in his name, and his Presidency marked perhaps the most creative span of congressional initiatives.

Finally, Hancock was the first American President to issue a farewell address. That proved a fatal mistake. Announcing on October 27, 1777, that his impaired health mandated a leave of several months, Congress jumped at the chance to replace him, grudgingly accorded him a vote of thanks, and three days later replaced him by Henry Laurens, the affluent merchant-planter from South Carolina. The activist Laurens was the first of the Presidents to form a firm opinion of the need for strengthening executive power in the central government. Vain, combative, and indiscreet (he actually fought a duel with fellow delegate John Penn while in Congress), Laurens presided with little pretense of impartiality.

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s President-delegate Laurens was an irrepressible debater, joining forces with Samuel Adams of Massachusetts and Richard Henry Lee of Virginia in criticizing the French alliance and casting doubt on the integrity of America's first envoy to France, Silas Deane. When Congress recalled Deane from France, Laurens treated him on his arrival in Philadelphia as though his guilt of peculation had been incontrovertibly established. When his motion in effect of censure failed to pass, Laurens regarded it as a vote of no confidence and rendered his resignation in a dramatic and prolix farewell address. Congress accepted his resignation just as they had Hancock's, and at once chose in his place a stalwart supporter of Silas Deane, the eloquent lawyer from New York, John Jay. Jay's Presidency of Congress marked the zenith of presidential activism during the years of the Continental Congress.

On more than one occasion, President Jay asserted the fundamental tenets of national sovereignty. He insisted that Congress was invested with the supreme power of war and peace and had jurisdiction over cases in admiralty. Faced with a rapid inflation, Jay addressed two letters to the American people calling on the

states to pay their taxes owing Congress and put their finances in order. "Let it never be said," he declared, "that America had no sooner become independent than she became insolvent."

With the creation of new executive departments in early 1781, more and more executive and administrative duties, some of which had been exercised by the President, were now assumed by the new department heads and secretaries, as well as the Superintendent of Finance and his collective successors, the Treasury Board, while the responsibility for corresponding with the new department was delegated to the perennial Secretary of Congress, Charles Thomson. Since the Articles of Confederation made no change either in the powers of Congress or in the character of the Presidency, although it did explicitly limit the President's tenure, the Presidency was if anything diminished in effectiveness after the Articles of Confederation went into operation and the prestige of the Presidency declined along with that of Congress itself.

Considering the character of the office, its limitations, and the fact that most executive functions were assumed by the departmental secretaries under the confederation, it is clear that one is describing an incumbent who was first among equals in Congress, a far different position from the chief executive whose powers were enumerated by the framers of the federal Constitution. If you ask any American schoolchild who was the first President of the United States, he or she will answer George Washington. And it would be correct.

From the opening speech at the convention by Edmund Randolph to almost the final days of the assemblage, the "National Executive" proved a subject of innumerable proposals and debate.

The Virginia Plan had recommended instituting a national executive "with power to carry into effect the national laws." When the proposal came up for discussion on June I, both Charles Pinckney and James Wilson argued for a "vigorous executive," one who could execute his duties with "energy, dispatch, and responsibility. " Over the weeks a singular collection of nationalists and states' righters were identified as supporters of a single chief executive.

They numbered Washington and Madison, Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, Alexander Hamilton, Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King, John Dickinson, and Pierce Butler-a range of viewpoints covering all regions of the country and varying opinions on other issues. Contrariwise, a group including George Mason, Roger Sherman, Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Randolph, and Hugh Williamson of North Carolina favored a plural executive chosen by Congress, a proposal comparable to the British parliamentary system.

Again the delegates displayed their talent for settling sharply divergent views by a series of compromises. First, beginning on June I, James Wilson and Edmund Randolph argued about the need for a single person to serve as chief executive. Wilson made the point that a single person would provide effective leadership without becoming a tyrant; Randolph, in response, supported a three-man executive chosen from different parts of the country to avoid the appearance of monarchy, a fear that George Mason also reflected.

James Wilson persisted in battling for a single chief executive. A plural office, he held, would lead to nothing but "uncontrolled, continued and violent animosities." His views prevailed, and the

single chief executive was carried by a majority, with the states of Delaware, New York, and Maryland voting against the motion.

What persuaded the majority above all else was the widely accepted view that George Washington would be the first holder of the office, and it was the image of Washington as the nation's leader that shaped their ideas of the powers to be given a President.

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he manner of electing the President provided another divisive issue. The original Virginia Plan would have had the chief executive elected by the national legislature, a proposal that in time was dropped. The framers were torn by eonsiderations that would make the head of state responsible directly to the people rather than to the states and by fears that so democratic a system would be too extreme for the time. Those committed nationalists, James Wilson and Gouverneur Morris, eloquently argued the case for having the President elected directly by the people. George Mason retorted that "it would be as unnatural" to permit the people to elect a President "as it would, to refer a trial of colours to a blind man." Roger Sherman stated his preference for having the President chosen by the national legislature, a proposal Morris ridiculed as "like the election of a pope by a conclave of cardinals."

For a moment it almost seemed as though Roger Sherman's adopted motion to have Congress elect the President would stand, but Madison came to the rescue. He reminded the delegates that such an arrangement would violate the principle of the separation of powers. After countless proposals and reconsiderations, the ultimate decision resulted in another compromise. The convention decided to have the President elected by an "Electoral College," comprising electors who would be chosen in each state "in such manner" as its legislature might "direct."

As to the various powers to be granted the President, the most intense and lengthiest wrangling occurred over his power to veto laws passed by Congress. The Virginia Plan had called for entrusting such power to a council of revision comprising the President and members of the national judiciary. For a time Franklin's views against entrusting such powers solely to the President prevailed, with ten states voting against giving the President an absolute veto. Thereupon the Virginia proposal, for which Madison fought so long and hard, was revived by James Wilson, only to be opposed by Elbridge Gerry and John Rutledge on grounds that it would violate the principle of separation of powers and involve the judges in improperly giving extrajudicial opinions. By a close vote the council of revision was rejected and instead a compromise proposal conferring a veto power on the President which two-thirds of Congress could override was finally accepted by a closely divided vote.

The share of power to be granted the President in making war raised significant issues and required definitions and parameters.

Many of the delegates wished to see the war powers lodged in the legislative branch, wherein they had previously been vested.

Charles Pinckney would have given them to the senate exclusively, but his fellow delegate Pierce Butler favored instead vesting the power in the President, "who would have all the requisite qualities and will not make war but when the Nation will support it." A more prudent James Madison, with Gerry as seconder, moved to insert "declare," striking out "make" war, but "leaving to the executive the power to repel sudden attacks."

Mason, who declared that the executive was "not safely to be trusted" with the war power, was for "clogging rather than facilitating war, but for

facilitating peace." Gerry declared that he "never expected to hear in a republic a motion to empower the executive alone to declare war." The motion to insert "declare" in place of "make" carried by seven states to two.

As finally adopted, the U.S. Constitution takes an ambivalent stand. Article I, section 2, vests in Congress the right to declare war and to raise and support armies, while limiting'appropriations to their use to a maximum of two years. Article II, section 2, describes the President as commander in chief. From this apparent division of powers one might infer that the convention intended to distinguish between declaring war and supporting it, on the one hand, and conducting its operations, on the other. Over the years the constitutional convention's caution in the matter of warmaking has proven well founded. As declarations of war have become old-fashioned ifnot obsolete, Presidents have seized upon the ambivalent treatment of the subject in the Constitution to embark upon a variety of overseas military ventures on their own.

Congress, in defense, has sought by resolution to define more precisely the parameters of the President's warmaking powers.

The powerful Presidency that emerged from the Constitution proved an obvious target for anti federalists like Luther Martin of Maryland and Virginia's Patrick Henry. Antifederalist pamphleteers who voiced their fears in melodramatic language, charged that the Constitution had been framed by a "dark conclave" of "monarchy-men, bold conspirators," who sought not only an elective king and a standing army but an aristocratical Congress of the "well-born."

And George Washington, with his activist advisers, provided proof that energy could be imparted into the executive branch without destroying the republic. Indeed, what persuaded the antifederalists to accept the strong Presidency outlined in the Constitution was the widespread belief that the first incumbent would be the general, Cincinnatus returned to the plow, a man the entire nation had once before trusted with enormous power.

In almost every move he made did the first President shape the office-in an inaugural address to Congress, since expected of all his successors; in the high tone he set, less than monarchial but perhaps halfway between Andrew Jackson and the imperial Presidency to which we are now accustomed. Washington originated the cabinet, a body not recognized in the Constitution, by drawing upon his heads for advice, (even for a time the chief justice). His power to dismiss executive appointments was quickly recognized by the senate. The notion of the senate's giving "advice and consent" to treaties, quickly came to be understood to mean "consent."

In fact, Washington never notified the senate in advance of the terms by which the Jay treaty was to be negotiated.

The principle was soon established that the President could unilaterally issue a proclamation of neutrality (a subject on which the Constitution was silent).

Finally, Washington's decision to retire after two terms from the center of power set a precedent that was followed without formal instruction for more than 144 years and, then, after one to the departure it was made law by the 22nd Amendment Constitution.

In sum, if we find some gleamings of the origins of the Presidency in the office under the old Congress, it was Washington who shaped the office in very much the form which we recognize today.

0 About the Author: Richard B. Morris is Gouverneur Morris Emeritus of History at Columbia University in New York.

Professor

Profiting From Wastewater American researchers are working on ingenious ways to make sewage a profitable resource.

SPAN describes two such ventures, one in New York and the other in California. The New York project, developed by William J. Jewell (facing page) of Cornell University, has already led to a dialogue between Indian and American experts exploring the feasibility of a similar system for Calcutta. In an accompanying article the Arcata project describes how a small California town devised an elegant and natural process using effluents to nourish plants and wildlife while at the same time purifying the wastewater.

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gricultural engineers at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, have devised a new system for treating sewage that can produce reservoir-quality water at low cost.

By using an unusual bacterial technique to filter out heavy pollutants and then growing plants on the partially cleansed wastewater, the Cornell system produces such commercial products as natural gas and nursery plants and trees while it cleans the water.

"The present American concept is 'dilution as a solution to pollution,''' says William J. Jewell, head researcher and an agricultural engineer at the New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. "We don't think we can continue to live with this principle. We want a system that converts unwanted material into something useful, a system that has the potential to pay for itself."

If the initial studies here prove practical on a large scale, communities may even be able to turn a profit from sewage treatment, Jewell adds. In the Cornell system, plants are grown hydroponically, in nutrient-rich solution rather than soil, Unlike other experimental wastewater treatments using such hydroponic plants, the Cornell system produces no sludge or other waste matter.

There are about two dozen commercial treatment systems using hydroponic plants now operating in the United States, most of them in the South where the warmer climate is more conducive to plant growth.

All produce a great deal of sludge and none uses an efficient bacterial filter to partially clean the water first, which then allows the About the Author: Jane ÂŁ. Brody is a science l\Titer and the personal health columnist/or The New York Times.

growth of far more useful plants. The bacteria in the Cornell system produce large amounts of commercially useful gas, which other systems do not.

Jim Basilico, a scientist with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency In Washington, D.C., and chief of the agency's water and toxic pesticides research division, believes the project had "the potential for a low-cost, low-energy process" that could benefit many cities.

"Ifit can be done in a northern climate like New York State, it can be done anywhere," says Basilico.

In a pilot project that began last summer at Ithaca's municipal sewage treatment plant, cattails are now flourishing, nourished only by the nutrients in bacterially filtered wastewater.

The fast-growing plants can then be digested by the same bacteria to prod uce methane, the chief component of natural gas. These bacteria also generate humus that can be used for turf or topsoil.

"I n energy value alone, not counting profits from plants grown for plantings or animal feed, we figure that the sewage from a community of 10,000 could generate $400,000 a year," says Jewell. Furthermore, the pilot studies indicate that even without the profitable products, the cost of sewage treatment with the new experimental system is less than the cost of conventional treatment.

The Ithaca studies are sponsored by the Gas Research Institute in Chicago and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. The pilot plant, which will operate for two years, handles about 38,000 liters of sewage a day, about what would be produced by 100 people.

Cattails were chosen for the experiment, Jewell explains, because they can thrive on solar energy in low-cost plastic green-

houses all year almost anywhere in the country. They could be used as fuel, in construction, as packaging material and as food for animals.

Jewell says that other hydroponic wastewater treatment studies elsewhere in the country used "trash plants" like water hyacinths that can grow in highly polluted water. Although they can be used to generate energy, they also leave a lot of sludge and will only grow in warm areas.

"Almost every kind of plant seems to like the nutrient-rich wastewater in our system-trees, roses, shrubs, geraniums, chrysanthemums, grasses and reeds," he says. Food crops, such as tomatoes and wheat, also can grow in the wastewater, but, according to Jewell, to prevent the spread of harmful microbes the water would have to be disinfected and the resulting crops monitored.

Jewell foresees a community's sewage plant being a plentiful source of plants and tree seedlings for its parks. Or the sewage facility could grow plants hydroponically for commercial nurseries.

"If just one-third of the trea tment system were devoted to propagating nursery plants, we would definitely have a profitable operation," Jewell says, adding that the wastewater could also be used to grow plants that are sources of pharmaceuticals.

Or plants grown on the wastewater could be bacterially digested to produce alcohol.

Jewell's interest in a hydroponic sewage trea tment system was triggered by a General Electric project in the mid-1970s in which tomatoes were grown without soil in an environmentally controlled greenhouse illuminated by the company's plant lights.

The tomatoes, which were marketed in midwinter, "tasted just like they'd come from a summer garden," he recalls.

"What I saw was state-of-the-art hydroponics in which a thin nutrient film flowed over an impermeable surface. The water runs through the roots of the plants, which grow on the water-tight surface. Immediately I thought of using solar power instead of electric lights and replacing the fertilized tap water with nutrient-rich wastewater."

But first he needed a way of reducing the amount of dissolved and suspended pollutants in the wastewater. Although some hardy plants will grow even in sludge or mud without much oxygen, he explained, the components of sewage are toxic to some plants.

He devised a first-stage biological treatment system that removes "as much

sludge, soluble organics and suspended solids as possible" before using the water to grow plants. In the process, which has been patented by Cornell, anaerobic bacteria are attached to small particles of pulverized corncobs, which are then suspended in the wastewater. These bacteria, which grow in the absence of oxygen, are very slow-growing and thus do not accumulate in the system. However, they rapidly convert soluble organic materials in the wastewater into methane gas.

"Currently," Jewell says, "most sewage treatment systems use aerobic bacteria and a large amount of energy for first-stage treatment and end up with a lot of sludge."

He estimates that it costs America about $500 million a year just to aerate sewage so that aerobic bacteria, which depend upon oxygen, can remove some of the organic material.

In the Cornell system, the initial treatment gets rid of most of the suspended solids and some of the toxic materials in wastewater, which is then ready for hydroponic agriculture.

The hydroponically grown plants remove nutrients and most of the remaining pollutants in the water. To produce drinking water, a third step would be needed to remove remaining pollutants.

"It takes only a few hours to turn grossly polluted sewage into highly purified water," according to Jewell. "The quality of water produced by this system exceeds that achieved by conventional sewage treatment facilities."

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If Calcutta's sewage can be treated to produce purified water, the chief beneficiary will be the polluted HooghIy River (above).

ane E. Brody's article from The New York Times, on a new system for treating sewage, has sparked an interest in the subject in __ Calcutta (which generates 570 million liters of sewage daily and discharges it into the Hooghly River, above). The article led to a useful dialogue on the subject between Cornell University's William Jewell, the chief researcher on restoring wastewater, and a group of Calcutta experts.

After reading the article, Calcutta Mayor Kamal Kumar Basu contacted Cornell University to ascertain whether the system could be utilized to treat Calcutta's sewage water. Meanwhile, B,asu also got in touch with the United States Information Service (USIS)in Calcutta to seek some way of initiating a

dialogue between Cornell and the city. USIS arranged for a telepress conference between Jewell and three Indian experts-Swadesh Bhattacharya, chief engineer of the water supply department of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation; Niloy Chaudhury, professor of civil engineering at Jadavpur University and a former chairman of the Central Pollution Board; and J.K. Nath, a professor at the All India Institute of Hygiene and Public Health in Calcutta The Indian experts met at the USIS office from where a satellite telephone link was established with Jewell in his Cornell laboratory. It was 8:30 in the morning in Ithaca and late night in Calcutta.

During the hour-long discussion the men from

Calcutta explained how sewage is currently utilized in their city and asked Jewell if his efficient sewagetreatment system could work in their municipality.

"We utilize the sewage water of Calcutta without treating it, for growing vegetables, and also for fish cultivation," said Bhattacharya. "It has also been found that the yield of rice could double by using sewage as a fertilizer" The technique developed by Cornell researchers produces reservoir-quality water at little or no cost and in minimal time. As Chaudhury pointed out during the telepress conference, the sewage treatment that takes about a week in most countries, takes only an hour in the Cornell system. The process requires little machinery or other equipment.

Jewell told the Calcutta specialists that the treatment of sewage possible through the process developed by his team could yield a revenue of Rs.5 million annually for a city with a population of 10,000.It would yield methane gas and also help in growing flowers, food and vegetables.

As a follow-up to the telepress conference, SPAN's' correspondent in Washington, Norma Holmes, interviewed Jewell.

"The panel of Indian experts in the Calcutta telepress conference was very well informed," he said. "They were very distinguished engineers and scientists and their questions related to how our system might apply to Calcutta and how it differed from alternatives that some Indian researchers have been working on. At the end of the discussion it was my understanding that they were r?lanning to organize some team visits of Calcutta experts to Cornell and vice versa."

Jewell pointed out that the Cornell system was ideal for solving the sewage recycling problems of developing countries because of its low cost. "Our approach has been to try to use low energy and low capital technology, which is why we are using vegetation as one of the primary driving forces," he explained, adding, however, that it was difficult for him to say if the system would apply to Calcutta until he has had more information on the city. "The point is that in Calcutta there are, I believe, 13 million people contributing sewage to a collective system.Part of our system would be very applicable there. But whether the best part of our processthe larger plant purification-eould be installed the way we would like to see it installed, depends on how much area is available. We would need a minimum of 500 hectares, probably more. That is a pretty large area.

"During the telepress conference," Jewell continued, "there was also a suggestion that fish farming could be integrated with our system. I think that the implications of that would have to be reviewed."

Following the dialogue with Calcutta, Jewell has also received "an Indian government inquiry from New Delhi asking me to document my research."

Said Jewell, "I would be glad to help in any way I can, but right now I am not familiar enough with the problems to be of too much assistance."

Meanwhile, Jewell's research into the subject continues. "I think we have got to find even more cost effective, natural ways of purifying waste.

The technology is so very general that creative people all around the world will find many different uses for it. The one field in which we are not doing anything-and in which a lot needs to be done-is food production. We do not know how virus migrate through our sewage system. If we plan to use the water for fish, and other food production, I would want to disinfect the water first. The end-product water we are now producing is not potable. We can get there very quickly and fairly inexpensively, but we are not quite there yet."

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Jhe Marsh Jhat Arcata

P

ublic restrooms in Arcata, a c~astal city in California, are called "pretreatment facilities." An office in City Hall is decorated with a poster of a toilet headlined "The Origin." And every September, thousands of people are drawn to this city's foggy shoreline for the "Flush With Pride" festival.

The source of all this good-natured humor lies just down the hill from the town plaza where engineers have built 60 hectares of marshes, lagoons and ponds to cleanse the wastewater generated by Arcata's 15,000 citizens. The wetland habitat has also attracted great flocks of sea birds, families of otters, and dozens of owls, osprey and falcons to the shores of a shallow bay north of San Francisco.

Arcata's wetland treatment system, which is based on a thorough understanding of marine biology and not on expensive and sophisticated mechanical technology, is regarded by ecologists as one of the

nation's most sensible approaches to solving municipal pollution.

The city's engineers have a novel view of what goes down drains and toilets. Instead of considering it waste, they see this effluent as a nutrient-rich resource, capable of nourishing plants and wildlife that in turn will purify wastewater.

"If it's used carefully, this water can support a highly complex ecosystem," said George H. AlIen, a fisheries biologist, and one of three professors at Humboldt State University here that helped city engineers design the system.

The wastewater refuge, which has no smell other than the scent of salt and shore mud carried on cool breezes, has revitalized what was once a blighted stretch of Humboldt Bay, where vagrants lived among crumbling lumber mills. Thousands of birdwatchers now negotiate kilometers of redwood chip trails that lace the refuge, hoping to spot peregrine falcons or watch

Buill fish eagles pluck trout from the lagoons.

"It may be wastewater to you," said David Hull, Arcata's aquatic resources specialist, "but it's our bread and butter."

Hull, a likable 33-year-old biologist who manages the system, delights in the jokes about his job. On a shelf outside his office, Hull proudly displays a miniature plastic commode that squirts water at those curious enough to lift the lid. He has begun a contest to name one of the lagoons in the treatment system. One suggestion: Pond of Flush.

And why shouldn't Hull chuckle? While other small cities boast about successful high school basketball teams or famous native sons and daughters, Arcata may be the only American city whose claim to fame is how it treats human waste.

In September 1987, as one of the ten winners of the Ford Foundation's Innovations in Government program, Arcata was awarded $100,000 for its work on the treat-

ment system. Franklin A. Thomas, the foundation president, called Arcata's program "an imaginative response to some of society's toughest issues."

Arcata plans to use the money to build a visitors' center near the restored wetlands.

It was no accident, say residents, that Arcata devel-' oped such an elegant natural system for solving a problem that has confounded many other small communities.

Since the mid-I960, when thousands of environmentally conscious young people from San Francisco settled¡ in the magnificent forested canyons of Humboldt County, the region has been a testing ground for experiments to restore the land and to reduce pollution. Their ideas, coupled with the technical assistance provided by faculty members at Humboldt State University, have yielded a number of successful conservation projects.

Salmon runs in many rivers have been restored.

Projects to rebuild Humboldt Bay's clam and oyster beds, and efforts to reduce soil erosion by changing timber and farming practices also seem to be working.

The treatment system includes three oxidation ponds, two marshes that filter and cleanse wastewater, three marshes and lagoons irrigated with wastewater, one brackish pond, six small ponds used to raise salmon, and a series of small marshes for research. The program also relies on a treatment plant that was built in the 1950s and modernized in the mid-1980s.

Arcata's treatment system starts like most others with wastes flowing into the mechanical plant where solids are removed and disinfected.

The similarities end at this point, hQwever. Arcata turns its solid waste into mulch for city parks. The nutrient-rich liquid is pumped into the oxidation ponds where it is broken down by algae, bacteria, and the swarms of coots, gulls, ducks and other water birds that cover the surface.

After a month, the water is allowed to flow into marshes and lagoons, where nutrients support thick stands of bullrushes, cattails and other marsh plants. The plants act like fine combs, trapping nutrients, filtering out particles, and clarifying the waste. Small fish live among the stems, along with water fleas and other insects that ducks and geese find tasty. Mice and muskrat live in the marsh providing ample nourishment for the birds of prey.

Part of the wastewater is diverted to the city's salmon hatchery where it is mixed with seawater. The nutrients support tiny invertebrate animals that are eaten by newly hatched steelhead, chinook and coho salmon, When they reach the smolt stage 15 months later, the l5-centimeter-long fish are released in Jolly Giant Creek, a turbid stream that pours out of the mountains and runs through the wetlands. Hull is trying to rebuild the annual salmon run in the creek, which was ruined by silting caused by logging operations in the redwood forests that surround Arcata.

In the last step, wastewater in the marshes is pumped back to the primary treatment area where it is chlorinated and dechlorinated before being released into Humboldt Bay. State and city tests show the wastewater is much clearer than the seawater in the bay. "We took a threatened area of waterfront and turned it around," said Hull. "Nobody came down here before we built this except to shoot seagulls."

He noted one other key component of the program. The construction of the ponds and marshes cost less than $700,000, far less than mechanical equipment capable of doing the same job. "Our maintenance budget is very low," Hull said.

"There aren't many moving parts to break.

All we do, basically, is plant a few more cattails and bull rushes."

Word about Arcata's treatment system has spread across the country. Among the cities that have shown interest, said Arcata officials, are San Diego and Santa Rosa, California, and Groton, Connecticut. Hull said he wanted to develop a promotional bumper sticker that would have an aerial photograph of the wetland, the city's logo, and this caption: "Thank You For Your Contribution."

0 About the Author: Keith Schneider is the Washington correspondent/or The New York Times.

An Indian Inspiration India built its first science park in Bombay a decade ago for children to learn about the basic principles of light, sound, motion, energy and the environment, even as they were having fun operating the exhibits. The idea inspired Jeffrey Bonner, a Fulbright scholar in India, to build a similar Facing page: To show how internalfriction works, two balls-one partially filled with sand and the other solid-race down a circular track; the ball with sand always loses. Top, left: Seeing can be deceiving-a confused double cone appears to roll uphill. Top, right: Gears and gear trains

facility in St. Louis, Missouri. That park opened last yearwith Bonner as its director of research and special projectsand was an instant hit. These parks have today demonstrated their effectiveness in making science more accessible to ordinary people. have many uses and arefun to operate.

Center: Identical blocks racing down a slide show that the race does not always go to the smoothest. Bottom, left: An inside view of the St. Louis Center. Bottom, right: Afour-ton giant lever helps visitors to understand the principle of mechanical advantage.

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Hands-On Hit With Children," "Science Park Offers Fun And Learning," "Kids Have Fun Testing Science Center's New Exhibits," "Something For Everyone," "To Be A Child Again .... " If newspaper reports on the opening of the Monsanto Science Park in St. Louis, Missouri, late last year, seemed to b~ a bit excessive, it \yas understandable.

The park, inspired by similar parks in India (see story below), was the first handson, informal science education facility of its kind in the United States of America.

A part of the St. Louis Science Center, the park is located on the 2,100 square-meter plaza surrounding the center. It features 24 all-weather, playground-type exhibits that demonstrate basic scientific principles of light, sound, energy, motion, the weather and other phenomena. The idea is to stimulate an interest in science among youngsters by making learning fun.

For example, an exhibit called Whispering Dishes demonstrates how focused sound waves travel. Two large parabolic reflectors, resembling television satellite dishes, are placed 23 meters apart. When someone speaks into the center of one dish, anyone standing near the other dish, can easily hear his or her

words, despite the great distance between them.

Another exhibit demonstrating internal friction uses two balls, one solid and the other partially filled with sand.

The solid ball continues accelerating as it travels, while the filled ball seems to be moving at the same speed but always finishes second. A six-year-old watching the demonstration nods wisely and says, "One has stuff inside that makes it drag."

And he is correct.

In another comer of the park, a group of children gather around a lab technician who shows differences in density with the help of plain water, salt water and eggs. The children watch silently as she places an egg in a large beaker of plain water and they see it sink to the bottom; but when she places another egg in a beaker containing a layer of salt water at the bottom and plain water on top, the egg floats. The technician explains to the wide-eyed children that what they have just seen is not magicit is the differences in the density of the solution that kept the second egg afloat. The experiment is also a simple way of showing that there are elements at work in the universe that cannot be seen.

The Science Park is the latest attraction at the St. Louis Center, which itself opened only in July 1985 after a $3.2

The Idea Came From India

by JEFFREY P. BONNER

In 1979-80, I spent a year as a Fulbright scholar in rural India. One of the strongest impressions I came away with was that India was a country with vast problems in the area of education.

But, to the nation's credit, India has taken some extraordinarily creative steps to increase sCience literacy. The most visible and dramatic efforts have revolved around the creation of a countrywide network of science centers. Some of the most unique components of these science centers are outdoor "playgrounds."

In 1986, the St. Louis Science Center received a major grant from the National Science Foundation to create a similar outdoor exhibition area for the people of St. Louis. The goal of this exhibition is to combine traditional playground devices with interactive, hands-on exhibits to teach science in an effective new way. As part of this grant, I again traveled to India for three weeks to review the outdoor exhibits and facilities. The trip was partially underwritten by the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Education and Culture.

My first stop was the Nehru Science Centre in Bombay [see pages 24-25]. This striking new facility has acres of outdoor

exhibits, including ponds, unique steam engines and a weather station. It also has a number of participatory exhibits which we thought we had invented ourselves! My personal favorite was an exhibit on unusual gear trains, demonstrating how square, elliptical and other gear arrangements work.

Next on the itinerary was a visit to a prototype outdoor park near New Delhi.

Again, I saw several exhibits similar to those being planned for the St. Louis site, including whisper dishes, a giant echo tube and-my favorite-a corkscrew race track that demonstrates how internal friction affects a ball's acceleration.

My final stop was a fledgling science center in the small town of Purulia. This town is located some six hours by train northwest of Calcutta. The exhibits at Purulia, like those of the other two science centers I visited, were wonderfully creative.

Perhaps the most interesting was a series of ramps and raceways. Large balls are rolled down these tracks, demonstrating a variety of physical principles. Gravity, centrifugal force and friction combine to make the exhibits an exciting learning experience for

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million renovation. Its origins date back to 1856 when the Academy of Sciences was established. In 1959, the academy founded the Museum of Science and Natural History, the forerunner of today's Science Center, at Oak Knoll Park.

Then in 1984, the museum purchased the McDonnel Planetarium from the city of St. Louis, and the renovated planetarium reopened as the St. Louis Science Center-Forest Park.

The center's attendance has grown from 272,000 in 1985 to 675,000 in 1987. Its major attractions are a planetarium equipped with one of the world's six computer-generated projectors; the Discovery Room with interactive displays for children; an exhibit gallery focusing on ecology, humanity, technology and the space sciences; the Sciencing Lab, which involves visitors in actual scientific processes; the Science Showplace, which has live science demonstrations showing the importance of science in everyday life.

The center also has a Discovery Van that takes special programs to schools. Workshops on geology and astronomy are periodically held in the city schools and those in the surrounding areas.

The center is a favorite with students and teachers and the Science Park has added enormously to its appeal. Says a

science teacher accompanying her sixth-grade class, "This is super. These kids see things that I could no way get into a classroom. We've been coming to the center for three years, but this park is a real bonus."

The idea of having an open air science park is fast catching on. "We've had calls from all over the United States asking for the plans for the park," says Bob Briggs, a spokesman for the center. Explaining the origins of the park, he says that Jeffrey Bonner, director of exhibits and programs at the center, got the idea when he saw such parks in India, where "they have a lot of good park space, but not much money to build museums. Instead of constructing $lO-million buildings, they put their science displays outside."

As a prelude to the opening of its science park, the St. Louis Science Center organized a conference on building outdoor parks. Among the international invitees was Saroj Ghose, director of the National Council of Science Museums in lndia. Ghose said that when he helped establish an outdoor science park in Bombay eight years earlier, he had no idea that the concept would catch on internationally.

As Jeffrey Bonner said at the conference, for such a park "the sky is the limit."

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Nehru Science Centre In the International Year of the Child (1979), the Nehru Science Centre in Bombay built the city's children a valuable gift-a science park where they could play and learn, have fun even as they found out more about the world around them. The center, inspired by lawaharlal Nehru's visionary faith in science and his fondness for children, created a wonderland of science by developing a series of outdoor science-related exhibits and educational toys. The park proved a hit, not just among children, but among adults too. It has also inspired foreign visitors to build similar parks in their countries-such as the¡ St. Louis Science Park (see previous story).

Today the park has more than 100 exhibits, some of which are shown on these pages.

Left, top: A view of Bombay's popular Nehru Science Centre futuristically designed by India's eminent architect A.P. Kanvinde. Left and right, bottom: What is depth perception? In these layouts of partial cricket fields, any observer standing off or square of the keeper or the batsman will see disjointed figures while from the bowler's perspective they seem normal as ever. On the right,from top, left, to bottom: A sound reflector focuses sound, and words said some distance away can be clearly heard if a person stands near the reflector; a rotating spiral that generates much enthusiasm; a view of demonstration models in the sound and light gallery of the center; and young people can become familiar with the uses and versatility of computers in the computer section.

Are Women Better Doctors?

The author, a pediatrician, talks to male and female colleagues to get an answer to her question.

While most agree that women doctors are more sensitive to a patient's needs, there are someincluding women doctors-who think such generalizations are nonsense. hall, the only female resident in the hospiThere was a conundrum that used to tal. During my own medical training, so far turn up, when I was in high school, deat least, I have not had reason to feel like a signed to test your level of consciousness. scholarship student from an alien tribe.

A father and son go fishing, and on the way When I set out to write about women in home they are involved in an auto accident.

The father is killed instantly. The boy is medicine, I wanted to bypass the tone of patronizing surprise that so often attends rushed to the hospital, where the surgeon women in male-dominated professions takes one look at him and screams, "Oh, ("She uses a scalpel! She has curly blond my God, it's my son!" What is the relationhair and a white coat all covered with ship between the surgeon and the child? blood!"). I also wanted to avoid some of Obviously, the surgeon is the child's the classic topics that apply a kind of mother. Yet, 15 years ago, lots of people prurience to the situation of the female would ponder the puzzle, making up comdoctor. (So what's it like when you have to plex stepfather/grandfather linkages, trydo a physical exam on a man?) With the ing to explain how a child could have no father, yet still have a parent who was a increase in women doctors, it's time to look more specifically at what kinds of doctors doctor. we are choosing to be, both in terms of In 1969, nine percent of the first-year specialty and in terms of style. medical students in America were women; According to the Association of Ameriin 1987, it was 37 percent. In 1970, women can Medical Colleges, men and women accounted for eight percent of all the physiapplying to American medical school have cians in America and II percent of all comparable acceptance rates. Of appliresidents. In 1985, they made up IS percent of all physicians and 26 percent of all cants for the fall of 1987,61 percent of the men and 60 percent of the women were residents. Between 1970 and 1985, accordaccepted by at least one school. After mediing to the American Medical Association's Women in Medicine Project, the number of cal school, however, men and women folphysicians grew by 65.5 percent and the low somewhat different paths. According number of female physicians grew by 218 to statistics compiled for 1986, 50 percent percent. In 1988, one in six physicians is a of pediatric residents were women, only 12 woman and 36.2 percent of the first-year percent of surgical residents were women, class at America's 127 medical schools is and just 1.4 percent of vascular surgery female. residents were women.

Women were I did not go to medical school during the heavily concentrated in psychiatry (40 perpioneering age. When I started at Harvard . cent of the residents were women), and in Medical School, in 1982,' 53 .of the 165 dermatology (44 percent), preventive medistudents in my class were women. Morecine (36 percent), pathology (38 percent), and obstetrics and gynecology (45 percent). over, I chose to go into pediatrics, the The frontier for women in medicine, then, medical specialty with the highest percentis really not in medical school, but in age of female residents-50 percent in the certain of the medical specialties, where United States. I have never had the experithey are almost as rare as ever. Women are ence of being the only woman in the lecture

choosing some of the fields that provide regular working hours and no night call (dermatology, pathology), but obstetricsgynecology (ob-gyn) and pediatrics can both require long hours and night duty. In surgery, where the disparity between male and female doctors is greatest, part of the problem for women may be the need to delay starting a family for five to seven years of infamously arduous training.

It seems to be pretty well agreed that back when there were fewer women in medicine, medical school and residency were often fraught with unpleasantness and loneliness. Many women have written about the sexual innuendos and the sense of exclusion. On the other hand, the more recent medical school graduates I interviewed could remember a few rotten professors and bad moments, but none felt she had been the victim of any real discrimination.

Are women doctors different? With a few exceptions, I got versions of the same response from all the women doctors I interviewed, young or old, avowedly feminist or not. First you get the disclaimer: I have known some wonderful male doctors, I have known some awful female doctors, generalizations are impossible. (I make that disclaimer myself; I have known wonderful, brilliant, sensitive male doctors.

Fellow residents. Teachers. My son's pediatrician. Why, some of my best friends .... ) And then, hesitantly, even apologetically, or else frankly and with a smile, comes the generalization: Yes, women are different as doctors-they are better.

Linda L. Dorzab started medical school at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, at the age of 33, after spending 11 years teaching grade school and working

A

with emotionally disturbed children. Last June, she finished her internal-medicine residency and began a private practice as an internist affiliated with Menorah Medical Center. For the first month or so, there were few patients, maybe only one a day, but by February it was as high as nine a day. Dr. Dorzab is proud to make a visitor welcome in her newly arranged office, a welcoming, plant-filled place with a large mahogany desk and a small table designed for less-threatening doctor-patient conversations. An ebullient, friendly, informal woman, Dr. Dorzab says that she had always dreamed of an office in which she could make her patients comfortable.

I ask her about mentors. She names two women, saying of both of them that "they maintained femininity and class, and always looked confident." One is Dr. Marjorie S. Sirridge, an assistant dean at Dr. Dorzab's alma mater, the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Dr. Sirridge, who graduated from medical school in 1944one of very few women in her class-insists she never felt overt discrimination.

Oh, sure, her college advisers told her she would

never get to medical school, but that only made her more determined to go. "I was first in my class from grade one through high school; that gives confidence."

Dr. Sirridge graduated from medical school first in her class, too. But during residency, she got pregnant and was informed that "pregnant residents were not acceptable." She droppec out of medicine for several years, then found her way back by working for no pay and no training credit. She went into private practice as a hematologist, pursued research on her own and eventually found her way into academic medicine.

Dr. Sirridge's office is decorated with pictures of her grandchildren and a poster of Marie Curie. She is extremely cordial, but speaks with the authority of someone who is accustomed to giving her opinions publicly. It is clear that she feels protective about the medical students she watches over, and that she is proud of Dr. Dorzab.

Dr. Sirridge worries that female medical students do not pursue leadership roles as readily as their male colleagues. On the other hand, women do much better when it

comes to human interaction.

"For the women, relationships with patients are very important, a very positive thing.

Many men also have this quality, but men in positions of power in medical education and government by and large do not."

The craving for female role models is very strong among women beginning medical school. (The numbers here are not so encouraging; in 1987, two American medical schools out of 127 had female deans, and 73 academic departments out of approximately 2,000 had female chairs.) Role models are important for a very basic reason: In the first year of medical school, you learn biochemistry, physiology, pa-

1. A doctor talks to a worried patient. 2. Fifty percent of America's pediatric residents are women-here, a doctor measures a child's height. 3. A physician checks a bandagedfoot after suturing a cut. 4. A doctor conducts a test in a laboratory. 5. A child with a congenital heart disease gets some special words of love and care. 6. An immunologist examines cell cultures.

thology, in traditional classroom settings.

For the remaining two years, you serve a kind of apprenticeship in a hospital, consolidating that knowledge and absorbing institutional logic and medical routine.

It is during this latter period that you also learn how to be a doctor.

Many of the traditional techniques used by male doctors do not work as well for women. Most obviously, we have more trouble assuming the mantle of all-knowing, paternal medical authority. As a result, many female doctors have found themselves searching for new ways to interact with patients, with nurses and with fellow doctors. And it isn't just vague inspiration we are talking about here, it is a question of who you are emulating as you prepare to walk into that room to talk to a couple about their dying baby. Whose example do you follow in acknowledging their grief and the failure of medicine to help, while retaining the authority you need as a doctor? And how much authority do you need as a doctor, anyway?

Dr. Nevada H. Mitchell pracl;~es internal medicine, with a subspecialty in geriatrics. She was born in Kansas City, went to Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, then came home, married and started teaching. She had thought about medical school, but didn't feel she had what it would take. She decided to become a doctor after reading in the Vassar alumni magazine about classmates who had gone to medical school. Dr. Mitchell has no doubt at all about the difference between male and female doctors: "There isa world of difference. The women, I come into contact with are less aggressive, more likely to have one-on-one relationships with patients, less likely to go for a high volume of patients, but also less likely to be out here in private practice." Dr. Mitchell returns several times to the issue of being "out here," explaining that many women take jobs with health maintenance organizations for the security of a regular salary and the convenience of limited working hours.

"Y ou need a certain aggressiveness to choose private practice," she says, with some satisfaction.

Dr. Mitchell cannot think of a female doctor she wanted to be like-"I didn't have that many examples. I developed my own style and image." But she tells me I ought to talk to a female gynecologic surgeon who operated on her. She says she felt that in earlier discussions with a male doctor, he had placed less emphasis on main-

tammg the option of future pregnancy.

Dr. Mitchell, who is 40 and has a l6-yearold daughter, wanted to keep her options open. She felt that Dr. Marilyn R. Richardson, the surgeon she eventually chose, had taken her wishes more seriously.

Ironically, Dr. Richardson, a 39-yearold obstetrician-gynecologist specializing in reproductive endocrinology, thinks that is nonsense. Highly professional, authoritative and decided in her opinions, she believes that patients looking for a female gynecologist are laboring under "a misconception that has evolved with consumer awareness, an erroneous belief that women doctors are more compassionate, more understanding. " When I repeat Dr. Mitchell's account of her surgery, Dr. Richardson says she doubts that being female has anything to do with her mode of doctoring. "It was a male mentor who taught me sensitivity toward the preservation of fertility," she says. She describes her style as a composite of this mentor and of her father, also in obgyn-and of techniques she developed on her own.

I mention that one of the places I always feel a very sharp difference between male and female doctors is in the operating room. Yes, she agrees, the way that women run an operating room is different: "Men are often arbitrary, demanding and disrespectful, and the level of efficiency suffers. Women don't usually command quite as fiercely...you get camaraderie with the other staff members."

Dr. Susan Love agrees. One of the first female surgical residents at a major Boston teaching hospital, Dr. Love, 40, finished her training in 1980. She went into private practice in general surgery, though she initially had trouble getting a position on the staff of the hospital where she had just been chief surgical resident.

In her practice, Dr. Love found she was encountering many women with breast disease who preferred to see a woman doctor, and eventually she decided to specialize in the field. She now has a partner-another woman surgeon. For an appointment with Dr. Love in a nonemergency situation, the wait is now five months.

Dr. Love says she had to suppress many of her basic values to get through her surgical residency: "Most women have problems, unless they can block out their previous socialization. Surgeons don't really like [training] women, and don't make it comfortable for them. Things that

women like-talking to patients-aren't important. It's how many operations you have done, how many hours you have been up, how many notches on your belt. If you get through your five or six years of training, you can regain your values, but it's a real 'if.' Most men never get them back."

She runs an operating room by "treating the nurses like intelligent people, talking to them, teaching them. I'm not the big ruler."

Are men always so different? "Surgery is a lot of ritual and a little science," she says.

"The boys need high mass, incense and altar boys. They need more boosting up.

The women are much lower Church."

Dr. Love offers an example of something she does differently, something no one taught her: Before a patient is put to sleep, she makes it a practice to hold that person's hand. ''I'm usually the only person in the room they really know, and it's the scariest time," she says. "The boys scrub, then come in when the patient is asleep. I got razzed for it, but they're used to it now."

Women doctors are often mistaken for nurses; many patients assume that a woman with a stethoscope is by definition a nurse.

Female doctors behave differently with their patients than male doctors, Dr. Love says: "I spend more time in empathy, talking, explaining, teaching, and it's a much more equal power relationship." She tells the story of a recent patient, an 84-year-old woman with breast cancer who was asked by a male surgeon, "Are you vain?" Embarrassed, the woman said she wasn't. The surgeon advised her, in that case, to have a mastectomy rather than a more limited procedure. "But then her niece pointed out, 'You bought a new bra to come to the doctor, and you combed your hair over your hearing aid.'" The doctor had simply assumed that an elderly woman would have no desire to preserve her breast.

Dr. Love's anecdotes are often sharp.

She describes a male surgeon who explained to a patient that a particular implant used in breast reconstruction felt just like a normal breast. He meant, of course, that to someone touching the breast, the texture would be close to natural, not that the woman would have normal feeling in

the implant. An important difference.

I heard over and over from women doctors that women are better at talking to people and better at listening. Dr. Carol B. Lindsley, a pediatric rheumatologist at the University of Kansas Medical Center, says the female medical students are "more sensitive to patient and family needs, more patient, pay more attention to detail."

Dr. Dorzab says, "My patients say women listen better and are better at acknowledging it when something is bothering the patient." Some doctors said female patients were particularly grateful for this extra consideration; others felt that male patients welcomed it also.

But Dr. Deborah A. Stanford, a resident in internal medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, sees no difference between the male and female interns she supervises: "Capabilities, compassion, endurance-no difference."

Dr. John J. Skillman, chief of vascular surgery and director of the surgical-residency program at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, says, "We're trying to train the absolutely best people we can." He acknowledges that surgery remains a maledominated specialty, with women facing "unofficial prejudice," but feels that the residency program he supervises makes women welcome: "We expect women, like all residents, to develop their teaching skills and their command of the team-I don't see that there's much difference there."

Dr. Michelle Harrison, who wrote A Woman in Residence, in 1982, about her experiences during an ob-gyn residency, comments: "As outsiders, we experience ourselves as difFfrent, but are we all that different in how we see patients? I don't see any major revolution."

Certainly, there are differences in the way male and female doctors approach relationships at work, and the increase of women doctors has shaken up traditional habits. Though the notion that nurses resent female doctors is much exaggerated, women doctors are, of course, often mistaken for nurses; many patients assume that a woman with a stethoscope is by difinition a nurse. Some women doctors mind this, others take it in stride. "You have to have a sense of humor," says Dr. Lois J. McKinley, an internist in Kansas City. "I took care of one patient for weeks, and when he was getting ready to leave, he was still saying, 'Oh nurse, would you prop up my pillows?' Nursing people are good people; being mistaken for a nurse

is not the worst thing that could happen."

Dr. Mitchell agrees: "If I walk into a room and someone asks me for a bedpan, I just go ahead and put him or her on it!" She is laughing. "But when they call my office and ask, 'Dr. Mitchell-when will he be in?' I tell them, 'He will never be in!' " It is generally assumed among women doctors that we have to be more polite with nurses than our male colleagues do; a fairer way of putting this would probably be that nurses have had to put up with a lot of rudeness from doctors over the years, and that though they make some of the traditional female allowances for traditional male patterns of behavior, they are unwilling to accept these same patterns from other women. Or, as Dr. Richardson says, "When you make a big mess in the operating room, there is something different in your mind when you walk out and leave it for another woman to clean up."

What would be taken as normal behavior in men is considered aggressive and obnoxious in women. Dr. Lore Nelson, chief resident in pediatrics at the University of Kansas Medical Center, complains, half-seriously, "A male surgeon can walk in to do some procedure and everything will be all ready, but if I go to draw blood, nothing is set up, and I have to go ask a nurse, 'Can you please help me?' " Shaking up the patterns doesn't appear to be an entirely bad thing. The traditional doctor-nurse relationship, like the traditional male-female relationship it parodied, left a lot to be desired. Surely, a good doctor is part caretaker, and surely a good nurse's observations should be a part of any decisions being made. I suspect the more polite, more politic behavior demanded of female doctors may be closer to good manners, but also to good medicine, than the supposed norm.

A study of American medical-school faculty members with MDs who were given their first appointments in 1976 found that by 1987 17 percent of the men were tenured, compared with 12 percent of the women. Twelve percent of the men had attained the rank of full professor, compared with three percent of the women.

Either women are encountering prejudice and resistance as they try to make their way in the world of academic medicine and research, or, as is often suggested, they are diluting their ambition, going more slowly-usually to give time to family.

Dr. Michelle Harrison, the former obgyn resident and now a family physician

and psychiatrist, thinks there are different standards for men and women. "Personality factors enter into the promotion of women," she says, "while arrogant and obnoxious men are promoted without that being an issue." But she also thinks that women "have tremendous problems around issues of power." And, she adds, "There is the problem of how to combine a family with a medical career, which tends to relegate women to salaried positions with less possibility for advancement."

But women doctors are in demand in some specialties. Dr. Stanley E. Sagov, who practices family medicine in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is looking for a female associate. He is disturbed by the imbalance of a practice in which the doctors are male and the support personnel are female. Further, he says, "It's a marketing issue. People, especially ob-gyn patients, are looking for female providers."

It is very difficult to pin down whether there are salary discrepancies between male and female doctors. According to the American Medical Association's 1985-86 data, women doctors earn 62 cents for every dollar earned by male doctors-but this does not take into account the differential distribution in higher- and lower-paying specialties or the fact that more women are recent graduates.

Will the remaining all-male fields ever integrate? Janet Bickel, senior staff associate and director for women's studies at the Association of American Medical Colleges, wonders whether we will end up with a medical establishment in which certain lower-paid, less prestigious jobs will be filled largely by women.

I had my baby in my second year of medical school. It was not an extremely common thing to do, but neither was it unheard of. Certainly, I didn't feel any pressure to take time off, to get my belly out of sight. I didn't feel it would be held against me that I had a baby along the way.

Several women in my residency program are pregnant. On the other hand, that is pediatrics again, a field with lots of women, in which even the biggest wheels have to be committed to the idea that babies are important. Most residents work nights and come home rarely and in poor condition.

Few residency programs provide coverage in case of sickness; there is a macho ideology that gives points for working when you are sick. Taking a day off to stay home with a sick child is really against the rules and ends up loading more work on your al-

ready overworked fellow residents, which in turn creates animosity toward people with children.

Nevada Mitchell started medical school when her daughter was three, and residency when she was seven. A single mother, she chose her residency program because she could live in the same building as her brother and sister-in-law. She requested Friday night call because she wouldn't have to take her daughter to school the next day. When her daughter got sick and she decided to stay home for a day, the attending physician commented, "Interns don't stay home unless they're hospitalized or dead."

These difficulties are not, of course, unique to women. Although men are somewhat more likely to have spouses who delay their own careers, I have heard complaints about male colleagues who are too eager to get home to their families. The fact is that, at least for now, certain intensities of career are essentially incompatible with any kind of parenthood. You don't have very much to do with your child if your ideal is to spend every waking moment in the hospital, whether you are the father or mother.

The influx of women into medicine, we can hope, will help us to design medical careers that will enable all doctors to lead more integrated lives.

Women are an increasing presence in American medicine, and with that change comes a certain amount of freedom. Many of the women doctors I talked to feel strongly that they have not simply adopted the mannerisms and techniques of the male prototype. If this is more than just a convenient prejudice, then the effect of women on the medical profession may be both interesting and profound in the future.

Recently, I told my four-year-old son that he was due for his annual checkup with his pediatrician. He asked me anxiously, "Is she a nice doctor?" I thought about the doctors my son knows best-me and my close friends, most of them female. I picked my words carefully. It was clearly one of those critical moments requiring all a mother's wisdom and tact. "Benjamin, I have to tell you something," I said. "Boys can be doctors too, if they want to. If they go to school and learn how, boys can be very good doctors, really."

0 About the Author: Perri Klass is a pediatric resident in Boston and the author of A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years as a Medical Student.

ramil, Business Is Though viewed in some circles as an anachronism, the family firm is not only alive and well but also remains "the predominant form of business organization in the Western world," according to Ivan Lansberg (above), editor in chief of a new American journal, Family Business Review. The publication, which released its first issue earlier this year, is but one link in a new American network of researchers, family-business members and their professional advisers called the Family Firm Institute. • In an introduction to the first issue, Lansberg explains the pervasive influence of family firms. If one defines a family business as any company in which family members have legal control over ownership, then, Lansberg writes, 90 percent of all businesses in the United States, including corporations, partnerships and sole proprietorships, are family controlled. Moreover, family firms produce half of the United States' gross national product and employ half of America's work force. "In fact," he says, "175 of the Fortune-500 firms are controlled by families."

Lansberg himself grew up with a family business in Venezuela. Lansberg Enterprises, founded by his father, Ivan Lansberg Henriquez, is one of the largest insurance companies in the Spanishspeaking world. The son belongs to a growing coterie of scholars who believe that the family firm has been too long neglected as a subject of serious study. A PhD in social psychology, the 34year-old assistant professor at the Yale School of Organization and Management has been a consultant to dozens of family firms. He recently completed a study of succession patterns in Chrysler automobile dealerships. He has also set up educational programs on family-firm issues for dealerships of Caterpillar

Tractor

and Detroit Diesel.

Big Bosiness Question: Some people think that the term "family business" is an oxymoron. What do you think?

Ivan Lansberg: I disagree. I feel quite strongly, particularly after having done a fair amount of research in the area and having had contact with some very successful family businesses, that under the right conditions the combination of family and firm can be a tremendously powerful mixture. It can enhance both the capabilities of business and the cohesiveness and harmony of the family.

You have noted that 175 of the Fortune-500 companies are family controlled. How broad a range of criteria do you use to define family firms? Would you call Ou Pont a family business? It is a Fortune-500 company. How about Ford?

I would, because there is evidence that the Du Pont and Ford families exert an influence in the management of those companies, which is critical in deciding a firm is a family company.

So, the family need not control 51 percent of the stock or have a family member as chief executive officer. In those 175 large companies, the family retains some sort of input in the management process.

That's right. r would look less at how much ownership falls on which side of the fence, and more on what is the actual, de facto influence of the owning family on the management of the firm. In other words, if you were trying to understand those companies and did not include some awareness of how the family has influenced the process, you would be missing part of the story.

For instance, unless we filtered into the analysis the Fords' family dynamics, it would be very difficult to explain why they went ahead with manufacturing the Edsel.

How did you get interested in family business?

In 1975, my father began planning his retirement from the company that he founded, so I obviously had a personal interest in the subject. But when r went to the Columbia University library and did a computer search of everything that had been written on family companies, I learned that you could read the whole file in an afternoon-if you were a slow reader. There wasn't much written from a well-grounded research point of view.

Do you believe that this oversight may be due to the failure to . realize the important role that many families continue to play in large companies?

Yes. I can think of at least two important reasons for the oversight. First, people tend to assume that just because in most large corporations there are few members of the founding family directly involved in management, the family's influence is negligible. Nothing could be fdrther from the truth. Owning families typically exert their influence through their ownership rights and through the company's culture. The second reason is that in most Goodloe H. Yancy II I and his sons, Goodloe H. IV and James D., are dealers for Caterpillar in A [Ianta, Georgia. Theji-anchise has been in thefamily jor three generations. Lansberg conducts a programjor Caterpillar equipment dealers on family-firm issues.

large family firms the mechanisms through which the family exerts its influence have been deliberately disguised for tax or political purposes. For instance, a lot of families influence large corporations through holding companies that by their very design protect the family's identity from being linked with the company's managerial decisions. Most often, scholars and researchers don't have access to the places in corporations where the real influence of the family is felt.

00 you mean that the family won't talk to these people?

That's right. We're talking about conversations that go on over Thanksgiving dinner or in the bedroom. It is unlikely that a consultant or a researcher will be there to witness the family making decisions about whether it should go into a particular line of business or hire a particular person to run the firm.

So a lot of big decisions are made at meetings that do not include all the corporate hierarchy nor have an official agenda.

Right. But if you were a researcher trying to explain a particular company decision, and all you had in front of you were the managerial data about what led to the decision, I would venture to say that in some cases you would be missing at least 60 percent of the critical information.

That's what I find fascinating. There isn't a management textbook around that will tell you that corporations are sometimes structured a certain way for reasons that aren't purely business-related.

For instance, a company might have three divisions because the founder had three children and had to find something for each of them to do. Similarly, a company might suddenly go into a new line of business not for strategic reasons, but because someone in the family wants to pursue his or her own interests. To my knowledge, there isn't one statement in all of the formal organization-structure literature that tells you that.

Do you think that consultants and new chief executives tend to disregard the organization's history, especially when it's submerged beneath this layer of family?

Yes. This can be particularly problematic for a new nonfamily chief executive who takes over a family business and rapidly moves to "professionalize" the firm without any sensitivity to the consequences of ignoring the family's traditions and culture.

Can you tell us about your relationship with Chrysler?

The relationship with Chrysler is purely a research relationship; it is not a consulting relationship. I approached Chrysler because I was interested in getting access to a pool of family companies. r was sitting in my office, and r thought about writing to Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca and asking, "Would you be interested in finding out about the problems of family businesses among your dealers?" He was, and Chrysler was very helpful.

What were you trying to find out? r am interested in comparing family businesses that are able to make it to the next generation-that somehow or other take care of the continuity problem-with those that are not able to make it to the next generation, or that are having a lot of difficulty. Our survey included about 90 family firms that had made a successful transition and 70 firms that were struggling with the succession problem.

Most firms avoid the succession issue. I was curious to know why some take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and do something about it. And one thing I learned was that in many of these companies the owner-manager or founder had had a close encounter with death. Or if he hadn't had a heart attack or a near

accident, then a close relative or business associate had had an experience of this type. In other words, something had happened that made it hard for him to deny his own mortality.

What else did you learn?

Most of the founders who had made a successful transition also had a set of activities that they were interested in pursuing once they left the firm. For example, one of them was very interested in music, and one incentive for moving out of day-to-day management was to pursue a musical career. He subsequently became a conductor of one of the local orchestras. There was another man, a brilliant inventor whose first love was research. He was 83 years old; he had retired at around 70 and had gone "back to the bench," as he called it. He was much more interested in being an inventor, in applying his scientific knowledge, than in day-to-day management. So for him, letting go of management was almost a relief. By the way, he has also produced several new patents for the company since he retired from management.

I think that for many entrepreneurs, some aspect of the business engages them more fully than management. If it's a high-tech business, it would probably be inventing. In other cases, you have people who like to make deals, so they will take charge of acquisitions or of the investment committee on the board, if it's a large enough company. Or if it's not large enough to accommodate this kind of ambition, they'll go out and start another company or become private investors.

I agree. If you can, you try to have the founder move out of management because he has got other things to look forward to, new places to test himself. No entrepreneur likes to be put out to pasture. So the question becomes how can we define a role inside or outside the company that will be fulfilling to this person?

There is a transitional role that falls into the category you were addressing. For instance, my father has become kind of an elder statesman for the company. He meets people all over the world, and he sometimes finds a client. But whereas in the past he would have worked with the client, now he gets the person involved and passes the name down immediately.

It sounds as ifthese founders have more or less designed their own roles. Intuitively, or perhaps purposefully, they have designed roles for themselves that work.

That's right. We have made some case studies of firms that did not make it through to the next generation, whose founders somehow could not get themselves to do that. Their identity was so wrapped up in the firm that even thinking of an alternative was very difficult.

Any other important characteristics of successful transitions?

We found that in firms that had successfully managed the succession, there was a very good relationship between the successor and the founder. They were typically father-son teams, although there were some father-daughter teams.

Do you see any differences between successful father-son teams and successful father-daughter teams?

The gender mix of the succession team can make a big difference; it has different ramifications in terms of how the process unfolds.

Regardless of the gender combinatiop, successful transitions were marked by a good relationship between parent and offspring.

In the typical situation, we found that the father and son had a relationship that was not limited to the workplace. These were father-son teams that went fishing or enjoyed having a couple of beers together. And as the succession process unfolded, and the father moved increasingly out of management, the two of them

••

Du Pont, one ol the 175 Fortune-500 family-controlled firms, has been led at different times in this century by three brothers-( left to right) [renee, Pierre S., and Lammot du Pont JJ.

Henry Ford, seen here in the first Ford automobile (completed on June 4, 1896), began one of the most enduring success stories in the annals of/amily businesses worldwide.

retained the aspect of their relationship that was outside of work.

One problem that you sometimes find in family companies is that the company is the only place where relatives see each other. I certainly encourage families to touch base with the realities and the beauties of having a family, which go far beyond having to worry about business on a day-to-day basis.

We have also found that in successful transitions, the successors were a very patient bunch. They were able to empathize with the founders' emotional struggles, with the process of letting go, and could be more tolerant of the founders' attempts to reclaim power.

They gave support as the process unfolded.

There are four different "family dyads," as you call them: fatherson, father-daughter, mother-son, and mother-daughter. There are also others such as founder/nonfamily member, founder/son-in-Iaw, and founder/daughter-in-Iaw. In terms ofthe sympathy and empathy of successors, do you see any difference among these groups?

It varies. The reasons sons go into the business to become successors tend to be somewhat different from the reasons daughters go into the business to become successors. The research suggests that sons are driven by a wish to surpass the accomplishments of the father and to compete with him for control of the firm. Daughters, by contrast, tend to be motivated by a wish to perpetuate the father's accomplishments, and they place a lot more emphasis on working with him in the firm.

This is not to say that daughters are not also driven by achievement. They are. But what the research suggests, simply stated, is that daughters often place a higher priority on being with their fathers than on compet:ng with them. And that these dynamics, in turn, influence how a daughter or son is likely to react to the founder's disengagement.

Are you saying that daughters have an easier adjustment?

A daughter has an easier adjustment in terms of empathizing with the founder's pain of letting go, but not necessarily an easier adjustment in establishing her own authority to run the firm.

When the founder is a woman, what is the difference between the mother-daughter and the mother-son relationship?

I think that the mother-daughter succession may be more complicated than the mother-son succession. I am assuming that the stresses brought on by the transition can just as easily fuel mother-daughter rivalries as it does father-son rivalries. This, however, may be just my own male bias.

You are suggesting that when founder and successor are of the same sex, there is likely to be more competition between them?

Yes, the research suggests this. There are two additional variables that complicate the equation: The nature of the industry itselfand the life-cycle stage of the succession team. Our interviews suggest that it is tougher for a daughter than for a son to establish authority in a male-oriented business. It would be very interesting to see whether the same effect works the other way around, but we simply don't know enough to tell whether a son would have a hard time establishing his authority in a traditionally female industry, such as cosmetics or fashion.

The other variable that influences succession is the life-cycle stage of each of the two generations. John Davis, who is a researcher at the University of Southern California, did his dissertation work at Harvard on this issue. One interesting thing he found was that the succession transition was significantly affected by the particular stage in the life cycle that the father and son were gOIng through at the time of the transfer of responsi bi Iities.

This suggests that succession is likely to occur at the worst possible time. The son is between 35 and 40, perhaps in the mid-life-crisis stage, and the father is in his sixties. In terms of personal agendas, this may be the worst time for them to be trying to work this out.

Yes. That is the punch line of Davis's research. When the successor is in his late thirties or early forties, and the founder is in his sixties, it tends to be a volatile time in which both are driven to assert their power. On the one hand, the founder is confronting issues of reasserting his influence and control over the firm; on the other, he's coming to terms with what his life has been about, and he's like a lion, roaring all over the place.

A lion in winter.

Right.

Or King Lear.

Lear is a great example of a ruler who sabotaged his own succession by setting the next generation against one another.

What about the developmental issues facing the son?

The son, on the other hand, is trying to find out what his contribution will be. He's trying to become his own person--eager to establish himselfin the community by joining the ranks of those who are respected and publicly acknowledged. These developmental needs often lock fathers and sons in a struggle.

Once the son is out of this stage and has earned his position in both firm and community, and the father is older, the process is easier. So being attentive to where a person is in the life cycle is critical to understanding how things unfold. Too often conflicts caused by developmental issues are interpreted as resulting from personality difficulties alone.

What about a case in which the successor isn't a family member?

The succession of a nonfamily member raises interesting questions. While in this case the relationship between the successor and the founder may also be an issue, more often they have known each other for quite a while and have a solid relationship.

However, problems can arise in the successor's relationship with his peers and with the founder's family.

In terms of his peers, it is not unlike what happens in a nonfamily company when a person who gets promoted from within finds himself the boss of a lot of his colleagues. I have also found that sometimes the nonfamily successor will want to professionalize the firm more quickly than the founder wanted to.

So their struggle tends to be played out more along the lines of a dispute in which the founder says, "We've always been a family company," and the successor argues, "It's time for us to run this place like a professional organization."

Some other sensitive issues can be serious problems, I've found.

For example, building a new corporate headquarters; changing the company name, especially if it's the family's name; or having a stock offering to raise new capital. The last course creates obvious problems by diluting the family's ownership. Doing something like that immediately or shortly after a founder retires or dies tends to make people nervous, even if the dilution is not significant and might serve a good business purpose.

There are many issues that don't relate to the professionalization of management, but that can antagonize the family. Do you agree?

Absolutely.

You have worked on family-business issues with Caterpillar Imanufacturers of heavy engineering equipment] dealers. What did you do, and how did you do it?

Two years ago, Caterpillar hired an outside consulting firm to assess the training needs of its dealerships. This outside company

"Sons are driven by a wish to surpass the accomplishments of the father and to compete with him. Daughters tend to be motivated by a wish to perpetuate the father's accomplishments." interviewed a lot of dealers and learned that family issues were of central importance to them. There are about 70 Caterpillar dealerships in the United States and Canada. Subsequently, Caterpillar asked John Davis and me to help design a training program.

We have representatives from a few dealers come to each of these programs. They each send three or four people, including the dealer principal, who in the Caterpillar system often is not the founder of the dealership. These dealers tend to be secondgeneration people, or sometimes third.

Who attends besides the dealer principal?

We give dealers the choice of whom to bring, but we urge them to bring people who will be important to future operations.

Typically, this includes a son or daughter, a nonfamily successorto-be, or a sibling of the principal who is involved in the ownership of the firm. We also do a program exclusively for the regional managers to help them understand how family issues affect dealerships in the territories that they coordinate.

How does the program work'!

It is a four-day off-site program. We start with an overview of family-business issues and provide participants with a conceptual .framework that helps them understand the basic structure of family firms. Then we focus on the business system, because this is the area that people have most in mind. We start this part by talking about some of the strategic advantages and disadvantages of family businesses, and we explore how participants can learn to capitalize on the advantages. We also talk about life-cycle issues in family businesses. We use an elaborate case study that we developed from interviews with Caterpillar dealers, which addresses the major family-firm issues that they confront.

Our aim is to get the participants to understand how their families work, and to teach them ways of managing the impact of family dynamics on their firms and vice versa.

In addition, we focus a lot of attention on such issues as estate planning, succession planning, and the development of a board of directors and a family council. Our module on family-business issues is one component of a larger training program, which includes such things as planning, marketing, and strategy.

To my knowledge, Caterpillar is the first major company to do something about family-business issues specifically for its dealerships. Most of the other family-business educational efforts that r have seen in large companies tend to be inspired by the dealers themselves, not by headquarters.

What do you think companies such as Caterpillar can gain from this kind of program?

A lot of larger companies have dealer networks composed of family businesses. Too often these corporations assume that dealerships should manage their affairs much the same way that headquarters does. However, corporate headquarters typically have been in existence much longer than their dealerships. They are also larger, more bureaucratized organizations.

So the people from headquarters are not sufficiently tuned in to the realities of what managing a family company is all about. Such programs can not only help the corporate side understand and manage dealers more effectively, they can also be a tremendous help to the dealers themselves.

Can you give an example of how companies fail to see the difference between their organizations and the dealerships?

One important problem is the issue of ownership. Most large manufacturers insist that a dealer principal retain ownership control of the dealership. While this generally makes sense as a policy, there are times when it can create problems. Imagine a situation in which the dealer has three competent children. All of them are working in the firm, and they're all contributing. Now comes time to plan the succession. The dealer wants to split the stock equally among them. This approach would be most likely to lead to harmony, but headquarters is insisting that one kid have at least 51 percent of the ownership.

This can become a very tough situation for a lot of the dealers, because they feel that the company is not sufficiently attuned to the realities that they are facing. Other problems arise when you have a kid who wants to go into a particular line of business. So let us say that a dealer wants to diversify; he wants to get into a side product that will feed into his main line and give it to one of his kids to manage. Corporate management sometimes steps in and prevents that from happening. In some instances, there is a good reason: Headquarters doesn't want the assets diverted into a side business. But in doing so, headquarters may underestimate the potential benefits to the dealership.

Are dealers forming networks to address some of the problems that most companies are ignoring?

They are. Let me give you an example of how dealers can help one another. One of the most difficult problems that successors face is in establishing their authority. We found that one of the things that significantly helps successors is learning the ropes of the business. Ideally, this is done in some other dealership. When you have a dealer system, you can actually create career paths for your offspring in one another's dealerships.

This way heirs earn their stripes elsewhere and get a sense of their worth in the market, without living in their fathers' shadows early in their careers.

This experience is important because it legitimizes the heir's status. He or she has a set of concrete, industry-based accomplishments gained in a situation in which the boss was not father or mother. So it's not just a matter of learning the ropes; it is a matter of conferring legitimacy and helping the person develop self-confidence. The successor could learn the basics of the steel business in the family company, but he might have more confidence in his own ability if he learned it in another firm.

I agree fully. One of the things that we know from management is that for people to work well and efficiently, they need to have continuous and reliable knowledge of their results. It is important also that people feel that they had something to do with the results.

In a family company, you can be criticized-and praisedunnecessarily. You can never quite trust the feedback that you are getting. So creating conditions outside the family firm that help the next generation learn what they are worth can be extremely valuable.

0 About the Interviewer: Ronald E. Berenbeim handles corporate relationsfor The Conference Board. New York, publishers of Across the Board.

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_ _-::..-=--::_-=-------=--=:::=:::=--=-'"::.~::....._._._._----~--------------~ ilo9J-0>--"b I "Oops! It looks like we ran out of time.

But we'll pick up where we left off tomorrow .... " Reprinted with permission from The Saturday Evening Post Society, a division of BFL and MS. Inc. Š 1986.

"I hate to say it, but it's a dumb cluck here, a dumb cluck there.

Here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere dumb clucks!"

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FOCUS As India prepares to celebrate the birth centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru (see pages 2-7), America pays tribute to John F. Kennedy, one of the country's most beloved Presidents whose 25th death anniversary falls this month.

The youngest American ever elected to the nation's highest office, at 43, Jack Kennedy had occupied the Presidency for just two years and ten months when, on November 22, 1963, an assassin's bullet ended a life thatwasso full of promise. Yet in that brief time, Kennedy had so powerful and abiding an impact on the nation and the world that his soaring idealism even today stirs millions around the world.

The ringing phrases in his inaugural address have become the common heritage of mankind: "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country ....Let us not negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."

Like Nehru, Kennedy's vision went far beyond his own nation, embracing all humanity. Kennedy sought a world of peace, liberty and justice. He said, "We shall do our partto build a world of peace, where the weak are safe, and the strong are just."

In an impassioned address to the United Nations, he said, "Mankind must put an end to war-or war will put an end to mankind ....Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames."

Toward that end, he signed the limited test-ban treaty in 1963.Although the treaty did not go as far as Kennedy wished, it represented a giant step in mankind's defense against self-destruction. For him, it was the first step in a journey that he hoped would one day lead to complete

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disarmament and the abolition of war altogether.

As he labored to remove the overhanging threat of nuclear war, so Ken nedy worked to end world poverty. He had been powerfully affected by the extremes to which poverty had reached among two-thirds of the world's peoples. Under his leadership, the American foreign aid program was enlarged to help the emerging nations to promote their economic growth and combat poverty, illiteracy and disease.

We find an echo of his deep concern forthe poor in his inaugural address: "To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for

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whatever period is required ... because it is right."

John F. Kennedy had a deep and abiding interest in India, which antedated his accession to the American Presidency. Its roots lay not so much in a visit to India he made in the early 1950s, as in that India symbolized for him the aspirations of the developing world. He was also impressed that India, under the leadership of Nehru, had chosen the difficult path of democracy to build a new, strong and -self-reliant nation.

As a U.S. senator, Kennedy cosponsored a resolution in the senate along with Senator John Sherman Cooper, making a forceful case for increased American aid to India. The pre-

amble to the resolution said, in part, " ...The continued vitality and success of the Republic of India is a matter of common Free World interest, politically because of her 400 million people and vast land area; strategically because of her commanding geographic location; economically because of her organized national development effort; and morally because of her heartening commitment to the goals and the institutions of democracy ...."

Kennedy also had great admiration for Nehru. In his first address to Congress as President, he referred to "the soaring idealism of Nehru."

And for his own country, Kennedy had a lofty vision of the United States. He was conscious of where his own nation had fallen short of its own best standards. Nothing grieved him more in his Presidency than the struggle to assure black Americans of thei r fu II rig hts as American citizens. He once said, "This nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fUlly free until all its citizens are free."

What kind of future did he visualize for America? "I look forward to a great future for America," he said, "a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purposes. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty ...which will reward achievement in the arts as we reward achievement in business or statecrafLwhich commands respect throughout theworld notonlyforitsstrength but for its civilization as welL" Although his was a short life, unfulfilled in the realization of many of his dreams, Kennedy left behind an invincible legacy-of civility, of courage, of honor and of faith.

As the dramatic photograph on the inside front cover of this issue shows, the United States has retu rned to space after a hiatus, following the traumatic explosion of the space shuttle Challenger almost three years ago, which killed all seven crew members and plunged the nation into shock. The successful launching and return of the space shuttle Discovery, in late September and early October, go far beyond the accomplishments of the five crew members and their refitted spacecraft, sending a signal to the nation and the world that Uncle Sam has licked his wounds and is back, full throttle, in space. As Ahmed Meer, the departing counselor for science and technological affairs at the American Embassy in New Delhi, points out on pages 43-45 in this issue, both candidates for the U.S. Presidency have indicated their firm support for continuing space research and exploration, which is expected to revive a number of imaginative projects that were shelved because of the Challenger disaster.

No one can yet predict what the new timetable will be for these projects to explore the solar system, but Meer, who worked for a time in the American space program, thinks the prospects are good that the renewed shuttle policy will emphasize scientific research and exploration over commercial or defense launchings.

Whenever these projects occur, they are sure to contribute enormously to mankind's knowledge of our solar neighborhood.

The first to be launched from a space shuttle, if the original order is maintained, will be the Galileo mission. Using an extremely high-propulsion upper stage rocket powered by liquid hydrogen and oxygen fuel to reach deep into space, Galileo has been designed to orbit Jupiter for a period of at least 18 months in the intense radiation of that huge planet. At the same time, the spacecraft will make a series of complex maneuvers to pass by virtually all of the Jovian moons and geologically map several of them. The imagery sent back to Earth will be at an improved resolution of perhaps 100 times when compared with the imagery of the two Voyager spacecraft when they flew past Jupiter in 1979. Another experiment on the Galileo mission will drop a probe equipped with a mass spectrometer into the dense Jovian atmosphere, hoping to get a better understanding of the primordial composition of the solar system. Earlier, on of the way to Jupiter, Galileo will have sent back photographs asteroids as well.

In this artist's conception, the Galileo probe scans one of Jupiter's moons as the planet looms large in the background.

If all goes according to plan, another space shuttle will launch a second mission to Jupiter within about 20 days of the first, also equipped with a high-propulsion upper stage. Known formerly as the International Solar Polar mission and designed jointly

under the poles of the sun. The positioning will allow Ulysses to sample for many months the variations in the solar winds and study the solar magnetic field, the cosmic ray influences and a number of other phenomena.

Sometime after these two missions get under way, the next important mission, perhaps the greatest advance in astronomy since Galileo invented the telescope, will be the launching of the Hubble Space Telescope. It is said that Galileo's first telescope was to the human eye what the space telescope YJili be to the 508centimeter reflector on California's Mount Palomar-until recently the largest telescope in the world. Once the Hubble is in orbit, it will be accessible to all whose proposals are considered of genuine astronomical interest to the scientific community. In fact, a team of American space scientists visited India in December 1985, a few weeks before the Challenger tragedy, to discuss with their Indian counterparts how the two countries could pool their scientific resources in the Hubble experiment. Now that the shuttle program is back in space, it is hoped that the proposal will be revived, providing another area of bilateral cooperation.

And beginning 1995, space shuttles will be used to ferry men and materials to build a permanent civilian space station named Freedom. The space station, which will be the "world's largest-ever international cooperative venture," will be jointly built by the United States, Canada, Japan, West Germany, England, Italy,

with the European Space Agency, it has been renamed Ulysses, from a passage by Dante in which he refers to Ulysses as the explorer of the great unknown.

Most of the space exploration conducted so far has been confined to the plane of the planets, called the ecliptic. LJlysses will be the first mission to go into the third dimension, as it were. By using the enormous gravity of Jupiter as a sort of slingshot to propel Ulysses well above the to fly over and then ecliptic plane, it will be on a trajectory

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway and Spain; agreement to this effect was signed on September 29. America will provide $16,000 million and the other partners will contribute $7,000 million for the space station project.

When completed in 1998, Freedom, which will be used exclusively for peaceful purposes in accordance with international law, "will serve as a stepping stone for human exploration of the solar system."

Quantum Physics Some people have it easy. When their kids ask them what they do at work, they can give a simple, direct answer: "I put out fires" or "I fix sick people" or "I do arbitrage."

As a theoretical physicist, I never had this luxury. Society has come to expect many things from physicists. It used to be that we only had to discover the basic laws that govern the world and supply the technical breakthroughs that would fuel the next Silicon Valley. With these expectations we were fairly comfortable: they involve the sorts of things we think we know how to do. What bothers us-and what makes it hard for us to tell our kids what we're up to-is that in this century we have become, albeit unwillingly, gurus on philosophical questions such as "What is the nature of Reality?"

We now deal with a whole new class of problems. We ask how the Universe began and what is the ultimate nature of matter. The answers we are coming up with just do not lend themselves to simple explanations.

In the good old days we could explain Sir Isaac Newton's clockwork Universe by making analogies with things familiar to everyone. And if the math got a little complicated, that was all right: it gave a certain panache to the whole enterprise.

But those days are gone forever. How is a physicist supposed to find a simple way of explaining that some of his colleagues think our familiar world is actually embedded in an II-dimensional Universe? Or that space itself is curved and expanding? The math is still there; the theories are as coherent as they ever were. What's missing is the link between those theories and things that "make sense"-things the average person can picture. This leads to a situation where it's easy for anyone to ask questions that can't be answered without recourse to mathematics, such as my all-time least favorite: "Well, if the Universe is really expanding, what is it expanding into?"

There's no place where this problem is worse than in the theory that underlies things like digital watches and personal computers. This theory, called quantum mechanics, describes the behavior of atoms

NovvYouSeelt NovvYou Don't What is the nature of reality?

And the ultimate nature of matter? The answers that physicists are coming up with do not lend themselves to simple explanations. A physics professor attempts to explain.

and their constituents. It tells us that the world of the physicist is not at all like the world we are used to. When physicists get out of their cars in the morning, have a cup of coffee and sit down in front of computer terminals, they leave a familiar, cozy environment and enter a place where things act in strange, virtually inexplicable ways.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. When you run into a wall, you expect to bounce off. If you were an electron, however, our theories say there is some chance that you would simply appear on the other side of the wall without leaving a hole behind you. In fact, if electrons didn't behave this way, your transistor radio wouldn't work. What does it tell you about whether the electron is "real" or not?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think that people--even physicists-go around with these sorts of questions on their minds all Well, if the Universe is really expanding, what is it expanding into?

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the time. But as one friend put it to me, "It's not so much that I want to know the answers myself, it's just that I want to know that they're in good hands." It is this obligation that has been thrust on me and my colleagues in this century to provide those good hands.

Physicists get involved in trying to explain these kinds of things because two of our 20th-century theories-relativity and quantum mechanics-have dealt major blows to accepted ideas about what is real in the world. The shock of relativity pretty well played itself out in the I920s, mainly in cocktail party chitchat that confused relativity (a well-defined theory in physics) with philosophical and moral relativism, with which it has nothing in common except the name. It now looks as if quantum mechanics is about to suffer through its own period of popular misunderstanding, making physicists even more uncomfortable with their role as philosophical arbiters.

Physics has gone from studying familiar things in our everyday lives, such as tides and baseballs to strange things such as atoms and the particles from which they are made: things we do not (indeed, cannot) ever know directly. Inside the atom we find everything in little bundles called quanta. On the subatomic level both matter and energy always come in quantadiscrete quantities. An electron can be at one energy level or another as it orbits a nucleus, for example, but never anything in between. Or, that characteristic of the electron known as spin will always be in certain quantities and never anything else. (The singular form of the word, quantum, is combined with mechanics, an old term for the study of motion, to give us quantum mechanics.) The first great difference between the familiar world and the quantum world-the world of the atom-is that we do not "see" things in the same way in the two worlds. This difference leads to results that defy our understanding, such as the electron going through the wall without leaving a hole behind it. The electron, in effect, disappears from one side of the wall and reappears on the other. Nothing in our everyday life prepares us for this.

You probably never thought about it,

but when you look at something (this magazine, for example), you're detecting light that has come from some source, bounced off the object and then has come to your eye. The reason we normally don't think about seeing in this way is that in our everyday world we can safely assume that bouncing light off a magazine doesn't change the magazine in any way that matters. The light from a lamp does not push the magazine away.

When we get to the quantum world, however, this comfortable assumption no longer works. If you want to see that bundle of matter we call an electron, you have to bounce another bundle off it. In the process, the electron is bound to' be changed.

A simple analogy can help with this point. Suppose you wanted to find out if there was a car in a long tunnel, and suppose that the only way you could do this was to send another car into the tunnel and listen for a crash. It's obvious that you could detect the original car in this way, but it's also obvious that after your detection experiment that car wouldn't be the same as it was before. In the quantum world this is the only sort of experiment you can do.

Therefore the first great rule of quantum mechanics is: You cannot observe something lVithout changing it in the process. This is the basis of what is called the Uncertainty Principle: When you choose to observe one thing (the location of the car in the tunnel) you must forever be uncertain about something else (how fast the car was moving before the collision).

We usually associate the act of making a measurement with the presence of a conscious experimenter who wants the measurement made. Thus you sometimes run across the comment that quantum mechanics implies that nothing could exist without the presence of consciousness.

From the example of the car in the tunnel, though, it's obvious that this is the modern-day analogue to the old confusion of relativity and relativism. It's the nature of the measurement, not the one who designs the experiment, that introduces the problem.

The inability to observe things in the subatomic world without at the same time disturbing them has some surprising consequences when you start to think about the way that particles move from one point to another. Let's use another automotive analogy. Suppose r asked you to tell me where a particular car will be tomorrow.

Ordinarily, you would look to see where

the car is, look again to see which way it is going and look again to see how fast. After a moment with your calculator, you would come back with a definite answer. If the car is like an electron, however, you can't look at it more than once-the first look changes everything. You cannot know with precision both where it is and how fast it is going; the best you can do is to playoff the uncertainties. You might, for example, be able to say that the car is somewhere in the Chicago area and heading in a generally eastward direction at roughly 65 to 90 kilometers per hour. You can't be more precise than that without more measurements, and more measurements would only change the car's location or velocity and therefore increase your uncertainty.

If you want to talk about where the car will be tomorrow, then, you have to speak in probabilities-it might be in Cleveland, it might be in Detroit, it might even be in New York. The chances are, though, that it would not be in Miami or London. You could make your prediction, in other words, by giving me the odds of the car being in Detroit, Cleveland or New York after 24 hours. This collection ofprobabilities is what physicists call a wave function, and it's exactly the way we describe the motion of things like electrons.

Up to this point, you've probably been following along pretty easily, perhaps thinking that you might as well humor this guy as he makes all these obvious statements. Well, hold on, because things are about to become curious. The reason you aren't bothered by having to describe the "/t only bothers me when/think about it," says a physicist about quantum mechanics.

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car in terms of probabilities is that deep in your heart, you know that the car is really somewhere all the time, and if you could just peek, you could see it merrily tooling along any time you wanted to. Of course, if you did you'd change it and mess up the experiment, but you have the easy feeling that somehow the car is really there, even if you don't see it. You might even imagine the whole country as an underground parking lot in which you can see the car only at the exits. You may not be able to see the car between exits, but you know it's always somewhere in the garage.

The problem is that physicists don't envision electrons this way. Their view is that until you look at a particle, you have to treat it only as a set of probabilities.

In terms of our analogy, they say that the car isn't really at any particular place unless it's being measured. In between, it's just a set of probabilities that describe what would happen if a measurement occurred-a wave function.

The idea, that there had to be some sort of underlying reality beneath the wave functions and probabilities that physicists use, was probably what led Albert Einstein to his famous comment that "God does not play dice" with the Universe. This is a wellknown statement, and I only wish that the reply of Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate and longtime friend and colleague of Einstein's, was as well known. "Albert," he is supposed to have said one day, "stop telling God what to do."

Einstein, being Einstein, put his objection into concrete form in 1935 when, along with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, he published what has come to be known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox. This paradox was intended to show the inherent ridiculousness of treating the particle as a set of probabilities between measurements, and hence to imply that the whole probabilistic view of the world was wrong. The argument goes like this: There are some common reactions that result in two particles (like electrons) being emitted back-to-back from the same atom; electrons spin around their axes, and general laws of physics tell us that in this sort of reaction the electrons have to spin in opposite directions-if one is spinning clockwise, the other must be counterclockwise and vice versa.

Einstein argued as follows: You tell me that the electrons don't really have a spin, just as they don't have a position, unless they're being measured, but I could let

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those two electrons travel until they were light-years apart, and then measure only one of them. For example, if you measured the right-hand electron and found it spinning clockwise, you'd know instantly that the left-hand electron was spinning counterclockwise-withoUl ever measuring it.

The left-hand electron, therefore, must have had that spin all along and you must be wrong about it not being anywhere or having any spin between measurements.

Well, that sounds pretty convincing, but quantum mechanics worked so well and explained so much that most physicists tacitly ignored Einstein and kept on using it. The practical payoffs-from microelectronics to lasers-have been tremendous.

But the old problem of reality still rankled.

Then in 1964, the Scottish physicist John Bell discovered something that has come to be known as Bell's Theorem. What he found was that in the kind of back- to-back reactions that Einstein talked about, there were certain quantities that were predicted to be different if the electrons were described as being "really there" than they would be if the electrons were described in terms of wave function. What these quantities are is not important (they have to do with the way the axes of rotation of the electrons point in space with respect to the direction in which the particles move).

What is important is that with Bell's Theorem we have, for the first time, an experimental way of resolving the problem of what that electron is doing between measurements, the problem of whether it's really there or not. All we have to do is measure some of the quantities Bell talked about and see if they match up with quantum mechanics or with the common sense approach Einstein advocated.

In the I960s, no one thought the experiments suggested by Bell's Tbeorem could ever be done; they had something of the status of that old sophomore problem of whether a million monkeys at typewriters could ever create Hamlet. It was interesting in an intellectual sort of way, but totally outside the realm of practical possibility.

Well, it never pays to underestimate experimental physicists. By the mid-1980s, a large number of EPR-type experiments had been done, and in all cases the results were unequivocal. The standard theory, the one that says that the electron has to be described by a wave function between measurements, is right. The predictions of the theories that say that the electron really has a well-defined spin before it is measured are

The new wave of quantum mechanical experiments has produced other results that are even harder to deal with than the EPR outcome. For example, one of the old problems in quantum mechanics has to do with something called the "wave-particle duality." In essence, the problem arises because in some experiments an electron acts like a miniature baseball (a particle), but in others it seems to have the property of a wave. In classical physics, waves and particles were all there was, and everything was either one or the other. The ability of quantum particles to assume the character of either, depending on the experiment being done, constituted another of those seemingly inexplicable paradoxes of the quantum world.

Of course, you could argue that electrons were neither particle nor wave, but something different that exhibited the properties of both. Like the standard probabilistic view, however, this is a profoundly unsatisfying solution, It doesn't give a picture of what the particle is.

A few years ago several groups in Europe carried out experiments designed to "trick" the quantum particles into revealing their true identity. A particle would be directed toward an apparatus and then, while it was still in flight, the experiment would be changed so that either the wave or particle aspects of the moving particle would be tested. The point is that the particle, in flight, couldn't know what the experiment was to be.

For all the cleverness involved in this setup, the results were exactly as predicted by quantum mechanics: when the particle experiment was done, a particle was seen, and when a wave experiment was chosen, a wave was seen. If you insist on thinking of an electron as something analogous to a Perhaps we have moved to the limits of what our baseball or a ripple on water, this result is mind can picture and our intuitions can deal with. hard to comprehend. What is the electron, A token oj'things to come? anyway, and how can it transform itself while it is in flight?

The sense of frustration you are feeling right now arises because try as we may, we cannot find an intuitively pleasing way to describe what the electron is doing during those periods when we aren't actually lookI ing at it. Does this remind you of the old college bull sessions about the tree in the forest? It should, because the quantum theory of the ultimate nature of matter seems to raise questions that simply cannot be resolved.

I often wonder if the real difficulty arises because there are limits to what we can

wrong. Period. The results mean as well that the electron really is not any place between measurements. When you are not looking, it is not there.

How can we understand this? If you try to make a mental picture of what the electrons are doing, you have to say that the left-hand electron somehow knows what experiment will eventually be donethat it changes itself depending on what happens to its right-hand partner before it can ever "know" what happened. No matter how transmitted, information-like everything else in the U niverse--eannot travel faster than light. Thus in an experiment in which a pair of electrons is produced and they flyaway from each other until they are light-years apart, it would take years for the results of measuring the right-hand electron to reach the left-hand electron.' But the latter knows instantly.

This result is the crux of the problem in understanding quantum mechanics, and it certainly makes it tough for physicists to explain what they do to their kids. How do you talk about things in simple everyday terms when the particles you're trying to describe insist on acting as if they could read your mind? There is just no way of picturing electrons in any way that makes sense or squares with our intuition.

Having made this point, though, I have to remind you that all of the conceptual problems with figuring out what the electrons are up to have to do with what happens between measurements.

We can never actually answer this question because the Uncertainty Principle tells us that if we try, we will change everything. Quantum mechanics succeeds beautifully in describing the result of any experiment that you can actually do.

OJ;

0)

know-what we can comfortably absorb.

Perhaps we have moved to the limits of what our minds can picture and our intuitions can deal with. Perhaps the problems we have with 20th-century science are tokens of things to come, and in the future everything will be as strange to us as quantum mechanics. I hope things don't turn out this way, but they certainly could.

Over the years, I have talked to colleagues about their reactions to this state of affairs in our science. Some of the answers may be enlightening.

Go Away-Anonymous.

This is far and away the most common reaction. We have a theory (quantum mechanics) that allows us to make the next big technological advance, win the next Nobel Prize. Why bother about questions that can't be answered, anyway?

What's the problem?-Asher Peres, theoretical physicist.

Peres is a man who has thought deeply about the question and has come to the conclusion that the problems are all in the mino. After all, problems arise only when we try to think about the electrons as if they were baseballs. Obviously they're not, and there's no reason to expect that they will be.

If we just stick to the rules of quantum mechanics and ignore the demands ofintuition, no difficulties arise. The title of one of his articles, "Unperformed Experiments Have No Results," tells it all. I have to admit that I find this line of thought very attractive.

It only bothers me when I think about itMike Chanowitz, theoretical physicist.

A typical response of a thoughtful man.

It is hard to stick with pure logic and give up a lifetime's worth of intuitive knowledge about the way the world really ought to be.

'The mind demands more-Bernard d'Espagnat, experimental physicist.

It's not enough to have a theory that predicts what will happen in experiments; it has to give you a coherent and intuitively appealing view of the world as well. I suspect that most of you feel this way.

Anyone who isn't bothered by Bell's Theorem has rocks in his head-David Mermin, theoretical physicist, quoting a friend.

What can I say?

0 About the Author: James Trefil, Clarence Robinson Professor of Physics at George Mason University in Fait/ax. Virginia. is the author ol Meditations at Sunset, From Atoms to Quarks, The Unexpected Vista: A Physicist's View of Nature ahd other books on physics.

Removing IheShadow Between Idea and Implementation An American citizen of Indian origin, S. Ahmed Meer has been the counselor for scientific and technological affairs at the American Embassy in New Delhi for the past five years. On the eve of his departure for Washington, D.C., last month, he talked to SPAN about the assignment that brought him back to the land of his birth.

SPAN: You have just received a Superior Honor Awardfrom the U.S. Department of State for your "exceptional achievement" in the furtherance of Indo-American relations during your jive years in India. Tell us about your tour here.

AHMED MEER: Actually, it all started before I even arrived, ~hen Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and President Reagan sj.gned the Science and Technology Initiative (STI) in Washington, D.C., in 1982. Both countries have found the STI so mutually beneficial that it has just been extended for a third three-year period, to 1991. It was also a time when the sciences were getting a lot of support from the Indo-U.S. Subcommission on Science and Technology. We realized that unless senior people came together regularly we would not be able to maintain that support. We have had the President's Science Adviser, Dr. William R. Graham, here quite recently, and before him the Acting Science Adviser, John McTague.

Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's two visits to the United States have substantively covered science; maybe 50 percent of his visit in 1985 involved science issues. I think he spent more than half of his time talking with scientists. That has been the difference, the subject has been raised to a higher political level. In addition, the Indian press reports a great deal in more depth than it used to about the nature of our collaborative work.

How many scientists from each country are involved in the project?

We have about 1,000 American scientists visiting India each year. In addition, about 200 Indians have gone to America

sponsored by us. A large percentage of the Americans come here for major conferences with their counterparts, the Indian establishment and a large part of the scientific community. We have formed a certain mode of operation, trying to highlight all interests on both sides of the subcommission, and encouraging U.S. agencies to support workshops and conferences so that the Indians and Americans can get together. Then, out of those workshops and conferences come recommendations and identification bfprincipal investigators on both sides, and that leads to a project. So we have the subcommission, workshops, international conferences and then projects, which lead to new workshops.

And what about the Indians going to America? What kinds of projects do they engage in?

The largest number ofIndians going to America attend international or bilateral conferences.

You were born in Meerut, and went to America afier schooling in St. Joseph's College, Allahabad. How did this come about?

When my father died I was 15, the eldest son and considered the one who would be the breadwinner.

So at 16 I went as an

In the summer of 1962 Ahmed Meer (left) traveledfrom Boston, Massachusetts. to Atlanta, Georgia. to talk to black student leaders about Mahatma Gandhi's use of passive resistance. While there he met Dr. and Mrs. Martin Luther King. Jr .. and Gandhians Sucheta and Acharya Kripalani, then on a visit to the United States. (The gentleman at right is an unidentified student.)

undergraduate to Queen's University in Canada, got a medal and my bachelors in electrical engineering, and was offered a fellowship by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). I went there in 1959 for a masters in electrical engineering, got married in 1962 in Switzerland to a cousin and, in 1965, went to Harvard to study economics. I became an American citizen in 1974.

What has it been like returning to India as an American diplomat after 25 years?

I was somewhat concerned about coming back, because I had not been involved in scientific or policy-level dealings with India in

the fields that the science office in India handles. I had been a director in the office of advanced technology in the Department of State, but my only dealings with India were in the United Nations Committee on Outer Space. When I came here, I must say that being ofIndian background I could very easily understand Indian sensitivities. It was also a big help that most Indians found it intriguing to have a person of Indian origin working in the embassy and calling himself an American. There were some people who were a little hesitant because they wondered how I had this type of position. And there were senior people who would ask questions like, "Are you allowed to see the secrets?" I did not spend a lot of time on this kind of thing because I felt it was very important to get across to India what America is. What I found most satisfying working in the embassy was that hardly anybody in the American community treated me as a non-American.

You mentioned that Dr. Graham was here last month to extend the Science and Technology Initiative. What exactly does that mean for the two countries?

I think it means that we have a new mode of operation in science and technology, which we now hope will continue through the next administration.

It is a mode whereby the U.S. government agencies find their own resources to fund u.s. researchers to collaborate on problems of mutual interest with Indians. It is a partnership. Dr. Graham's coming here at the end of the current administration shows there is strong support in both governments to keep this program alive. It was a symbolic gesture. The money involved is relatively little, but all scientists, Indian and American, feel that the Prime Minister and the President are behind STT. We are working on truly frontier problems: Vaccines for fertility and infertility that might help birth control, the possibility of reducing fertilizer use by finding where and how it is being washed away, dehydration problems, and blindness owing to lack of nutrition, which is a major problem here, along with the occurrence of cataracts, a problem around the world. We found by looking at vitamin A as a help for eye problems that it also affects death rates in childbirth. It really is frontier work that is engaging and challenging American scientists who are researching problems that are important throughout the Third World.

Before you became a diplomat, you had a promising career in the American space program. Tell us about that and what you think the September 29 flight of the Discovery means for the future of Americans in space.

When I finished MIT in 1962, for some time I was a consultant to the National Aersmautics and Space Administration (NASA), getting into electronics, aerospace, defense. My work covered everything from civil aviation to missile design. In 1976, I went back to NASA at the request of the director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, who had been a colleague at MIT. He asked me to look into the economics of space. We were then having to actually market the space program to the Office of Management and Budget and to the greater United States community. Support for space research seemed not to exist anymore.

We did some fascinating work, which helped to some extent my later support for the Indian Remote Sensing program. We looked at the economics of the value of information. What is the value ofa weather satellite? IfI can make it better in accuracy by a factor of two, is it worth doing for $100 million? It was. I also worked on trying to replace ground stations-which until recently were

needed to support space flights around the world-with a set of satellites called the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites. The September 29 mission of the Discovery space shuttle finally took a second one of those satellites into orbit, allowing NASA to communicate directly through the satellites to a single ground station in the United States. The building of the space shuttle in the first place was a major achievement for the United States.

I believe it was seven or eight years ago that I saw a photograph of the first Soviet shuttle, and it is still not flying. The technology of a craft that goes up like a rocket and lands like an airplane is extremely advanced. So I believe this new flight was an extremely important event. Space offers tremendous leadership benefits to the United States. I believe space exploration will be continued by the next administration no matter who wins the election.

India has the third largest pool of scientists in the world. after the United States and the USSR. What more does the nation need to prosper. in the Western sense?

India is a big country. It needs more scientific institutions. It needs to reduce the time between idea and application, and incentives to achieve that. Without the incentives it is very hard.

That is one of the things that I am very American about. I believe that in India the business community has contributed to India's progress and I think the scientific community should be given more opportunity to contribute, but that can only be done when some of the bureaucratic obstacles are reduced.

India needs more engineers. The word "engineer" is not as commonly used in India as it should be. The concept of engineers is that they work with their hands. I am an engineer and I feel strongly that engineers are a causal people; they think about cause and effect. We recently had some visitors from MIT who looked at the IITs. They said that if India wanted to be a nation to be reckoned with in the 21st century, these institutes should be an order of magnitude larger. If you go to England or Sweden, relatively small countries, you will find 20,000 students in an engineering institute, and faculties in the thousands. If you are going to do a big project, such as the Ganga cleanup, you cannot pull a team together unless you have large institutions.

I would also like to see more American students in Indian graduate engineering institutions. I think the Indian government should facilitate more Western-sJudents in Indian universities.

Initially, few will come, but once rndian universities are famous in the world and difficult to get through, then India will not have a brain drain. People will no longer be going for PhDs to MIT, they will stay at IIT Kanpur. In the United States, there is hardly a university catalog that does not say it accepts at least 15 percent foreign students. That is an education in itself. My roommate, who was from New Hampshire, benefited from me and I from him.

Speaking of the brain drain. when you remained in America after your education was completed. you were no doubt counted as another instance of the brain drain to the West. However, with 700.000 ethnic Indians residing permanently in the United States, the attitude toward people like you in India seems to have changed. You are now considered a nonresident Indian (N RI) who can assist in India's economic development. How do you see this situation?

I think that is true. There is something that cannot be duplicated, which is that when you go to another country. and you have the capacity and pride, you actually work harder in the new environment. That is the whole background of innovation-which

always occurs in a different environment, such as a liquid that can grow a crystal only when an impurity is added. I know from my own experience and from talking to other Indian students in the United States that we had to prove ourselves and wanted to be respected as Indians, and so we worked very hard.

I am especially proud of children of Indian-origin Americans.

They are an interesting synthesis of the two countries' cultures, and they are really contributing to the whole American scene.

When Ambassador [Harry G.] Barnes offered me this job, he told me that it was to be a robust link between our two countries, and I believe we have been seeing that in the past five years.

Tell us about your new job, and your expectations for the future.

I hope to go back and contribute a little to U.S. thinking on how science and technology can be utilized to the benefit of developing countries. I believe the United States is pre-eminent in the world in the use of science and technology for the good of society; and I think we can share our experiences with India without too much cost. We do not want NASA or National Institutes of Health to have a budget to work with India, but to work with India if it is mutually beneficial. I think that has been a good princiR!e.

Professor M.G.K. Menon. science adviser to the Prime Minister, talks with Meer and U.S. Nobel Laureate Severo Ochoa (medicine. 1959) at a reception in Roosevelt Housefor National Institutes of Health Fellows in 1987. Meer estimates that more Nobelists came through his office in Delhi these past five years than to all the other U.S. Embassies combined.

What I would like to do is educate the people I will be dealing with in the United States about what I have learned from the collaborative program we have here, which is a fairly small program-only $100,000 to $1,000,000 for a typical project. But we exchange so much knowledge in that process that I think the whole program is a catalyst to exceedingly large activities in India.

When I go back to Washington, I will be a special assistant to the assistant secretary of the Department of Oceans and Environmental Science. I imagine the election period will result in a lot of changes being made, so I am happy not to have a position that deals with policy until after the election.

0

ART AS THERAPY Elizabeth Layton sat down at her kitchen table to draw a picture while her husband attended a high school football game one evening in September 1977. Tired of sketching the potted plant and the salt and pepper shakers, the 73-year-old housewife remembered a suggestion made during her first art class two weeks before. "If~ou run out of things to draw," her teacher had said, "draw yourself."

So Layton, looking into a IS-centimeter hand mirror, drew herself. Honestly. Pain-

fully. With wrinkles and age spots, sagging flesh and a weary look on her face. She drew her terrified self as Eve, fleeing a male-dominated Garden of Eden; her devastated self, grieving the death of a child; her lost self, pleading from a void; her bemused self, holding a tiny-waisted wedding dress up to her thickened figure; her whimsical self, serving a Thanksgiving dinner of Kentucky Fried Chicken, cookies, and olives.

Little did she know that the self-portraits

COMMENTS BY ELIZABETH LAYTON

BUTTONS (left) Her strength principles.

is

in

her

NOAH'S WIFE (right) Oh, My! Wasn't Noah's wife glad to hang the freshly laundered wash outdoors after all those days of drying diapers and Noah's underwear on lines in the kitchen.

Noah, himself, has gone fishin'.

CAPIT AL PUNISHMENT (below, right) She grovels for her life, to end or not to end at the whim of Society at the ballot box. The bottomless pit, lined by daisies with little broken necks, is in wait-at the end of a long Death's Row. On the right are reasons people give in favor of capital punishment, clothed in Executioner's robes and carrying nooses.

From bottom right, the Law, the Bible, money, an eye for an eye a tooth for a tooth, other, more humane methods such as the electric chair, vengeance and protections, though high fences and guns may not keep the enemy out.

In the background are chalk outlines of murdered victims and nylon-stocking-hooded murderers with guns and hatchets running amuck in spite of any prospective punishments.

WINGED VICfORY, 1981 (right) She has struggled and toiled up a lifetime of steps. Now she is where she wants to be, has taken off her running shoes and is ready to fly.

STROKE (left) This is an out-of-body experience at a time of stress.

would lead to a cure for her 30-year manic depression, a new life with new friends and admirers, and national recognition.

"Mercy, no, I had no idea all this would happen," Layton, now 79, says while sitting at the same kitchen table. "My only ambition with the drawings was that maybe they would be shown at the local nutrition center where old people sometimes hang their art."

But in the summer of 1983, an exhibition of 30 of her self-portraits was shown at the National Council on the Aging in Washington, D.C. It was cosponsored by the Travelers Companies, which then hosted the show at its corporate headquarters in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Washington Times art critic compared the drawings to the work of Van Gogh. In the spring, 15 drawings at SoHo 20, a women's gallery in New York City, prompted an art critic from New York magazine to write, "Considering her background, I am tempted to call Layton a genius."

Layton attended neither the show in Washington, D.C., nor the show in New York City. "We're homebodies," she says of herself and her husband, Glenn, who live in Wellsville, Kansas, a town of about 1,600 people 72 kilometers west of Kansas City.

The story of this artist's rise from obscurity in Wellsville to national prominence begins much earlier. At the age of 30, she found herself divorced with five young children. She threw herself into her work as "writer, typesetter, and floor scrubber" for the newspaper her parents operated in Wellsville. Her depression began at that time. Doctors labeled her a manic-depressive At the time of her marriage to Glenn

Above: Elizabeth Layton sketches her husband, Glenn. Right: The artist looks at her image in the mirror as she paints a self-portrait.

Layton in 1957, she had had 13 shock treatments and was being treated with drug therapy and counseling. There were days that she slept through and weeks that she could feel nothing.

In the fall of 1976, one of her sons died.

The grieving mother reached her limit. At the suggestion of her sister in California, ~he enrolled in an art class at Ottawa University, a small college 32 kilometers from Wellsville. "It was either art, or something more drastic," Layton explains.

The technique being taught was contour drawing, in which the artist looks at the subject rather than at the paper while drawing. In Layton's case, she looked into a mirror and drew without looking onto the 29-cent sheets of poster paper she had bought at the local drugstore. Then with crayons and colored pencils, she filled in the colors between her blind, or contour, lines. Apprehensive about signing her own name to her strange drawings, she would instead write "Grandma Layton" in the lower right corners.

In her bedroom, she drew for as many as 12 hours a day. Her drawings thrust deeply into the problems of being a woman and growing old in a society where neither seems appreciated. "I had to draw," she explains. "With each drawing, I felt a little better."

After drawing for ten months, she made what for her was a miraculous discovery.

She was no longer depressed. One of the first people to confirm her discovery was Robert Ault, an art therapist at the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kansas, and former president of the American Art Therapy Association. He said her works were the most dynamic example of art

serving as therapy he had ever seen. Since her discovery was not made through any therapy program, she had shown most dramatically the restorative powers of art.

By 1980, news of the grandmother artist in running shoes had spread. NBC News did a segment on her, as did WTBS' Nice People in Atlanta. The Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, Kansas, organized a show of30 of her drawings. With assistance-from the Kansas Arts Commission, the show toured 15 Kansas communities. One of her drawings received the $1,000 first prize in the annual juried show at the NelsonAtkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. The then Kansas Governor John Carlin named her one of three Governor's Artists in 1980.

Of course, all this changed the lives of the Lay tons. A former mayor, Glenn still goes daily to his real estate office, even though business has trickled to but a few houses a year. "I think folks here are real interested," he says. "Lizzie Beth's art has helped keep Wellsville on the map."

Layton continues to draw. But now it is because she likes to, not because she has to.

Her most recent self-portraits are filled with flowers, such as the honeysuckle and morning glories growing on the front porch. And she draws herself prettier, younger, and slimmer.

Her mission with her art is now becoming clear. She is telling others that depression can be cured through the creative process. Art is necessary. People should communicate their feelings. Old age can be a good time of life.

Throughout, she has stood by her rather unusual decision not to sell any of her drawings. Art saved her life, she reasons, and there seems little cause to be commercial.

Her drawing and her thinking have not slowed in spite of two surgeries last summer to correct a detached retina. "I have been thinking that someone should write a book about contour drawing," she remarks. "That is something I shall do when I go blind and can't draw anymore."

And there is still the Wellsville Nutrition Center, where she hopes to be invited one day to show her drawings. "No," she says with a smile, "I have not had a show there.

Not yet."

0 About the Author: Don Lambert discovered Elizabeth Layton's art at a campus art show ten years ago when he was a 27-year-old reporter in Ottawa, Kansas. He has since become, to quote Life, "her unpaid agent and amanuensis. "

Height of Success The first ever joint Indo-U.S. Army mountaineering expedition recently made a successful bid at scaling the 7,273-meter Mana Peak in the Garhwal Himalayas in just 16days.

This was the first time that the peak was attempted from the south face.

SPAN's cover story relating the exciting adventure is told partly through diary entries of one of the American climbers.

1

Quality in the Classroom Once much maligned, the public schools in Prince George's County, Maryland, are now cited as a national educational model. The 171 schools in this area serve 103,325 students representing a racially mixed and culturally diverse student population. The turnaround has come through innovative programs, a dynamic new superintendent and a rejuvenated enthusiasm among students, teachers and parents.

Galhraith Thought For years, says economist and former American Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith, economic and political life has been seen as the choice between capitalism and socialism. But today it is profoundly evident that there is no "salvation in fixed rules." SPAN reproduces Galbraith's recent thought-provoking talk on this subject to the Harvard Club of India in New Delhi, and features an interview with him on Indo-U.S. relations.

Skin Deep Traditionally, the skin has been regarded as a passive rind. Today's researchers, however, have brought about a "dermatological renaissance" with their discovery of vital functions that are performed by "this convoluted body stocking we wear so casually."

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