International House Berkeley

99 How was I changed by the I-House? I already told you my initial change from being a Britisher Raj to a human. But then I already was conditioned to that by experiences at the junior college. It was so provincial there! Nobody cared about anything else except what high school or post-high school kids in America cared about. I was so disgusted that they didn't know anything about the outside world that I started an International Relations Club. So, my interest in international affairs started out that way, and the I-House just continued it, and it was a lovely experience. My career choice, though, was not influenced by my stay at I-House; rather, it started when I was very, very young. Being an engineer – doing things with electricity, I should say; I did not know what an engineer meant! From the very beginning, when I was about seven or eight, I followed the chief engineer in our factory, and whenever I could possibly be around him, I was, and he showed and taught me all about electric motors, and the generation of power, and steam engines, and all these thing. And I just picked it up. So my career was fixed. By hook or by crook, I was going to be an engineer. I don't know how I thought I was going to manage it without going to school. I collected books, and when I became a bar mitzvah at thirteen – when I became a man, as the Jewish tradition has it – I got all sorts of presents. One present has accompanied me to England and to the States: it is a book of technical progress. It was a first volume of a projected huge series. There was no other published; that was the only one, and I have it. I did not go on to graduate school, because at that time it wasn't necessary for engineering; now, it would be too foolish not to. I was getting too old anyway. But it didn't hold me back. I found a little niche at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory for forty-three years. When I retired, I went to work almost the next day as a consultant. Taken from an interview by Tonya Staros on September 7, 2010; editing assistance by Jeanine Castello-Lin

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