Prologue: Brief Encounters

Abstract

I first met Richard Nixon, a fellow Californian, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. It was January 21, 1948, and we were both there to attend ceremonies recognizing our selection by the United States Junior Chamber of Commerce, the Jaycees, as two of the ten outstanding young men of 1947. (The eight other selectees are identified in the photo on page 2.) At the time, Nixon, 34, was a member of the House of Representatives and already well known for his work on the Alger Hiss case while a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee. I, a year older, was director of the nuclear chemistry division of the Radiation Laboratory, now the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, at the University of California, Berkeley. The Jaycees cited me for my work in the discovery of several transuranium elements.*