Oral history transcript, Donald F. Hornig, interview 1 (I), , by David G. McComb
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OCR Page 1 of 35INTERVIEWEE: DONALD F. HORNIG
INTERVIEWER David G. McComb
December 4, 1968
M:
This is an interview with Dr. Donald F. Hornig, who is the Special Assistant to the
President and the Director of the Office of Science and Technology. The interview is in his
office in the Executive Office Building, Room 203, December 4, 1968, 9:45 a.m.
Well, to start with your background. Where were you born and in what year?
H:
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, March, 1920.
M:
Where did you get your education?
H:
My schooling was initially in the Milwaukee Public Schools through junior high school and
part way through high school. Then I received a scholarship to Milwaukee Country Day
School, where I did my last two years of study. I subsequently received a national
scholarship to Harvard and took my bachelor's in chemistry at Harvard.
M:
This was in 1940?
H:
This was in 1940, that's right. I was graduated from Country Day in '36. I received the
usual advice to go elsewhere after my B.S. but Harvard gave me a better graduate
scholarship than anyone else, and being more or less impecunious, and Harvard not being
intellectually unrespectable, I decided to stay on there and took my Ph.D. degree--a rather
peculiar degree because the war intervened. There had been an episode when I planned to
drop out of graduate school and go to the UK. In fact, I came within a week of shipping off
to help with some of the problems connected with the bombing of London, but as typically
happens in a war, they got into a wrangle as to who paid the costs of my crossing the
Atlantic. And backwards from what you would think, the U.S. government insisted on
doing it, and the British government insisted on doing it. Since that couldn't be resolved, I
didn't go. I then got involved in the question of very large bombs, so-called blockbusters,
and submitted a somewhat peculiar Harvard thesis entitled--I've forgotten the exact
title--but it was the effects of large bombs, and a considerable amount of work was done at
the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.
M:
Was this degree in chemistry?
H:
Chemistry.
M:
And you did receive a Ph.D.