John F. Kennedy
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A banquet honoring Nobel Prize winners at the White House, 1961 |
In April, 1962, Kennedy gave a dinner for Nobel Prize winners at the White House. Forty-nine Nobel Prize winners or their representatives were there. There's Pearl Buck; Rudolf Mossbauer, who won the Nobel Prize the previous year, 1961, in physics; Mrs. Ernest Hemingway; President Kennedy; Mrs. George Marshall (George Marshall had won the Nobel Prize for peace); Melvin Calvin, our own Melvin Calvin here at Berkeley, who had won the chemistry prize the year before; and Jacqueline Kennedy. Here am I in the last row. Owen Chamberlain, also a Nobel Prize winner from Berkeley. He's about as tall as I am, so he wound up in the back row.
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JFK and Dr. Seaborg at a Nevada nuclear test site |
In December, 1962, Kennedy visited the nuclear weapons test site in Nevada. Here I am riding with him. This is one of my favorite pictures with President Kennedy.
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Dr. Seaborg's reappointment letter from JFK |
On June 27, 1963, he reappointed me as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission to serve another five years. I had accepted an appointment to fill a five-year term in January, 1961, two and a half years to expire in June, 1963. Then one day in June of '63 I got a telegram from the President at home saying he was glad I had decided to accept another term as Chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. I had done no such thing but my wife Helen and I talked it over and decided, well, what can you do. If the President of the United States thinks you've accepted another term, I guess you have accepted another term. So I stayed on for another five years.