Roy Caldwell Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by Jane Scherr

Page 1 of 8

Background

Welcome, Roy.

I'm glad to be here.

Where were you born and raised?

I was born in Mount Vernon, Iowa. Actually, on a farm about five miles outside of Mount Vernon, back in 1943. I grew up on that farm, which was homesteaded by my great-grandfather, and went to the University of Iowa for both undergraduate and graduate degrees.

How do you think your parents influenced your character?

They wanted me not to be a farmer; they wanted me to do something else.

So they tried to push you in the right direction?

Yes.

How did rural life affect you, in retrospect? You obviously went to the ocean a lot, as we'll discover later.

I actually didn't go to the ocean at all. I didn't see an ocean until I was twenty-one.

I think it taught a certain self-sufficiency; you had to be a jack-of-all-trades. It also gave me an opportunity to interact with nature a lot: a lot of hunting and fishing, and just walking in the woods -- the appreciation of animals and the life around me. I was lucky. There was a good school system nearby, so I had good teachers. I think that one of the most important things was just the opportunity to interact with nature a lot.

When do you think you decided, "Hey, I want to be a scientist"? Was it while you were still on the farm, or later on in college?

It was when I went to the University of Iowa as an undergraduate. My first major was pre-law and then Russian and then pre-med., and then somewhere along the line I discovered biology, particularly zoology. There was one professor, Hugh Dingle, who was a new young faculty member and he got me working in his lab. I never really wanted to do anything else after that.

Before you were in college did you read any books that you remember that affected you?

I read one autobiography on Madame Curie and a lot of books on Vikings.

So that was your first introduction to the sea?

Probably, yes.

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