In other departments in the school we often went outside the traditional public health area with considerable success. Nathan Keyfitz, one of the world's leading demographers, chaired the Department of Population Sciences for several years, and he was followed by David Bell who was the first head of the... the... David Bell who was the first Head of USAID under President Kennedy, and then the head of the Population Program at the Ford Foundation. Armen Tashjian chaired the Department of Toxicology, Armen having been at the medical school before coming to the School of Public Health, and he and the people he recruited redefined that field. John Cairns, one of the world's leading biologists, came to the school, set up a program in cancer biology and in epidemiology, and again, was met early on with a charge that he had no public health background, a true charge if one means by that no background in a school of public health, but a world renowned scientist who contributed much.

We didn't succeed in all of the ventures we began. I tried very hard to persuade Joe Goldstein and Michael Brown, two scientists who, of course, won, ultimately won a Nobel Prize for their work on cholesterol biosynthesis. I tried hard to persuade them to come to the school to chair the Department of Nutrition, but they preferred to stay in Texas. Subsequently Peter Timmer, a well known agricultural... agricultural economist did come to the school and after two or three years found that the business, the Harvard Business School would be a more hospitable environment for his work and he... he transferred there. Peter Goldman, a person trained in clinical pharmacology, but interested in nutritional issues, ultimately did come to the School and contributed a great deal.