I then figured out that indeed the carbon nitrogen cycle at the predicted temperatures for instance for Sirius would give the right rate of energy evolution. And I wrote a paper on this which was published in the Physical Review early in '39, and before that in '38 I had a very brilliant graduate student by name of Robert Marshak who told me 'You have made such a fine theory, why don't you compete for the Cressy-Morrison Prize of the New York Academy of Science?' So I sent it in there and told the Physical Review to hold the paper until they had decided about the prize. I got the prize, $500.00 which was very useful at the time, and then the paper was published in the Physical Review.

[Q] But before then you had talked about it at various places and the report... that is, one can see reports in the New York Times and things like that before then about you having solved the problem. And Henry Norris Russell is a person who is influential in this dissemination.

Indeed. That's the way it went. I was asked, I think early in the fall semester of Harvard University, to give a talk at Harvard to which Henry Norris Russell came from Princeton and he asked some quite searching questions and I thought maybe the great man really doesn't believe me. But the great man did believe me and then made propaganda for my... for my theory from then on. This was the fall of '38, and soon the New York Times got interested and I gave an interview which was printed in The Times, that is I think the interviewer, probably Mr Lawrence, printed it in the New York Times and so it became known pretty well long before it was published in the Physical Review.