[Lesley Williams Brunet] Has the lead tape. It seems
unusual for a chairman to do that.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] It sure is. (crosstalk) Most of them won't do this.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] No. (laughing)
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Once I got mad in him because he promised me to give
us a laboratory space when
the original occupant move out. Then he forgot.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Which was this occupant?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Was Marjorie Shaw.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] (noise) They want to hire somebody in and
they want give that person that laboratory.
But he already promised me about
that laboratory and he forgot about it.
I got so mad.
I went in to pound at his table and say,
you promised me to get it.
Now, I'm here, blah, blah, blah.
He just stared at me.
He said, you're finished? (laughing) I say yeah.
He says okay, sit down and shut up.
(laughing) He said, to be truthful with you,
I completely forgot I promised you.
I will give the newcomer somewhere else.
You take that laboratory.
That really touched me because he admitted,
he said, I forgot about that.
Now you mentioned it, you take that.
I expanded the laboratory.
I have to say that his philosophy and administration was
super he cares about the people,
his people and he try to help as much as he could.
Apparently, he viewed me with a very high. (crosstalk)
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Yes, he did.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Now, myself when I was in UTMB,
because of my discovery of the hypotonic solution and
all these possibilities I'm continuing on,
I gave a seminar,
all staff member postdocs seminar.
I gave a seminar and after that,
I forgot his name,
there was associate Professor
in Department of Physiology.
I saw him, I said,
what do you think of my peak seminar?
Your stuff is very good,
but your English lousy.
That really stimulate me to learn English.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Do you remember who that was that said that?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I forgot his name.
I talked to Dr. Pomerantz.
He says, I have a cousin who used to
be a English teacher in Honolulu,
but he now is here with me looking for a job.
He said his English naturally, very good.
I ask him to teach you how to write,
how to speak,
and I really put in a lot of time and
effort to polish my English.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Your writing, I'm talking about even in the '50s,
you do not write like a non-English speaker.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Well, this was Dr. Pomerantz's help, his cousin.
He says, okay, when you write a manuscript,
we make a copy.
You have one, I have one.
We sit together and you will read and I'll stop.
He said, this is not correct.
There's a verb wrong,
there's tense wrong, there's something.
He said, I suggest you write this way.
I rewrote this.
I never forget this gentleman.
He taught me English.
Then I tried to
practice speaking English and writing English.
I was then a member of
NIH study section and all that thing,
so try to socialize with scientists within my reach,
and 10 years later,
in 1974, I was
elected the president of
American Society for Cell Biology.
The meeting was held in San Diego. I remember clearly.
The opening session,
I represented this president of
society to give a welcome speech.
I wrote it, asked people to change it,
polish it, and recite it.
I went to the podium
to offer 5,000 people a welcome address.
The next day where
they studying the papers and all this,
and I found that gentleman
who told me your English is lousy.
He was another school element already,
but he was at the meeting.
I say, hey, what do you think my English now?
He says, remarkable improvement. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] So all that hard work paid off?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yeah, it was hard work.
(crosstalk) I decided if
I want to stay in this country,
I must understand the language
to be able to use it freely
and with as few mistakes as possible.
But still, even when I now I write paper,
I still ask many people to (crosstalk) read it.
For example, this autobiography,
I was invited to do this in 1991
by the editor of
the American Journal of Medical Genetics.
He was very flattery and all this.
I told him, I'll think about it and if I write it,
I want no deadline.
He says, I don't give you a deadline.
When you are ready, send to me the manuscript.
It took me four years to write this thing.
I asked many people
to read it and comment and all of this.
I work hard on my English language.
In fact, I went back to China in
1998 to Beijing to participate
in International Genetics Congress because of
my beginning professor in China who taught me genetics,
who helped me to come to
this country became the president of the Congress.
He was 90 years old and
I was obliged to go to celebrate his 90th birthday,
to participate in that meeting,
and also to give lectures to
several medical institutions in Beijing.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] How was your Chinese?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Not bad. (laughing)
Lesley Williams [Brunet] That's good.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Because at home I talk to my wife in the dialect.
When I was in China,
I was able to speak about eight different dialects.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Wow, eight?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Dramatically different?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Quite different. Yes. But when you don't use it,
you tend to forget it.
The only one I can use fluently still is the Mandarin,
the Shanghai dialect, the Hakka dialect.
(noise) But all the rest of them, (noise) (crosstalk).
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Is that your-.
T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) [Hsu] No, this phone.
If I go back to China to
that area province they used the dialect,
I learned it before I was spoken to,
I can't do it now.
But I think in one week I will pick it back up again.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It would come, yes.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] It depends on how deeply you learned it.
Probably, I'm more or less linguistic.
My father never could speak English very well,
he was a colonel product and his English,
I listened to him,
he was lousy. (laughing)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] We learn enough to get by sometimes.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] He would get by, yes.
Because he was a very famous civil engineer.
I described this in my autobiography too.
He has a pioneering spirit.
He would go to no man's land,
just completely a wilderness because
the area got flooded every year.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Some people would say that you had
a pioneering spirit because you came to Texas.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Well, I think part
of this spirit was inherited by my father.
He would take me to wilderness.
He says the reason that for flood it was
because it's such a flat land and no irrigation.
He said, what I did was to catch short period of say,
five,10 years of meteorological data
and how much waterfall and all this this.
He would design irrigation canals and all this.
When one of the places he already
had a dam built for electricity,
he said, "Ten years ago there was nobody living here.
Now you can see a village has formed,
people have electricity, they can have a crop."
It was very deeply engraved in my mind
that if you have a desire, you can do it.
Some people I have very [great respect and love for],
my late father,
my beginning professor who taught me genetics,
arranged me to come here, Professor,
Dr. C.C Tan,
and Dr. Pamred,
he was one of them too.
I have some idols that I follow their footsteps,
then studying some on my own.
I think I have a very good life.
I had a hard time getting them over.
Because that time,
the immigration office limit
Chinese immigrants to 105 a year.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's not very many. Especially in
the late '40s or early '50s?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] It was in early '50s.
In Galveston, the immigration officer,
he was very kind to me.
He said, "You can't get your family in by quotas."
Because the quota's only 105.
The only way you can get them over
is to make them non-quota immigrants.
I said, "How do I make them non-quota?
He said, "When you become
a citizen of the United States.
I strongly suggest you
work hard to get yourself nationalized."
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did you want to do that, at the time?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Proudly, because I wanted to stay in this country.
The communist already over in China,
my wife and my daughter,
I have never seen.
She was born when I was in the United States already.
I wanted to get them over.
Whatever Mr. Grover said, I followed.
I got my nationalization ceremony,
the next day I went to see him and he said,
"I knew you could come today." (laughing)
Lesley Williams [Brunet] The day after.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] He said, "I've got all the papers ready for you."
Lesley Williams [Brunet] That's good.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] He was such a nice guy.
I should have thought about giving him
some real good present for his memory.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Sure the work itself was fulfilling.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I didn't do that.
Later on, I thought about it,
he already has retired.
But he was the one that I really appreciated his help.
He said, "I got all the papers,
and you now fill in then I will do the rest."
My wife and my daughter came.
When they arrived at Los Angeles,
I went to pick them up.
It was exactly my daughter's six-year-old birthday.
First time she saw
her father and first time the father saw his daughter.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] What year was this?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Let me see. I was still in Galveston,
so it was '53 or '54, there about.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I came to Anderson '55,
so it was '54.
We were there for one year.
She naturally could not speak a word of English,
and we sent her to a private school, 1st grade.
Then when we moved to Houston State in Western Bristol,
I told my daughter Margaret,
"Margaret, pretty soon,
you're going to speak
fluent English because you're going to school,
but I want you to be bilingual.
In other words, you must speak Chinese at home.
If you don't speak with me in Chinese,
you speak in English, I will not answer you."
Sure enough, she finally realized this.
She became multiple lingual.
She speaks Russian fluently,
German fluently, and some French,
and Chinese, several different dialects.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] She inherited your skills in linguistics.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I guess. There are some people who can
never learn English or learn another language.
When I was a graduate student in Austin,
I was mentioning to some people here,
they want to learn English,
I said, "I'll teach you the best I can.
But you have to keep your ears."
In the University of Texas there,
one of my fellow graduates was from China,
same year, he cannot pronounce university.
He will pronounce univer-sity.
The accent is on the city.
I told him, "You have to
realize people talk university
rather than univer-sity like you did."
Usually, in a word,
when you go to the last syllable,
go up three syllables, that's the accent.
She cannot learn. Naturally,
it's not my business. I tried to help them.
But even my own English was poor at
that time as that professor, so lousy.
I learned it. If you have mind to it,
I guess you can always succeed to some extent,
if not complete, but at least passable.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] What was your impression of
Texas and of Houston when you first got here,
before your family got here?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No. My family came
when I was in (crosstalk) Galveston already.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But when you first came to
Austin and although Austin
is more beautiful, and then Galveston?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I like the both places.
Yes. Because Galveston has the beach.
At that time, I was an avid photographer.
Even Dr Palmer had thought so.
One time, the medical school wants to have
some photographs to keep
as a Galveston because there may be demolished,
the building demolished and
the change of scenery on all of those.
Dr Palmer said,
get TC Hsu to do it.
He said he is so perfect photographer.
Still some of them still in my cassettes.
I remember one time in a rainy day,
I went to downtown Galveston and passed the fire station,
which was set and the rain and
the lights shine to
the street with a beautiful reflection,
but I didn't have my camera with me.
One night, it rained again,
so I took my tripod and camera,
stayed in the middle of the street, set my camera.
Everybody hated me because
(laughing) they had to go by me.
In fact, it was also risking my own body and all this.
But I took some beautiful pictures of
the fire station at night with the fires reflecting it.
But later on,
I got too busy,
so I did not continue my photography.
I invented some very interesting things, photography.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] As part of your work?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No, a hobby, part of my hobby.
I use the a low-powered microscope,
put my transparency on the microscope and put the lens.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] For your photographs of cells?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] The image they came out,
it was really beautiful, fantastic.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I think I have heard of it.
But these are the pictures
of cells or what were you looking at?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No. On the sceneries.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You took slides of sceneries
and then looked at it with your.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Microscope and I had a picture of bluebonnet.
It was taken from the field I had concentrated on.
Other one was, I think I liked the most,
was in Galveston Beach.
I was taking a shot with all of
these sea birds and seagulls and all this.
I didn't even realize at the (inaudible),
far away, there were two women
fishing with the fishing rod.
On top of this,
there was a seagull just covering.
I took a picture from
the microscope and enlarged that portion.
I have an Italian friend who is
in Palmer's laboratory also. He loved.
He called us three fishermen,
the two ladies, and the seagull.
I used that name.
Most of the European scientists,
they are either good in art or
in music and they are learned,
not like American scientists there.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Why is that?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I don't know, their tradition, I believe.
One time I had a friend
that Dr Palmer had put him and me in a little room.
We had office. Somehow,
I was whistling the last duet
of Aida aren't very ideal, that push.
He listened, he said, "Why are you so sad?"
Because this was the time Aida and Radames got
buried alive. They knew that.
They send us goodbye earth.
I was whistling,
and he said, he is from Vienna.
They're all very well, he's a psychiatrist.
He said, "Why are you so sad today?"
He knew the tune and it was a sad one.
I said, somehow,
I'm not happy today.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But you don't remember why.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I fully respect many European scientists
as some very good friends.
That's why I was in Sweden four
times because they invited me to go there.
I loved the country.
In Northern Sweden near Finland,
they had wilderness with
moose and reindeer running around.
It was beautiful. I went to England,
Denmark, and several other places.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You traveled for cancer conferences
as sometimes as a client?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yes.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Well, starting back when you came and you're
working as a section under Dr Haas.
Excuse me. Going back to Dr Haas,
I did notice in the correspondence
that he was always very
supportive of you and how highly he thought of you.
T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) [Hsu] Yes. I know.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But he seemed to have problems with someone who worked
with you in your lab?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] In my lab or somebody else in another section?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Well, that too. He seemed
to have strong feelings when he
either like he really
liked people or he really didn't like people.
But I noticed that he sent out a number of memos
about someone subverting his authority,
a section head going ahead and doing
something without going through him.
He seemed very interested in
maintaining a strong authority.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I don't know exactly which one he was referring to,
maybe a section head.
I don't want to mention him anymore.
He was a section head of molecular biology.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It appeared that way.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] The name is Mendel.
Well, I worked with
him because he knew a lot of molecular biology,
and I wanted to learn this,
to collaborate with him.
In fact, I bought a very expensive machine.
He had one, I had one together.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] The electron microscope?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No. This was an ultracentrifuge.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] That's right.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] How long ago? Electron microscope was another story.
I don't have time to think all of those.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] We have just one controversial story per session.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yeah.
There was another,
I would say boo-boo I made.
There was a young man in Stanford as post-doc.
I went to Stanford and heard his talk.
His work was fascinating and I was very happy.
I came back to persuade Felix Haas,
I said I want that guy,
I want to offer him a job and he says,
"Okay, we'll do our best."
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Who was this?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Pardon?
Who was the person at Stanford?
[Speaker 1] He passed away finally,
he was in the Biology Department (noise)
but I don't want to
talk people who already passed away but
he didn't do a damn thing.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay. Let me stop this just for a minute. Well, anyway.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Because I was very disappointed with him (noise).
He frequently went to London for
a year and he came back, without doing anything.
Do you know Chih-Yuen Koo?
K-O-O. He's in pathology.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I know the name.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yeah. He and I worked on
the project and wanted him to do the electron micrograph.
He came out with
some marvelous electron micrographs
of the DNA chromosome harder.
He went to London for one year.
When he came back, I talked to him,
I said let's write this paper because
it's a first-class paper we can send
to the prestigious journal of
molecular biology in Edinburgh because I know the editor.
He never did a damn thing,
it's still buried today.
Chih-Yuen Koo and I were very disappointed.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] (inaudible)
Then the other
person whose name I mentioned,
you were trying to get them out of your section.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] It was a female by name of Arrighi.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I know, but I did want to ask you about her because
Haas was so often
opposed to her and yet you seem to respect her.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No, I didn't respect her.
I tried her as my glorified technician.
She thought she was great.
She is still alive.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] She changed her name, I didn't see
her name in that directory.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Arrighi, A-R-R-I-G-H-I.
I protected her. I tried to.
It's very
sad I finally gave up.
A lot of people came and I tried to help.
Later on, I had
some younger postdocs and all those like Gen Leang here,
this lady, Lauren Cherry and another
man I promote them to assistant professorship.
Then because the budget and old problems,
I tell them they better find a job.
Gen Leang went to medicine
and was promoted to associate professor.
She's talking about retirement now.
Gen Leang is not here.
I had a picture of Gen (noise)
(background) She's a sweetheart
and Lauren finally had
to quit and they're all very faithful to me.
On my birthday, they'll come to celebrate
and I think Stable Field was really one of my boo-boos.
I thought he was good.
He got postdoc in Wisconsin that was the time they had
very strong cell biology faculty and all those.
He didn't accomplish as I had expected.
He puts some paper in, they're good.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But many of your students did go on to
prominence and all over the place.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Ann Kilerry, she's in (inaudible) hospital.
She was the one that worked
under Stable Field but Stable Field didn't like her.
Liked another girl and he
put all his attention to that girl not to Ann.
I remember Ann came to my office and cried.
She developed some technique that are so
marvelous that I told
her you can pick up whatever postdoc you want to.
He finally got offers from
about 20 different institutions.
She chose to go to San Diego.
You see San Diego.
Stayed there, got married, and came back.
Now she's in Anderson.
When I was sick,
last year, I fell off upon this roof.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You fell off the roof?
(laughing) You were on the roof?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Say yes.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Sir, how old are you?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] (laughing) I was stupid and my hip and rib when I fell,
hit this tree stump about this big and it was painful.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Was it broken? Or just really bruced?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] It is bruced. But I try not to show that.
But finally, friends hear,
they say you have to go to hospital,
Gen Leang and the others.
They forced me to go to
Hermann hospital and I stayed there for nine days.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] So long done.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] That they test me.
Finally, they say that
the insurance paid for most of it.
I still have my worker at home.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Why were you on the roof?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] I was cleaning the roof. (laughing).
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Even I'll now get on my roof.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] There were all these trees,
leaves and they're going to rot on the roof tile so
I swept them all down and I
took a look at how that my gravity pulled me down.
It was a stupid thing I did.
But they took me
to the hospital and the word got around.
The first bouquet I got was from Dr.
Fiddler. They were this
long with all these exotic flowers at one glance,
I know is from Fiddler.
Finally, so many people came to visit me
and I appreciate because people still like me.
Otherwise, they won't come to see me like that.
Every evening there flock of visitors.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I think you're pretty popular.
That's the impression I've gotten here.
T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) [Hsu] Thank you.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Do you want to take a stop here and take up another day?
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] No, I think I have to
close with another interview if you want to.
My wife is waiting for me.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Oh no, yeah. We can do it another time.
[T. C. (Tao-Chiuh) Hsu] Yeah that will be (inaudible)