[Lesley Williams Brunet] This is Lesley Williams
Brunet about to record
an oral history interview with Dr.
T. C. Hsu, spelled H-S-U,
in doctor Hsu's office in
the Smith Research Building of
the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center
in Houston, Texas.
This interview is being recorded for
Anderson's historical resources center
, oral history project.
The date is May 10th,
2001. Check my meters.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Okay.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] We talked a little bit about your research.
The first hypotonic solution,
how you discovered that.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah, did I tell you of the story?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yes.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Okay.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But we haven't talked much. We haven't moved
on to your other big accomplishments.
The banding and the (crosstalk)
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Banding was later (crosstalk)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Is there anything in-between
that you want to talk about that
I've overlooked that you consider a major? (crosstalk)
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Well, I'll give you brief steps to introduce to that.
That time I was in 1955, came Anderson,
(noise) I was appointed associate professor.
Did I ever tell you about the chairman
of the department of biology Dr. Felix Haas?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yes. You talked a little bit about him.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah. He had a vision. Very good.
He said department chairman is only a caretaker,
is the meat is on these investigators.
He said, "I don't want to
control all the finance of this."
He says, "I will set up different sections.
Let's set each section to develop their discipline.
Then they can collaborate in research."
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Yeah.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] I have a special my own member,
but to the entire lab,
my phone will ring also.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Okay.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] He wanted to recommend that my salary be higher than his.
That was very noble way of him.
Dr. Clark and the committee said no,
you cannot do that.
You're our member be higher than the chairman.
Next year he proposed that
my salary was the same as his and that was approved.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] That's good.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] See, this is the personality he had.
Unfortunately, he died early because of many ailments.
I feel really sorry.
I lost a good friend.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You mentioned his ailments.
Was his illness or medical problems the reason
he gave up the chairmanship of cell biology,
Dr. Haas, and move prior to administration?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] At first, he was the chairman of department of biology.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] biology, yeah.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] I was in the section of cell biology.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] Cell biology.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] He had four sections.
He said, "You guys can
work together with the common interests.
You could go ahead anything anywhere you want to."
That's the biology department
developed much better than physics and biochemistry.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] For that reason?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] For that reason. Because we have four sections
so he requested a larger budget.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] That's why.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] (laughing) That's why.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It wasn't the structure it was the budget.
(laughing) It's important that we got that on tape.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] But unfortunately, he was a brilliant man.
But somehow after he came over to MD Anderson,
he cannot make any contribution to science.
He did before.
He had some excellent work.
When we were together in graduate school,
I was in the genetics department,
he was in microbiology department.
We were in the same building.
This was really his leading contribution.
He was working with bacteria mutation so (inaudible).
When he tried to irradiate
the bacteria medium with
either x-ray or ultraviolet light
then he put the bacteria in.
He said that he formed it, he got a tremendous number of
mutations from the bacteria,
and then they trace what happened,
what's responsible for this?
It was the first time they discovered that
if you irradiate water with x-ray or ultraviolet light,
the water would produce a lot of peroxides.
Hydrogen peroxide, organic peroxide,
and these peroxides are mutagens.
This was his major contribution.
Anyway, we were good friends.
A couple of times I got mad at him.
(laughing) I went to his office,
shouted at him because
he'd forgotten what he promised me.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] They got space, wasn't it?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] There was a space and
his secretaries outside saw
that we're going to get a fight.
No, we didn't.
He said, "Are you finished?"
I said, "Yeah." He said, "Okay.
Sit down and shut up."
(laughing) Then he said,
"I forgot what I promise you,
I'll make it up for you."
That was so nice.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] But space is a big issue.
[James Struat Olson] It is an issue.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Through out the correspondents.
I was going to ask you about it.
[James Struat Olson] Yeah, he said that whenever one suite
that becomes vacant,
I will occupy it to expand my own,
but he forgot he promised to somebody else.
That's why I got mad.
He said, I forgot,
said don't worry that will be yours,
I'll relocate the other guy.
Yeah, we were very close friends.
I was working on since I was
the chief of the cell biology section,
I concentrated on cell biology areas and I had one of
the best post-doc fellows by the name of Bill Brinkley.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Was going to ask you about him?
[James Struat Olson] Pardon.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I was going to ask you about him?
[James Struat Olson] Yeah, and I didn't have electron mapper,
he worked with the electron microscope,
Physics Department, had one.
He stayed in Physics Department,
but every Monday we got together and planned what to do.
Because of Bill Brinkley,
we made a really headway in
that area and we both became famous in this.
Now here his accomplishment is far better than mine.
You know where he is?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] He is at Baylor, isn't he?
[James Struat Olson] He wears three hats,
he is the Vice President for Research in Baylor,
the Dean of Graduate School in Baylor and his professor,
he has his own laboratory.
He came over to see us from time to
time talking about things on mutual interests.
He wasn't my best post-doc ever.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Why was he your best post-doc?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Well, his accomplishment
is the second best as the doctor part time?
Lesley Williams [Brunet] I sense that.
[James Struat Olson] He is good. But part time
is not an administrator, he's a scientist.
Bill can do both and I'm very fond of him.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] One of the questions I had for you that's related to him
was I wanted to ask you about
the discovery of the week prize.
[James Struat Olson] What?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Discovery of the week prize.
I saw it somewhere in relation to- (crosstalk)
[James Struat Olson] Week prize?
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Discovery of the week prize.
You have a prize for the discovery of
the week in your laboratory or a Dr. Brinkley?
[James Struat Olson] Is not discovery of week.
We had a monthly or weekly conference because
he was stationed in
Physics Department to do electron microscope.
(crosstalk) He would come to
my laboratory every Monday morning,
we'll discuss what to do next.
It's the weekly what did he call it?
Something it had a week.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Discovery of a week prize. (laughing)
[James Struat Olson] Something of this sort,
and we still remain very good friends.
In fact, I have some studies,
I want him to collaborate with me.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I saw in a letter that you wrote to Dr. Haas,
you're writing about wanting to reorganize this section.
This was a time, I guess you
were unhappy and you were thinking of
looking elsewhere and you
referred to the loss of Dr. Brinkley.
[James Struat Olson] It was. (crosstalk) Well
actually during a period of time,
I tried a lot
of places asked me to do to move to there place.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Right.
[James Struat Olson] One is the University of Oregon Medical School,
one is University of Colorado Medical School
and another one was in Colombia,
College of Physicians and Surgeons.
Another one in San Francisco,
I talked to Felix and he said,
if anything I can do to keep you in here, I'll do it.
I said, I in fact I'm happy here.
But I say if somebody asked me to go to San Francisco,
I probably would leave.
The University of Chicago asked me it was very serious,
I went for one week to visit each laboratory.
The chancellor at that time was George Beadle.
He was a Nobel Prize winner.
Actually I knew him very well.
It was very impressive,
I went to the Chancellor's office early in the morning.
His secretary let me
in to his office and we shook hands and
then ordinary and he had a book in his hand.
He said, have you read this
recent PNAS proceedings natural (inaudible)?
I say I haven't I saw in
another guy's head for any strolls hand,
but he said, you want to read it first.
You said there are some very exciting paper on RNA.
To me it's a really remarkable,
the Chancellor is the busiest officers in a university.
He has all administrative,
but he was sided by a technical paper.
He wants me to go to Chicago.
The only thing I finally declined,
it was the day I left
Chicago and that evening I was walking on the loop.
It was in November and the wind was just incredible.
I had to bend like this before I can balance myself.
I told him, I said this issue, don't come here.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That's really cold.
[James Struat Olson] Yeah, I had some real friends in University of Chicago.
One guy who was a world chemist.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Tao told me he was in the study exception and
the same study right now was in NIH.
He said, I understand
last year you got a lot of snow and all this.
He said, you tell me.
He said I went to work and then it snowed.
But I talked him in the parking lot.
But the whole parking lot was snow covered.
I didn't know where my car was.
He said it continued to snow and
all of this was three months.
(laughing) Finally, it melt.
I found that the top of my car.
So I tried to start it,
the snow getting to
all the engine that I couldn't even start it.
I still went home by bus.
The next day it was buried in snow again.
(laughing) I said, Sam,
I'm not coming to your place.
(laughing) But I did pick up a lot of, first of all,
by contact with people,
I learn English and my English was improved,
even right now,
I was not as good.
But I think I can use it.
I tried to learn in
conversation as well as writing and all of that.
In, I think it was 1974,
I became the President
of American Society for Cell Biology.
That was in San Diego.
I prefer to,
during the opening session,
I talked to several thousands participants.
I gave the welcome address.
I learned this from my mentor
in Galveston, Professor Kamarck.
What he did was he was scheduled to give a talk,
but before that there was a dinner.
I was at the same table for the dinner.
He told me, excuse me,
I want to go out for a while.
It was a long time.
Then he came back and I said Dr.
Kamarck, where did you go?
He said, oh, just around the building.
I said, why are you doing that?
He said, I never use
manuscript or something to give talks.
I always recite it.
He says, I turn around the buildings three
times to recite my talk
twice so I won't
forget any word I wanted to say so that impressed me.
During that welcoming address,
I recited just like he did.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You walked around the building?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] No. (laughing) Before I went,
I prepared a long time so I didn't miss a word.
You pick up things like this
from people that you admire,
and you like, and you do it yourself.
I'm still not good in English,
but I think it's adequate I can get by.
A lot of Chinese people
here asked me why is your English so good?
When they heard my talk and
notice and I said it's a long,
hard road to walk.
But if you want to know,
I'll tell you how I did
it from a completely foreign student coming
to a graduate school and didn't speak English and
all to my present state
is a long fight and you should fight it too.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Did you speak any English when you came here?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] No.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Not a word when you came to Austin?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] I could read but I could not speak because in China,
in high school, in college,
they all emphasize English.
But the English, most people learn with British accents
rather than American except once in college.
One year, the teacher was American, not Chinese.
His name is Mark Callister.
He was telling us, he says,
I've been in China many years,
but still don't speak Chinese well.
I was born in Puerto Rico.
(laughing) Now, if I were that time
then I can talk to him about
Puerto Rico because I've been totally come in many times.
But anyway, I
did learn very hard to my present stage,
even though not perfect, but I can get by.
When I gave the welcome address,
even on the plan,
I read my manuscript,
and then I followed it and I started to talk in my mind,
did I miss any word or something?
Therefore, that was the hard work.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I'd love to try that.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah, it was my mentor whose example taught me that.
I didn't give you the copy of
a book I wrote. (crosstalk)
[Lesley Williams Brunet] You gave me two chapters from The Mammalian Genetics.
You sent me some chapters.
They have the book in the library and I looked at it.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] There was eulogy that I gave for Palmer,
that was very emotional.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It was very nice.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] I love that man.
He told his people,
he says tissue issues discovery
is the best of my laboratories history.
He realized that.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] That was very important.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah. But afterwards,
everybody naturally developed better techniques
and all these banding.
We developed one banding then all of these.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Can you tell me more about how you came to
develop that banding process?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah. Let me see if I can get
a picture to show you how the chromosomes,
when they're banded, how they look like.
(noise) I'm quite sure it's here.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Sorry, I (noise) forgot.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] I'm sorry.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I forgot too. Let me
get you on tape when you're saying this.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] With all the bands, these six pairs
are indistinguishable.
These six pairs plus
the X Chromosome are indistinguishable.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] The 6-12 are indistinguishable?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah,6-12 plus X. This is female,
so no Y, then the width's two bands.
You can tell they're all different, the pattern.
You can pair them if you like it.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I'll put that in there. Thank you.
I'll need to put your microphone back on.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Okay.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] We get to have four few too many wires pretty soon.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] One of my former graduate students,
he was a Psychology major in
Austin but he wants to work on Monkeys.
He performed Psychology.
He and his professor came to ask me
whether he could work in my laboratory,
on Monkey Chromosomes and I have no objection.
But he learned a lot of Psychology that he told
me pattern recognition
is inherited.
Anybody can learn to improve but there's a limit except
some people who are
endowed with a marvelous pattern recognition.
He himself was one.
Doctor Pattack is one.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] This is recognizing
the patterns on the Chromosomes or any patterns?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Not necessarily, any pattern.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] It's a visual thing.
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Yeah, my wife was ill.
He and I, Doctor Pattack went to Hermann Hospital,
but we didn't know the road,
so we were going on bike,
but finally got there.
When we got back,
I was completely lost weight.
He said, "Oh doctor, turn this way, turn that way".
(crosstalk) Even that kind of pattern he can.
I'm only a mediocre type.
Whenever I have some serious chromosome analysis
I ask him to help me.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] Because he can pick up the patterns?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] He was great. Right now he's
working on a lot of
cancer patients or non-cancer patients,
but he predict that person
won't become a cancer patient,
what kind of cancer he can even predict
them from the chromosomes.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] How can he do that?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] Well, somehow a one place
the abnormality can occur repeatedly,
even in the blood cells.
He can tell from the blood cells,
this person is liable to develop a certain cancer.
For example, in retinoblastoma,
this is eye cancer and Louis Strong helped
her boss that time to look into the record
and it's found out that a chromosome 13 I think,
no chromosome 11 had a lesion.
Some patients, non-patients when Pattack look at
his chromosomes occasionally we show
one or two cells with the lesion Chromosome 13.
He will predict this patient
will develop Retinoblastoma sooner or later.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] When did he start doing this?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] He's been doing this for a long time.
Lesley Williams [Brunet] A long time?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] No, he is marvelous with this.
I just admire that of him.
He said, "Look,
this guy is going to have certain cancer",
and later on sure enough he did.
I don't have that ability.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] To see the patterns?
[Tao-Chiuh Hsu] No, I can see say
a chromosome is wrong with a (inaudible) or something,
but not as precise as he could. Yeah.
[Lesley Williams Brunet] I noticed in a letter you wrote to Lemaitre in 79.