34 



Sharp: 

 Revelle: 



Sharp: 

 Revelle : 



Sharp: 



Revelle: 

 Sharp: 



More of the typical School of Piiblic Health plan. 



That's right, yes. I think he had in the back of his head, 

 though he never said it — he was a very tactful and very 

 gentle and polite man — I think he had in the back of his 

 head, however, the idea that the most important thing was 

 contraception . 



I thought the most important thing was the social 

 science side of it. He didn't have much confidence in the 

 social scientists, for the very good reason that it's hard 

 for them to make practical recommendations. 



Or generalizations even. 



Yes. Nevertheless, this population problem is right at the 

 heart of society. What more important thing is there than 

 the population? It's very much of a sociological issue. 



When you left Scripps and did the White House panel work and 

 then went to Harvard, if you look at your career sort of 

 from the outside, which I do and you obviously don't, it 

 looks like this tremendous detour — . 



This zig. 



— away from the ocean. At one point, I don't recall now 

 where I read it, but somebody was looking up what you were 

 doing and commenting that you were a little far upstream, 

 and it looks like you had to do an awful lot of homework to 

 figure out what the individual researchers at the center 

 were all about. 



Revelle: Sure. I never did learn much demography, 

 enough mathematical background. 



I never had 



Sharp: But the basic principles, about population and the relation 

 of population to resources . Did you pick those up from the 

 Pakistan work? 



Revelle: Pretty largely, yes, that's right. I was always interested 

 in resources. As you know, I started the Institute of 

 Marine Resources at Scripps. But I learned a lot about 

 agriculture in that Pakistan project. I didn't know 

 anything about it before. My approach was always just that 

 approach: not how do you control population, but how do you 

 develop the resources to take care of the population you're 

 going to have. 



Bob Dorfman was never really convinced that that was 

 what we should be doing. He didn't quite know what we 

 should be doing, but he felt somehow it ought to be more 

 related to population growth specifically rather than taking 

 care of the population growth. This was in no way a 

 quarrel, but it was a difference in point of view. 



Sharp: And in point of view in terms of direction of the center 

 too. 



