36 



now for the last fifteen years or so, perhaps more than 

 that. It has never been very widely accepted by the 

 population people because what it basically says is if you 

 feed the people of the developing countries they'll have 

 more babies. 



Sharp: Just exactly the opposite of what you would like. 



Revelle: But it's probably correct. 



She has written papers in which she points out that 

 it's quite essential in providing food aid, for example, to 

 also provide birth control because those women are well fed 

 are going to get pregnant. 



Actually, it's not a simple problem. Women in 

 less-developed countries are often malnourished, and the 

 result is that as long as they're lactating, as long as 

 they're nursing their babies, they're likely not to get 

 pregnant-. Whereas with a well-nourished woman in the United 

 States it's not the case. 



Sharp: The direction of your research, once you got to Harvard, 

 spread out quite a bit in terms of your interest in food, 

 body size — . 



Revelle: Rose and I wrote several papers on this. 



Sharp: This was later on. This was in '74, '75? 



Revelle: Yes, I think so. It may be a little bit before that because 

 the World Food Study I think was 1965. 



Sharp: I was thinking there was another one that was going on. 



Revelle: That was the one with Harrison Brown for the National 

 Academy. I was not involved with that. 



Side Notes: Back to California, University Fellowship and 

 Living in Cambridge 



Sharp: I'd like for us to close for today, but I think we need to 

 get you out of Harvard and back to California. ## And, 

 retired from there. 



Revelle: Well, that was no problem because of Harvard regulations. 

 You had to retire from an administrative job at sixty-five 

 or sixty-six, maybe sixty-seven. I was born in 1909, and I 

 retired from the professorship in 1976. I must have been 

 sixty-seven. You were able to stay on until you were 

 seventy on a half-time basis. I tried to do that for a 

 couple of years, spending half the time at Harvard and half 

 the time here at UCSD. But it was not a satisfactory 

 arrangement; I never really did either one very well, [brief 

 tape interruption] As I remember it, Walter Munk was the 

 one who really arranged my coming back. He talked to Bill 

 McElroy, who was then chancellor here. 



