Betty Compton talks about her husband, Arthur Compton, and what gave him a sense of personal satisfaction.

Weiner:

What I'd like to do now, since we've gone a long time today, is to think very briefly if there’s anything that you really want to cover, a general theme that we might have missed; and then to end on this note with your characterization of the thing that you think gave your husband most personal satisfaction in his career, the thing that was most rewarding to him in terms of the sense of personal satisfaction and personal achievement. Is it possible to pinpoint it to a particular event or series of events?

Compton:

I don’t know that I could — not to a particular event. But the working out of the planning for the future education at Washington University. It was a challenge, and I believe he felt that it was a kind of fulfillment in at least what he was able to do in the time he was there.

Weiner:

I see. We haven’t touched on that at all, and I think perhaps we shouldn't, as from 1941 onward represents a new period. But anyway you feel that in the total career, that that had a special kind of meaning.

Compton:

Well, when you ask it now, that just comes to me. That's the response that that comes now. In thinking it over, maybe I would discover something else that might be latent that I don’t think of now. I wouldn't know. I’m going to make a little note of that just for the fun of it, because some time I might be thinking about that, meditating on something that might just strike the point.

Weiner:

There can be several answers, of course.

Compton:

Well, of course. I should think so. There might have been. We were very close as person to person, as husband and wife, and always working together on all of these things and having him talk about everything, just normally to talk it over. And that's the reason I was cleared for the atomic project. That was very amusing. But sometimes being very close to people, you’re not sensitive enough to some of the things that other people would be sensitive to it they were involved. Because we were just so much of one piece, so to speak. Let's see, how did you phrase that? What single...

Weiner:

What single event or series of events gave him the most personal satisfaction in the sense of personal achievement? And I would really ask the same question of you now?

Compton:

What single event or events did give A.H. personal — what?

Weiner:

Satisfaction or a sense of achievement, in a personal sense. Perhaps it's too general, limiting it to the professional sphere. Because raising a fine family is in a sense a personal achievement, too.

Compton:

Yes. That reminds me of something else because I remember when we had reason to lose several of our young progeny at birth and one later. I remember his saying how he would be willing to have given several years of his life to have saved that young bit of humanity, which ties in with your question.