Dresner, Lawrence (Larry)

              
ORAL HISTORY OF DR. LAWRENCE (LARRY) DRESNER
Interviewed by Keith McDaniel
October 15, 2013
 
MR. MCDANIEL: This is Keith McDaniel and today is October 15, 2013, and I am at the home of Larry Dresner here in Oak Ridge. Mr. Dresner, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us.
MR. DRESNER: You're welcome.
MR. MCDANIEL: Let's start at the beginning. Tell me something about where you were born and raised, something about your family.
MR. DRESNER: Well, first I would like to say, my actual, given name is Lawrence, but you're quite correct, everyone calls me, 'Larry.' And I was born in Brooklyn, New York. My birth certificate, actually, is signed by Jimmy Walker, who was then the mayor of New York and a very flamboyant political figure. So it's very nice to have an autograph of Jimmy Walker on my birth certificate.
MR. MCDANIEL: Go ahead.
MR. DRESNER: I went to public school in New York City, in a neighborhood public school, P.S. 193. Afterwards, I went to Midwood High School which was also within walking distance of my home. At that time, it was a brand new high school so it was really quite a pleasure to go there.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now what year were you born?
MR. DRESNER: In 1929.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1929.
MR. DRESNER: I was born one month before the Great Depression started, the Stock Market crashed. I like to tell my friends and my family that the world was just not ready for me. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. (laughter)
MR. DRESNER: It did make life hard for my parents. My father was a small business man. He was a printer and my grandfather had a printing business, they were partners. And my parents were, of course, had just gotten married in 1928 and when the market crashed, shortly thereafter, business spiraled down and in 1932, when I was just 3 years old, the world was in the... the country especially, was in the depths of the Depression. The first 10 years of my parents' marriage were really terribly difficult for them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: After high school, I graduated, I went to City College of New York.
MR. MCDANIEL: Did you have brothers or sisters?
MR. DRESNER: No, I did not. And I think that was partly the...
MR. MCDANIEL: ...because of the ...
MR. DRESNER: Because of the Depression. Yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now did your ... was your father able to keep his business? I mean, keep his business?
MR. DRESNER: Yes, they did...
MR. MCDANIEL: But it was tough...
MR. DRESNER: I remember him... they had an errand boy because ... My father set the type, my grandfather ran the presses and when the printing was finished, the errand boy would carry the finished printing to the customers.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: Later on, when I was 14, in the summers, I was the errand boy.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: But it was very difficult for them. They managed to keep the business together. But I remember my father remarking once that the entire cash income of the business in one particular week was used to pay the errand boy and my father and grandfather, who were the partners, in the business, went home with nothing in their pockets.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: It's... I was a child, I had no idea, but when I grew to manhood and I realized what my parents had gone through, it was worth shedding a tear.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, sure, of course, of course. Now, where in New York was it located?
MR. DRESNER: Right smack in the middle of Brooklyn, area called Flatbush, but a very nice area. That was a decision my mother made when she insisted that we live in a neighborhood with good schools and a neighborhood that was quiet and tranquil. There were times when, during the Depression, paying the rent on the apartment was such a burden that they had trouble, my mother and father, had trouble putting food on the table. But my mother was, I would say, a bit fanatical about a good neighborhood with good schools and I think that was a correct decision on her part and I'm glad for the courage that they had to do this because it made an enormous difference in my life.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure it did.
MR. DRESNER: I want to tip my hat to my family, they got it right.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated high school. What year, what year'd you graduate high school?
MR. DRESNER: That would be 1947.
MR. MCDANIEL: 1947. So you were in, you were old enough to remember the war. I mean, you know, you remember...
MR. DRESNER: Oh, yes.
MR. MCDANIEL: What do you remember about that time?
MR. DRESNER: Oh, I will tell you. In 1945, in the summer, August, of course you're aware, was the date of the atom bomb.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: I was working as an errand boy in Manhattan. Was on the subway, I got on the subway to ride home to Brooklyn and the man opposite me in the subway was holding a copy of the Daily News, like this, spread across. And I remember seeing, on the front page of the news, in huge block letters: ATOM BOMB.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: I couldn't imagine what it was because I was 15.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: I got off at the next stop and I went and bought a newspaper. And I remember walking home and reading, in the street, standing there, reading this article about the atom bomb, I never dreamed that 10 years later I would be working at Oak Ridge.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: But that is one thing that I remember.
MR. MCDANIEL: So that made an impression on you, didn't it? The 'atom bomb' newspaper?
MR. DRESNER: The other thing much earlier that made an impression on me was the fall of France.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. DRESNER: Because I was, at that time, probably 12 years old, yeah, or 13, something like that. It was '41 or '42. Prior to that I had, in my naiveté, I call it, a comic book mentality: The good guys won. Eddie Rickenbacker and the Escadrille Lafayette always beat the Germans. Well, when France fell, I was stunned. I found it incomprehensible and it frightened me because if that could happen, I was afraid, tomorrow the German troops could be disembarking in New York harbor and looking for me because I'm a Jew and I knew already from what was going on, from speaking in the family, I knew what was happening to Jews in Europe. And I had a genuine panic attack. And, of course, in a day or... I was a kid so in a day or two I sprang back, but I remember that, I'm 84 years old and it was as though it happened yesterday.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right? Wow. So you were old enough, really, for the war to make a major impact on you personally, the way you feel about things.
MR. DRESNER: Yes, I understood.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you graduated high school and you went to City College of New York. Tell me about that. What did you study? What were you interested in and how did you come to that decision to study?
MR. DRESNER: Well, I would like -- How I came to that decision was partly the influence of two men whose names I would like to say now, a public school teacher named Max Edelsen, who taught me the use of logarithms. He did that to keep me quiet, because I was kind of a noisy kid. Instead of punishing me the way other teachers had done, he motioned to me, I went up to his desk expecting the worst, and he handed me the book and said, "Do you know what a logarithm is?" And I said, "No." He taught me how to use them and then he used to give me little problems that I would use the book of logarithms to solve.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: So I enjoyed that and that inclined my thinking towards mathematics. And I had another teacher in high school who had a PhD in mathematics, his name was Aaron Shapiro, and he was the mentor of the high school math team, which I had joined, and he showed us, at that time, what I considered to be all kinds of tricks. And I just... I knew there was stuff out there and I wanted to know what he knew.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And, so, by that time, I was... after experiencing the math team in Midwood High School, I was fairly thoroughly committed to mathematics, but not pure mathematics. I enjoyed physics, theoretical physics -- which is how I made my living -- I enjoyed that more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And so, when I got to City College, I took all the math and physics that I could and my BS is in physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. So when you graduated from City College, what did you do?
MR. DRESNER: Well, I pursued graduate education at Princeton University
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And I was accepted in many places because I had done extremely well at City College. I'd worked very hard and did well. By that time, I had met Blanche, my wife.
MR. MCDANIEL: Where had you met her?
MR. DRESNER: I met her in City College. She was a freshman and I was a senior.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: A very favorable arrangement, by the way.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, of course.
MR. DRESNER: She was young, and I didn't want to leave her because I thought if I left her, because we'd only known one another a few months and she was 16 years old. I had no claim on her.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: But I had my heart set on marrying her. Of course, I was 20 at the time and that made a big difference. So I chose to stay as close to New York as I could which meant Princeton University which is an absolutely dizzy reason for choosing a graduate school but, I'm happy to say, it's one of those stories that I tell my kids and my grandkids, I got the diploma and I got the girl. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: There you go, there you go. Now, I bet, by the time... how were things with your mom and dad by the time you got to college? I mean, how were you able to go? Were they better?
MR. DRESNER: Oh, yes, things were much better. There was a burst of economic activity after the end of World War II.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: There was a lot of pent up demand. So business was good for everybody. By that time, my grandfather was able to retire. He bought a little house in Levittown. I don't think he ever dreamed in all his life that a time would come when he would become a property owner.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah. It was a tiny, little cracker box of a house but for him it was a castle.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MR. DRESNER: He and my father dissolved the business and my father went to work for another printer.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And, I must say, he enjoyed it. He said to me once, "It's so nice not to be the boss." He says, "Five o'clock comes, I wash up and go home and that other guy has to stay and break his head over whether the business is going to make money or not." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely, absolutely, I'm sure.
MR. DRESNER: And in 1973... near as I can remember. No, 1970, they retired and went down to Florida.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: Unfortunately, my father died three years later so he didn't really enjoy much retirement. My mother lived to be 97.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. DRESNER: Oh, yes, and she lived in Florida for 30 years or more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, did your mother work when you were growing up or when you were... did she eventually go to work?
MR. DRESNER: Yes, she did eventually go to work. She was self-taught. She used to do -- when they had the business, she would do the books.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And she taught herself bookkeeping and, having taught herself bookkeeping, later on, she was able to get a job as a cashier in Macy's and, after having that experience, she was able to work her way up and became a bank teller.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And so she did rather nicely for herself. She was a bank teller until she retired.
MR. MCDANIEL: Until she retired. So you... So you're at Princeton, you got your Master's at Princeton. Blanche was still at City College, I imagine?
MR. DRESNER: Well, no, she had graduated.
MR. MCDANIEL: She had graduated.
MR. DRESNER: And we married and we spent the year in Princeton and in the spring of 1953 -- I looked away for a moment because I'm remembering dates...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's ok. That's all right.
MR. DRESNER: I realized, I'm a married man, when the summer break comes, I got to get a job.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: And I had dawdled a bit and so, I was kind of upset because all the other students already had jobs and I thought, well, gee whiz, I've made a bad mistake.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And there was a fellow named Milt Edlund who had been part of the Manhattan Project. He was young for the Manhattan Project, but he'd been on there and he had been sent to Princeton. He had written a book about reactor theory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And Alvin Weinberg sent him to Princeton to do some graduate work and he and I were simpatico and we got to be good friends.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And I said to Milt, in 1953, "Gee, I need a job, what do you think I ought to do?" "Oh," he said, "come to Oak Ridge." And the rest is history.
MR. MCDANIEL: The rest is history. So you came to... Now, so it was the summer, or had you finished your Master's?
MR. DRESNER: I'd finished my Master's but not my PhD, not yet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. DRESNER: There's a story there, too.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. DRESNER: That summer, I worked for Bob Charpie, I don't know if ... He was an assistant to Alvin and sort of a second man in the scientific leadership.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And they didn't really... I didn't... I'm ashamed to say, I didn't know a whole lot of nuclear physics at that time, they gave me a break and that summer I spent studying nuclear physics out of a book by Blatt and Weisskopf, very famous book. I read it from cover to cover and by the end of the summer, I knew nuclear physics pretty well. I think they had had in mind that I should remain at Oak Ridge. I went back to Princeton for one more year. In '54 I came back permanently and the first job that Alvin put me on turned... was a problem that turned into my doctoral dissertation.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, is that right?
MR. DRESNER: So, if you were of a religious bent, you will see the machinations of Providence moving my feet in the direction I was supposed to go.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly, exactly. So you were... Your PhD was in nuclear physics, is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah, it was actually neutron physics.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, neutron physics, which, to me, I don't know the difference, but that's ok. A lot of people will.
MR. DRESNER: Right. And the fortunate thing is, the problem that Alvin put me on had been something which was originated during the Manhattan Project by Eugene Wigner.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: An aspect of reactor design which had to be done. Wigner had done the theory but, in a manner of speaking, it was 'once over lightly' because of the exigencies of wartime. And there were many unanswered questions that were interesting from a physics point of view that, during the war, they could let slide because they had other things to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But there was this wealth of unanswered questions which dropped in my lap. It also enabled me... Of course, Wigner was a full professor at Princeton so, as I say, everything came together in a kind of miraculous way because he was my doctoral mentor. So this was a kind of small miracle because that was very good for me.
MR. MCDANIEL: What was Wigner like?
MR. DRESNER: Interesting man. We got to be good friends. For some strange reason, both he and Alvin took a shine to me. I don't really know why. I try to look back on myself at age 30 or so, I was kind of a brash kid and I'm surprised, but they did, they took a shine to me. And, of course, I reciprocated it. I find Wigner to be a very nice man and I enjoyed his company and he seemed to enjoy mine. In fact, in 1986, we invited him and he came as a guest to my daughter's wedding here in Oak Ridge here at the hotel.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow. Huh... So here you are, you're in Oak Ridge, and you’re put on a project that ended up becoming the subject of your doctoral thesis. Why don't you kind of take me through your career?
MR. DRESNER: Well, the best, there are two aspects to... I knew you would ask this so I thought about it all night.
MR. MCDANIEL: Good.
MR. DRESNER: There are two aspects. The first is I was free, pretty much, to do the research that I wanted to do. I was always allowed to follow my own... the inventions of my own mind, as it were. I understood that it was necessary to be responsive to what I would call the programmatic needs of the Laboratory. You had to... you had to help foster the goals that we were paid to do by the Department of Energy or the AEC then.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But, I was... if I thought of something which I thought was good or worth doing, I could do it. And that was one aspect of the job that I thought was wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's what I was about to say, I mean, rarely do you have that opportunity...
MR. DRESNER: Oh, yes...
MR. MCDANIEL: You know, as a researcher, you know, to explore... explore what you want to explore.
MR. DRESNER: Well, within the... I mean, it had to be somehow related to the programmatic needs...
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, sure. Of course.
MR. DRESNER: ... of the Laboratory. Just to give you a good example. There was a time when I was on the Civil Defense project and actually that was headed by Eugene Wigner, who came to Oak Ridge to run it. Well, he never really told me what to do. And a friend and I, the late Conrad Chester and I, sat down together. Neither of us had an assignment and we said, "Well, what shall we do?" And we decided that ... The question of blast shelters was under active discussion at that time, so we said, "Ok, suppose we take it as a given that we're going to build blast shelters, what, then, do we need to know." We made a list of all the things we needed to know. We built a shock tube laboratory and we started to measure and calculate all of these things. To be able to do research in that way is marvelous. No one breathing down your neck. I remember the guy, the administrative aide to Wigner, a man named James Bresee, a PhD in chemical engineering in his own right, said to us, "Do what you know how to do. Tell me about it and I'll take it to Washington and sell it." And you can't ask for a better deal than that.
MR. MCDANIEL: That's true. That is true.
MR. DRESNER: That's the first part and the second part is that three times we were able to live overseas for a year. In the 1960s in Germany, in the 1970s in Israel and in the 1980s in Japan.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, was that part of your job? Tell me about those.
MR. DRESNER: Well, the... Yes, it was all part of my job. In 1955 and 1958, there were two Geneva conferences and my boss then, the late Everett Blizard, attended both meetings and brought back with him German and Japanese scientists so that we could, Oak Ridge could begin international cooperation which was the spirit of the Geneva Conferences anyway.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right. Was this the Atoms for Peace program?
MR. DRESNER: Yes. The Atoms for Peace program. It fell to me to take care of these people because the Lab was then, pretty much, a security area and they had to sit, as I recall, in the Van de Graff building. It was the Van de Graff accelerator which was unclassified.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: So I ran back and forth to make sure they had what they needed, books from the library, whatever else they wanted so they could pursue their work. The German participant, a young man, at the time, named Wolf Hafele, who went on to great distinction in Germany, but Hafele had a certain amount of influence and he arranged an invitation for me, because we'd worked together and he, evidently, respected me and I respected him greatly. We got to be fast friends and at the end of his year he suddenly said to me, "How would you like to come to Karlsruhe with me?"
MR. MCDANIEL: Come to where?
MR. DRESNER: Karlsruhe. It's a city ... it's a Rhine port in Germany where they have a laboratory like ORNL.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, right, right.
MR. DRESNER: And so, I immediately said, "Yes." And, my Blanche was a good soldier. I came home, and we had three little kids and she was pregnant with the fourth.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, my.
MR. DRESNER: And I said to her, "How'd you like to go to Germany?" And we packed our bags and we went. My daughter, my youngest daughter, was born in Germany.
MR. MCDANIEL: Was she?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah. She has a pack of papers. She's an American citizen and, for those who worry about this kind of thing, she could be president. (laughter)
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, there you go, there you go. So that was Germany. The next one was Israel.
MR. DRESNER: I applied for a Fulbright and, in 1972. There's a funny story there also. I had a friend, Stanley Milora, who saw me filling out the papers for the Fulbright award.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, the Fulbright, it's an award.
MR. DRESNER: Yeah.
MR. MCDANIEL: Tell me a little bit about that.
MR. DRESNER: At the end of the war, Senator Fulbright of Arkansas and Representative Hays, I don't know where he came from, proposed an act which was passed by the Senate and the House and signed by the President, to allow Allied countries who had a debt to us for the aid that we gave them during World War II.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: To repay that debt by hosting American scholars overseas. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: That's how it started. Afterwards, it morphed into a bilateral arrangement so our people could go there, their people could come here and it was enlarged to countries beyond just the Allied countries and included all countries, including some of the former enemies like Germany, Italy and Japan. So it became an international exchange program. And you applied for it, and, you kind of wrote a grant. And I was lucky, there were two that year, in the state of Tennessee, and I was one of them.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: When my friend Stanley saw me filling out all the papers, he said to me, "What are you doing?" And I said, "I'm going to try to go to Israel." He said, "You’ve got to be crazy." He said, "There could be a war in Israel."
MR. MCDANIEL: And this was in the '60s, wasn't it?
MR. DRESNER: No, this was in ...
MR. MCDANIEL: The ‘70s?
MR. DRESNER: In '72...
MR. MCDANIEL: '72...
MR. DRESNER: In '73, in October while we were there, the Yom Kippur war started.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: And so we ... we were there, it was a month-long business. Israel's wars are short and sharp. But it was an expensive war for Israel. The casualities they had, if you prorate them in ratio of the population up to the United States, their losses were comparable to what we lost in Vietnam.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: And so, it was an expensive and hard-fought war.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: I stood on the sidelines. I was not only a foreign person, I mean, I wasn't an Israeli citizen, but I also hadn't been trained, I'd never been in the Army or anything so there was nothing for me to do. We did... I had some friends who pitched in and helped one day -- my whole contribution to these things -- There was a farmer who had a field of, oh, drat, I can't think. Some kind of nuts that grow on a tree, almonds I believe. And he had been drafted as all healthy Israelis were, his wife was pregnant and the only other person on the farm was a very aged grandfather. So I and... I had a class, a language class so I can learn the language of the country which is Hebrew, and the whole class went to the farm and picked the crop for this guy that was in the Army.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: But other than that, I just went to work every day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: But it was nerve wracking. We were blacked out in the evening and the kids -- my kids were going to high school. The high school kids were filling sand bags. I mean, it was a scary bit.
MR. MCDANIEL: I bet. I bet. I bet it was just ... I bet it was just tense, I mean, all the time. It was constant. You didn't know what was going to happen. Did you think about just leaving and coming back?
MR. DRESNER: I know this is not a time to talk politics, but you ... People see today what is going on in Syria.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: At the time of the Yom Kippur War, Israel was fighting on two fronts. Egypt was one, Syria was the other.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And I had no illusions about being protected because I was an American and I felt very strongly that if anything happened that we would share the fate of our Israeli neighbors.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And I think... I and they feared the Syrians much more than they feared the Egyptians.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: For they said the Syrians were cruel and brutal people and you see now what is going on in Syria. The way that war was fought by Israel, which we could follow because you could see the movement of troops within the country.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: The Israelis first fought the Syrians and stopped them on the Golan Heights, and then they sent the Army south to fight the Egyptians.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. DRESNER: For the first three days, it was nerve wracking.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: I had two young daughters and a young son. My oldest son had returned to the United States to begin Northwestern University.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. All right.
MR. DRESNER: But that was probably the scariest time of my life.
MR. MCDANIEL: How old ... So how old were you then? You were mid-40s?
MR. DRESNER: Well, '73...
MR. MCDANIEL: 40... 43, 44?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah, something like that. Right, yes 44.
MR. MCDANIEL: So, you... did you ever think about just leaving, getting out of the country when that... when all that started? I mean, seriously.
MR. DRESNER: I will tell you about that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. DRESNER: The war started on Saturday. Saturday night when we finally got the kids to bed, we sat on our blacked out -- it was a sun porch just like this one -- listening to the news. We could get English news from the BBC in Cyprus.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And I said to Blanche, "You decide what you want to do, I'll decide what I want to do and when the sun comes up in the morning, we'll have showdown poker." I decided, "I got to stay." I could not, in good faith, turn my back on what I considered to be people just like me.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. DRESNER: So I said to her in the morning, "What did you decide?" She said, "Let's stay." So I said, "Fine, that's what I decided."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: Then, in a really comic relief moment, I said, "What do you think I ought to do now?" because it was Sunday morning, that's a work day in Israel.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And with the voice of common sense and equanimity, able to keep her balance, she looked at me and said, "Well you could take your briefcase and go to work." (laughter) And I said, "Yeah, I guess I could." And that's what I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, so you... So you returned from Israel and you came back to work and, I guess, picked up your work here at Oak Ridge.
MR. DRESNER: Well, it was a little different. The work that I had been doing, it was out of money.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And so, a good friend of mine who is still alive and living in Oak Ridge today, Roger Derby, knew about a project called the Large Coil Program which, at that time, was a program to build large super conducting magnets for fusion. And they were looking for people.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And so I joined. And two years after the inception of that program it became an international program. The participants were the European Union which was largely represented by Germany, a German lab, Switzerland and Japan and the U.S. And, of course, I got busy and got to work and, after several years, I'd written some really nice papers, and I was standing one day at the Xerox machine... We had teams from the other participants, we had several Japanese, and the Japanese boss guy, a man named Shimamoto, happened to be there for several weeks. And I was standing at the Xerox machine one day, Xeroxing, and he came over to me and said, "How'd you like to go to Japan."
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Which, again, Providence, moving in strange ways. Well, I came home and I said to Blanche, "Hey! I got an invitation for Japan." And she said something like, "Funny you should mention that." Because she had been negotiating with Rotary International for a fellowship and she hadn't said anything to me 'cause she wanted to keep it quiet.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But at this point, it had virtually matured and she was getting set to tell me that she'd been invited to go to Japan.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: Yep.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: In fact, her fellowship was for two years. I was the party pooper because I ... my appointment was only for a year.
MR. MCDANIEL: Only for a year...
MR. DRESNER: But we did go and the only strange thing about it is, her assignment forced her to live in Tokyo. We got her a rather nice apartment in Tokyo. I had to live in a place called Tokai-mura, and that was several hours away by train. So Monday through Friday I lived by myself. I was a Tokai bachelor.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And then, Friday afternoon, I came to Tokyo and stayed with Blanche until Monday morning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. DRESNER: And it was fun, but I remember when we were on the airplane flying home from Narita Airport, I said to her, "I don't ever want to be apart again."
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: And so, that traveling, I think, was the best part... made the job paradise.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, I understand. Well, good. So, you came back from Japan and you picked up your work again.
MR. DRESNER: Right.
MR. MCDANIEL: And that... the work was what year? I mean, Japan trip was mid-80s did you say?
MR. DRESNER: '81 to '82.
MR. MCDANIEL: '81 to '82...Now how much longer did you work until you retired?
MR. DRESNER: Until '94.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok, so you worked until '94.
MR. DRESNER: I was 65 and the Lab... budget times were tough in the early ‘90s and the Lab decided to downsize by offering a buy-out.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: It was, I think, far and away, the best buy-out ever.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And I once again heard the voice of Providence whispering in my ear. I was 65 and they wanted me to... they offered me a buy-out and, I mean, it had to be Providential, I seized it. I was so excited that the first day you could sign up, I went to the wrong office and so I had to wait for the second morning. And I was there, and I signed up at once. But I remained working until the 30th of December, 1994. We had... I had signed up like in May or June, I forget, something like that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But I stayed around for the remaining six months and then, it was sort of a funny feeling to retire. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, I'm sure.
MR. DRESNER: You go to the Lab, you walk in the door at eight o'clock, show your badge just the way you always did. Thirty minutes later you come out, no badge, big check in your hand and it's nine o'clock in the morning and you don't know what to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: I understand. So what did you do after retirement? I mean after you retired, did you consult?
MR. DRESNER: Well, I consulted for several years on the same project that I'd been working on but I got quite tired of that after a while and, since I felt I had enough, I took a year off and that was no good. I found I needed something to do.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: So I began to teach and the first place I taught was Roane State. I taught algebra there for about six or seven years.
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, by then, the Oak Ridge campus was here, I mean, the new campus was here.
MR. DRESNER: Yes, and in fact, one of the nice things about being retired is when you negotiate with people you can set your own terms.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And I didn't challenge, of course, I dealt with an extremely fine man, Adolph King, who was a PhD and professional chemist and a professor at Roane State. And Adolph was head of natural sciences then and he hired me and I said to him that I would prefer to not to teach any place but the Oak Ridge campus and, bless him, he was flexible and sensible and he said, "That's good." He thought he saw in me a useful resource and he was willing to bend a little in order to make use of it and it was good for both of us.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, well good. So you did that for several years.
MR. DRESNER: And then I had an opportunity, at the Oak Ridge High School...
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: ...to -- I was asked by Benita Albert if I would work with a young man who was... had what's called Asperger's Syndrome.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And the challenge with teaching algebra at Roane State, I have to tell you, is that it is not very challenging and I was happy to abandon that and so I began working with this, one-on-one with this Asperger's boy who, incidentally, was an extremely fine mathematician.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really?
MR. DRESNER: And so, we worked, you know, in circumstances of approximate equality at the blackboard. It was a pleasure. I worked with him for two years. I am happy to say that he went on through the Oak Ridge High School, went through UT and got a PhD in mathematics from the University of South Carolina.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: It was really quite a success story. But when he graduated from high school, my task, in a sense, was over but Benita Albert, who also is a truly blessed woman, also saw a resource she didn't want to waste and she said, would I like to continue working with the honor students.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And I did for many years. I continued that until I just got plain too old and too tired to continue anymore. That was wonderful.
MR. MCDANIEL: Now, how often would you work with them?
MR. DRESNER: Once a week for one hour. I'd come in and we'd just go to the blackboard and I'd teach them all kinds of mathematical tricks. And one of the students, a young Japanese boy, I cannot remember his name, but he introduced me to a book called, “The Art and Craft of Problem Solving” by a man named Paul Zeitz, and that book has become my Bible in what I did thereafter.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: Because I began to use it as a source material for the high school students and I began to teach a class using the same material at ORICL.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And there I was teaching some of my former colleagues and they were scientists and engineers with a thorough mathematical background so it was a genuine pleasure to teach them and I continue to do that to the present day.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: But the high school and ORICL got to be too much.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And so I finally quit the high school. I was a little bit regretful, but I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: But, I'm sure, the ORICL classes, like you said, these are highly educated, highly intelligent people, and it's ...
MR. DRESNER: It's fun.
MR. MCDANIEL: It's fun, I bet, to have a ...
MR. DRESNER: Yes, it's really fun.
MR. MCDANIEL: They are your peers, they are your peers, you know.
MR. DRESNER: They certainly are and on more than one occasion... Well, the way I ran the class is I give them Olympiad problems. These are the problems that are presented to bright high school students in the mathematical Olympiads.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: Right. I'd assign a few to these, to my ORICL guys and I'd give 'em a week to do it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And then we'd discuss... I'd let them show their solutions. I tried to -- It's hard for you to believe now that I've warmed up to my task here -- but I actually stayed in the background. And I always had a solution to the problem but it was often my students had more elegant, shorter, more succinct proofs than I had.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And so, yes they were my peers and I learned from them as much as they learned from me. And I still do that to this day. Thursday, I will have a class. Thursday morning.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure. Well, let's go back and talk about you and your wife and your family's involvement in the community of Oak Ridge. We've talked about your work, your professional life, let's talk a little bit about your personal life from, kind of, the beginning when you came to Oak Ridge. How did you become involved in the community and make friends and...?
MR. DRESNER: If the truth be told, which it must be, it was entirely my wife's doing. I'm... I'm social when I get in a group, you can see that, but it takes a bit of pushing and dragging and if I were left to my own devices, I fear I would be something of a recluse.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: It's entirely my wife's doing.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: She made the friends. We're both Jewish, but I'm much less religious than she is and if I had come down here by myself, I'd have some questions as to whether I would really have sought out the Jewish congregation and joined it. But, in her mind, there was no question. 
MR. MCDANIEL: There was no question.
MR. DRESNER: And of course, we did. It's sort of odd because, anti-clerical though I may be, I also speak Hebrew. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, there you go. Exactly. 
MR. DRESNER: Well, only half. Because I was in an ORICL class, a religion class, taught by one of the local ministers. There were a number... there are a number of Israelis in the Oak Ridge population and there's several in this class and some question came up about some word or something, and so the speaker asked one of the Israelis and the fellow answered -- that was Uri Gat who answered, friend of mine -- and then, as an aside, the speaker said, "By the way, how many people are there in the room that speak Hebrew?" And there were three Israelis and me. And Uri, who has a sense of humor, said, "Three and a half, there's me and Moshe and Leon. That's three and Larry Dresner's a half." (laughs) And that's probably right -- it's fair, it's fair.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right, I understand.
MR. DRESNER: So we got involved in the community through Blanche's activities.
MR. MCDANIEL: And personality.
MR. DRESNER: Yep, and personality, yes, yes. Oh, absolutely. She was active in Playhouse. And I remember one of the things that she did that she enjoyed very well was to play in “The Mikado”. I don't remember now what part she played, but they did a really beautiful production of that. And there were... The Jewish congregation put on a production of the play, “The Wall”, and she was in that. She inveigled me into appearing on the stage once. There were two performances, a Tuesday night and a Thursday night. On Tuesday night, I had such stage fright I almost died. But what was even worse, was when I got home Tuesday, I knew I had to be ready again Thursday... worst night of my life. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Now was this at the Jewish congregation?
MR. DRESNER: Yeah. But that was the start and finish of my acting career.
MR. MCDANIEL: Of your acting career. That's funny, that's funny...
MR. DRESNER: I ran for political office once. I don't know what induced me to do that.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: Well, I do, it was the Jernigans -- Big Hal and, what's his, I forget his wife's name. Was it Helen?
MR. MCDANIEL: I believe so.
MR. DRESNER: Right. They talked me into it. I wasn't a hard sell. I was a bit of a fool. I learned a lot. I didn't... 
MR. MCDANIEL: What'd you run for?
MR. DRESNER: City council. 
MR. MCDANIEL: City council, ok.
MR. DRESNER: I believe the elections were at-large then and of 2,000... I got approximately 2,000 votes and the other guy got 200 more.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, really?
MR. DRESNER: So I lost by an acceptable margin. I could hold my head up. I wasn't totally trounced.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, exactly.

MR. DRESNER: But I came home and I whispered a prayer to God that he had contrived to make me lose because I think I would have gone nuts if I had, it's just ... that kind of politics is not for me. I learned a great deal about local politics. Well, I don't want to get partisan...
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, go ahead, though. Go ahead, tell me, what did you learn?
MR. DRESNER: I went down... the union guys interviewed me as a candidate and I could see right away having a PhD was an enormous black eye. That was the... And I didn't say anything, but they knew who I was and what I did.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And I guess I was hurt to be rejected like that and then I wised up and I realized, you know, what politics is like. But they felt, right from the get go, that I couldn't possibly represent their interests, and, you know, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat and I was always, in spite of the fact that my father was a small businessman, he was pro-Union.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And one of the... I have his Union pin downstairs in a little display, what-do-they-call? Shadow box because he was so proud of it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: And I went down to the Union here and these guys basically treated me like dirt.
MR. MCDANIEL: Is that right?
MR. DRESNER: And, as I say, I don't have the thick skin that you need -- or didn't then, today I would be wiser -- but I was young and I was naive and my feelings really got hurt.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But I wasn't mad. But I felt like in the schoolyard when all the kids gather up to get a game and then you come over and they say, "You can't play." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: Right. So politics taught me something.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure.
MR. DRESNER: And logical argument, rational thinking has nothing to do with it. People vote their pocketbooks or their prejudices and, I'm not ashamed to say it today because you all see what's going on with the Tea Party in the Congress, government doesn't function right at the moment.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right.
MR. DRESNER: So, and this is the kind of thing, and I have no stomach for it.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure, sure, exactly.
MR. DRESNER: I hope you won't show this 'til I'm dead. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: The -- oops, there we go, just pick that up...
MR. DRESNER: Oh, goodness...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's ok. You're fine.
MR. DRESNER: I've gotten... wait...
MR. MCDANIEL: Just put that back in there, it slips out occasionally...
MR. DRESNER: You know... signal... Oh, it came out again.
MR. MCDANIEL: I think it may have... got it?
MR. DRESNER: Oh, it's just an antenna?
MR. MCDANIEL: Yeah, it's just an antenna.
MR. DRESNER: I see.
MR. MCDANIEL: We're close enough that we don't really need it, but I need to solder that in a little bit. There we go. That's good.
MR. DRESNER: Ok.
MR. MCDANIEL: We're about finished anyway. Is there... you can just lay it down flat, that'll be fine, yeah. Is there anything else you want to talk about.
MR. DRESNER: Well, in the course of my foreign travels I had an opportunity to meet two presidents.
MR. MCDANIEL: You did?
MR. DRESNER: And that's got to be worth a story.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow, yes, absolutely.
MR. DRESNER: All right, the first president, that's easy because when I was in Israel there was an outfit called the Israel Academic Society that all the foreign visitors for that year were taken to their... the residence of the president. The president, his day job was as a biochemist.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh!
MR. DRESNER: And his name was Ephriam Katzir, and we all shook hands with him and since his day job, as it were, was at the Weizmann Institute, which is where I was on the staff...
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: ... we, he and I, spoke a while and he asked me who I was working for there and what I was doing so he was really interested. So that was sort of nice.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: But the more fascinating thing... I'm going to have to... dab my nose which is running...
MR. MCDANIEL: That's fine.
MR. DRESNER: The more fascinating thing was when I met the former president of Turkey. His son was a physicist and was invited to spend a year at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: And I was assigned to be liaison with him. Well, we never got much accomplished as far as physics went that year but we hit it off very well. We got to be good friends and I always joked with him -- his name was Inonu.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. DRESNER: And his father had been Kemal Ataturk's right hand, Ataturk is the George Washington of modern Turkey.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok.
MR. DRESNER: He was the leader and he was the president from the establishment of the Turkish Republic until 1938.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, wow.
MR. DRESNER: Ismet Inonu was a general and his second hand, his second man in command.
MR. MCDANIEL: Ok.
MR. DRESNER: And when Ataturk died in '38, Ismet Inonu became president. Ismet's son, Erdal, was a physicist, came to the lab for a year, and I said to Erdal, if ever I get to Europe and I make it to Turkey, I want to meet your father. When we were in Germany, Blanche and I decided to visit some relatives she had never met living in Bucharest, Romania. I understood that these were her, it was her mother's two sisters and their husbands and a daughter, a cousin who's still alive today and we see her quite often now, but then, it was hard to get to Romania, but we were able to do that and I said to her, "As long as we're as far east as Bucharest, let's go to Istanbul and see Erdal." And we got to Istanbul and Erdal met us and installed us...We got there late in the day so he put us in a hotel -- the Hilton in Istanbul, you really can't do better than that. 
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And then, as they were bidding us good night, he said, "By the way, tomorrow, we're flying to Ankara." He said, "You have a talk scheduled at 11 a.m. at Middle East Technical University. And then we're having lunch with my father." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: We flew. I wrote the talk, out of... just out of my head, 'cause I had no materials, on cocktail napkins. Gave the talk. It was wonderful, because it was work that I was doing and it had just matured to the point where I really could give a talk about it. And then we went and had lunch with his father. And, the old man -- he was in his 90s -- his mind was clear as a bell.
MR. MCDANIEL: Sure.
MR. DRESNER: And when I sat and talked with him, I felt like I was taking my final orals all over again.
MR. MCDANIEL: Really? Oh, wow. Sure.
MR. DRESNER: Yes. He was able to talk knowledgeably about anything and he ... the probing questions that I couldn't answer, you know, it was terrible.
MR. MCDANIEL: Wow.
MR. DRESNER: But he was a very charming man. And the interesting thing, the thing that broke the ice. The meal was served by a butler. I had never in my life been in the presence of a butler. It was amazing. And he poured wine, a little bit for everybody, except for Ismet, the old man.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: And Ismet said, "Well," he said, "my physician doesn't let me have wine anymore." Ok. The meal was progressing, it's Blanche, me, Erdal and his wife...
MR. MCDANIEL: Right.
MR. DRESNER: Mrs. Inonu, his mother, and his father. And while I was sitting there and Ismet thinks nobody is looking, he switches his wife's glass with his, (claps) down goes the glass of wine. And I thought to myself, president or peasant, we all put our pants on one leg at a time. (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, that's funny, that is funny.
MR. DRESNER: But, I haven't seen Erdal in many years. When he went back to Turkey I know he got into politics. From time to time I would meet a Turkish exchange student because I spent summers, for a while, at the University of Wisconsin and I'd meet the exchange students and I'd ask 'em, what about Erdal Inönu, do you hear any news? Because the name, the name Inönu in Turkey is a lot like the name, Kennedy, in the United States.
MR. MCDANIEL: Oh, ok. Right.
MR. DRESNER: And he kind of got pushed into politics and so he gave up being a physicist and I think he was in the Senate, the Turkish Senate and then I lost track of him. He's older than I am and he may not be alive anymore for all I know.
MR. MCDANIEL: Right, right. Well, thank you so much for taking time to talk with us. It was very interesting.
MR. DRESNER: I'm glad you let me put in some of my little anecdotes.
MR. MCDANIEL: Absolutely, absolutely, that makes a good story.
MR. DRESNER: My children would say, "I knew it! I knew he would tell those stories." (laughs)
MR. MCDANIEL: Well, good. Well, thank you so much.
MR. DRESNER: Thank you, Keith.
MR. MCDANIEL: Very good.

[End of Interview]

[Editor’s Note: This transcript has been edited at Mr. Dresner’s request. The corresponding audio and video components will remain unchanged.]