Open Mind

For a while, the chairmanship of the Atomic Energy Commission seemed to be the most unpopular top-level job in Washington: the AEC chairman must not only possess considerable administrative ability, along with scientific and technological know-how, but he must also be able to thread his way through highly emotional issues while keeping the U.S. on a straight, or at least a safe, nuclear course.

President-elect Kennedy offered former TVA Chairman Gordon Clapp, an experienced Washington hand, the AEC post, but Clapp wanted no part of it. Neither did Physicist James Fisk, president of Bell Telephone Laboratories. Then, last week, Kennedy found an eminently satisfactory candidate who had actually asked for the AEC job: Chemist Glenn Theodore Seaborg, 48, chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley.

Lanky, roughhewn Glenn Seaborg has more qualifications for running the AEC than mere desire. He is a top-rank nuclear scientist. He was a co-discoverer of the element plutonium, crucial in the development of the atom bomb. That achievement won him a 1951 Nobel Prize. His work in the laboratory has been continuously fruitful. Asked what he does, he answers with calculated simplicity: "I discover elements." To date he has been instrumental in adding nine more to the periodic table.

Seaborg is no scientific recluse. An articulate instructor, he was one of the first to extol the advantages of TV teaching. An energetic sportsman, he whacks out a middling-good game of golf (in the 90s); he also served as Cal's faculty representative on the Pacific Coast Conference.

Even during his two-year tour as chancellor of the university, he retained an active interest in the university football team and converted a lot next to his house into a neighborhood playground.

Seaborg comes to his new job with no entangling alliances in the touchy international tangle over the problems of nuclear-bomb test suspension or control. At a time when scientists of all varieties have spoken out with self-asserted, and often politically motivated, authority, Seaborg has concentrated quietly upon his own work. He has no intention of commenting on test bans until he bones up on detection systems and the means of defeating them. Maintaining strict scientific discipline, Glenn Seaborg insists that he is approaching all the intricate demands of his new job "with an open mind."

Last week's only other major appointment was that of Najeeb Halaby to take over from Elwood ("Pete") Quesada as head of the Federal Aviation Agency. A lawyer and longtime pilot (he flew for the Army Air Forces, then for Lockheed, and joined the Navy as a test pilot), Halaby, 45, is a native Texan of mixed ancestry: his father was Syrian, his mother of Irish-English extraction. He is familiar with the growing problems of air traffic control that plague his agency. He was vice chairman of the President's 1955-57 Aviation-Facilities Study Group, which warned that fast-moving jets would soon saturate U.S. airways. Experienced both in Government service (Defense Department, ECA, NATO) and private industry (Servomechanisms, Inc.), "Jeeb" Halaby made it clear that he intends to exercise the same firm control over FAA that characterized Quesada's service. In all efforts to minimize the perils of U.S. airspace, said Halaby, he would deal directly with President Jack Kennedy. "I'm his man."

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