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RAND History Project Interview: Robert Specht 6/29/1989

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RAND History Project Interview: Robert Specht 6/29/1989 Specht, Robert. Date: June 26, 1989. Interviewer: Martin Collins. Auspices: RAND. Length: 2 hrs.~ 30 pp. Use restriction: Public. Specht (b. 1920) initially reviews his upbringing and education. He then discusses ~1hy he accepted a position in the Mathematics Department of RAND in 1949, John William's leadership of the department, the usa of consultants like Warren Weaver and John von Neumann, his involvement with the development of systems analysis, and the evolution of the Systems Development Division. Specht next describes his impressions of Frank Collbohm, other projects the Mathematics Department worked on, and the department's contributions to RAND. TAPE 1, SIDE 1 1-3 Early family background and history 3-4 Initial Lttraction to RAND; recommendations from Quade and Germond 4-5 Responsibilities and activities at RAND~ John Williams' approach in Mathematics Department 5-7 Description of RAND interdisciplinary projects during the first fifteen years RAND's use of consultants; Warren Weaver's contact with the Mathematics Department 7-8 Von Neumann's contributions to game theory 8-9 Developm:nt at RAND TAPE 1, SIDE 2 9-11 summer studies at RAND 11-12 Contact with Quade and Paxson during their development of systems analysis 12 Specht's involvement in and sensitivity to Systems analysis issues 12-13 Striking a balance between research and administrative activities 13-16 Evolution of the Systems Development Division Characterization of Frank Collbohm's positive and negative prejudices 16-17 Project briefings and presentations Investigations into dynamic and linear 18 Programm.:l.ng TAPE 2, SIDE 1 18-20 Sam Genesky's creation of the Center for the Partially - sighted 20-21 Intellect.nal framework of early RAND studies 21-23 Notion o.~· the Kriegspiel as an integral aspect of RAND culture 23-28 Mathematics Departments' contributions to RAND efforts 28-30 Closing c.::>mments ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW Interviewee: Mr. Robert Specht Interviewer: Mr. Martin Collins Date: June 29, 1989 Location: Santa Monica, California TAPE 1, SIDE 1 Mr. Collins: Just as an introduction into your experiences, it might be useful to sketch out your background, where and when you were born, your parents and your educational background. Specht: Background, what I'm qualified to do--there's an ancient story: a mother says to her son, "By me you're a lawyer, by you you're a lawyer, but by a lawyer, are you a lawyer? When I told the joke in Germany the punch line is " ... aber bei un Advokat bist du ein Advokat?" That's about the extent of my German. I have the union card of a mathematician, but by mathematicians, I'm a cellist, and vice versa. Neither group will admit to knowing me. In any case, I was born in Seattle, Washington, 1913, moved to Florida as an infant, grew up and went to school in Florida, finished high school when I was fourteen in my senior year, fifteen about a month before graduation. That would be a Depression year in Florida, '28--the Depression hit Florida earlier--and I worked four years, wholesale drug house, office boy and then bookkeeper, and saved up enough money to go to college, University of Florida, but only enough for three years, so I had to go through in three years, in mathematics. Then I spent two years as a teaching assistant getting a master's, went to the University of Wisconsin for a doctor's, and taught at Florida. In the war years, I was a physicist for the Navy, by virtue of the Civil Service Commission, my only claim to being a physicist, at Taylor Model Basin, Bureau of Ships, and then taught at the University of Florida, assistant professor of mathematics, got a job at RAND and moved in '49 which would be, I guess, the second year in which RAND was a private corporation as opposed to a Douglas project, which it began in 1 46. I got invited to RAND because a couple of friends whom I'd known at Florida were here, Ed Quade, Hal Germond. Quade was living in the Palisades. Collins: Let me just quickly ask, what were your areas of interest in mathematics in graduate school? Specht-2 Specht: Applied math, which is somewhere in between engineering and mathematics. Collins: Did this involve you in taking engineering type courses? Specht: No. The closest I've come to engineering, I taught engineering at UCLA briefly, linear systems, which is more nearly mathematics than it is engineering, for that matter. Collins: To move on to the next period when you were with the Navy, what was the nature of your activity as a physicist? Were you doing applied mathematics problems? Specht: Yes. The Model Basin, as you may know, which is out past the end of the streetcar line 20 which runs along the river to Cabin John and back, was created because the Navy was paying large amounts of money for designing ships that would go faster than the specifications in the contract. It was to their interest to be better predictors, and they built a towing basin in which they would tow models and measure drag and get the wave lines on the side, and the rails had to be curved to fit the curvature of the earth, because over a mile or whatever the length was if it's just a few inches, the model has been lifted a few inches out of water. So for that reason you had to have that precision which you would not otherwise have expected. But then at the time of the war they were doing all kinds of work for the Navy, physicists, and mathematicians and Jesse Ormondroyd of the University of Michigan, a first-rate mechanical engineer, headed the engineering group, a good man, and I've forgotten whatever I did useful. Maybe nothing. Collins: I just wanted to get the flavor of the activity. In the immediate postwar period, what were you thinking about in terms of what you might do with your career? You said you went back to the university. Specht: I probably didn't know. Well, I went from there to the University of Wisconsin to teach. I probably never was well enough organized to plan ahead, think ahead and so on. As today, you know: one year at a time. Collins: But academic life in some sense was attractive to you. Specht: When I went to Wisconsin as a graduate student, I wanted to combine math and physics, and they suggested I forget about math and enter physics. They didn't mean that as a compliment, you understand. And so I took the hint and just studied mathematics. I never did learn any physics, but it has always been attractive to me. Collins: Do you recall what your dissertation topic was on at Wisconsin? Specht-3 Specht: Something in elasticity, strength of metal beams, which was Sokolnikov•s specialty. When I was teaching there I had only one doctoral student who did his dissertation under me and he did better on it than I could have, so, good man. Collins: So how did you first become aware of RAND and what attracted you to the possibility? Specht: I think I'd never heard of it until I had letters from Quade and Germond who were already here, whom I'd known at Florida, and they described it in glowing terms, and I came out as a visitor to interview or be interviewed. Collins: By Quade and Germond? Specht: No, it would be by John Williams, who was one of the world's unique people. Collins: Do you recall anything about that initial exposure to RAND? Specht: Not really. No. This was before the current building, of course. They were down on 4th and Broadway in Santa Monica. The people, of those, those I do recall, and there were some weird and wonderful characters, but now I'm not sure they were there the day I came in but later. Women from the very beginning, there were very few but very gifted women. If you look at the RAND "Index of Selected Publications, 1946-1962 11 (the unclassified publications) you will find a number of women represented--Selma Arrow, Elsa Bernaut, Bernice Brown, Janet Chapman, Leola Cutler, Alice Hsieh, Hilde Kallmann, Bella Kotkin, and Ruth Wagner, for example. Harriet Kagiwada came to RAND in 1961, with a Master's degree in optics to work as a programmer for Dick Bellman. She went on to do important research in automatic control, radiative transfer, mathematical biology, and numerical methods. As a result of this work at RAND she was given a PhD degree in astrophysics by Kyoto University. And Harriet didn't speak a word of Japanese. consultant Margaret Meade wrote one of the early RAND books, Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority, An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character (McGraw-Hill, 1951). Nancy Nimitz, the admiral's daughter, and who now lives on a hilltop in Topanga, was writing on Soviet economics and agriculture, and, more recently, Soviet research and development. When Harry Rowen came in as president of RAND in 1967 the number of women increased markedly, but mostly at the--not quite scutwork level, but as research assistants and the like. When Don Rice became president in 1972 the number of senior women increased markedly. An economist friend of mine said I was wrong in saying that they were senior women because he said that most Specht-4 of them were at the level of beginning PhD's, but I argued since only forty percent or there-abouts of the professional staff have PhD's, that's senior enough, you know, not to quibble.
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