Daniel Goldin Interview (page: 2 / 6) Space Exploration	Print Interview

Aside from your father, were there any other role models in your life? Were there teachers, or books you read, that particularly influenced you when you were growing up?

Daniel Goldin: My Uncle Joe, my father's brother. He was incredibly dexterous with his hands, and he taught me how to build planes and rockets.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I built my first planes maybe when I was eight, nine years old with my Uncle Joe. And I remember a plane we built. It was about this big. It was made out of balsa wood. It took weeks and weeks and months to build, and we got the Exacto knives and we sanded it. We put it together. You know, it broke, we put it back together again, and then we painted it. It was red and blue. I remember the color. We put an engine on it, hooked up the wires and I started up the engine, and I flew that plane. I got such pleasure out of it. It was so exciting.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

My Uncle Joe is a dreamer. He helped me form images in my mind. To be a good scientist, a good engineer, you have to be able to visualize things, conceptualize it, have a picture in your brain, look at it upside down, inside out, and my Uncle Joe helped me do that.

There's a third person: my grandfather, who taught me how to love. He taught me to look for the positive things in people. Every time I would get frustrated or angry with someone, he always told me, "You've got to look for the positive things." He was an incredible influence on me. I don't know that there's any one book that knocked my socks off, but I love reading books about creative people to see how they conducted their lives. I loved reading about history. I love nonfiction. So I'd read nonfiction about people, and then I'd read science fiction about dreaming.

I think all these things helped make me what I am today, but the driving force in my life was my father, who forced me to be different, who wanted me to have what he couldn't have. He's a first generation American. His mother was placed in New York City by my great-grandfather, who saw the disaster coming in Europe. My great-grandfather had 12 children and he placed them in different cities because he was worried that maybe some of them wouldn't survive. My grandparents, they worked as garment workers. They were piece workers.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. My father graduated college during the Depression, in biology. He wanted to be a scientist and he sorted mail for ten years of his life. There was a rage inside of him and to his credit he transformed that rage of frustration to me to drive me, to tell me to take risk. When I failed he never beat me up, but he got angry at me when I played it safe and he pushed me and he pushed me and he pushed me.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

At 25 years old I finally thanked him. I wasn't angry anymore. I didn't talk to my father in any substantive way from the time I was 16 to 25 because I didn't understand. He wanted me to achieve what he could never achieve.

What made you realize at 25 how much your father had done for you?

Daniel Goldin: I was achieving success and recognition. I found I had an incredible ability to create, to invent. I had always been very self conscious. I was insecure. I never knew whether I'd be able to make a contribution. And there I was in my laboratory doing research, writing papers, and people were listening to me. I was being accepted by the scientific community, the engineering community. I was making a contribution. I didn't quite understand it.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. It struck me - how did I get here? It was like a fog and a cloud and I didn't quite understand it. And, I finally realized my father made me hungry. He made me want to reach and achieve and he didn't allow me to accept mediocrity. He embarrassed me by forcing me to be different. I would squirm from any controversy and then I found myself acting like my father. It was overwhelming. And, over a period of about a half of a year this consciousness came to me, the fog cleared and from that point on we talked. It was incredible.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

And he lived to see it happen.

Daniel Goldin: Yes. He was in the White House.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The President of the United States invited my father and mother, my daughters and my wife, my son-in-law, to the swearing in. And, it was unbelievable. They said, "Bring the family Bible." We had it. My wife took it out. We went for the ceremony. And, when the ceremony was over, my father went over and started touching the President. He just touched him. I got embarrassed, but I said, "Be quiet." The President understood. He had achieved. He had achieved it.

[ Key to Success ] The American Dream

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