George Rathmann Interview (page: 4 / 9) Founding Chairman, Amgen	Print Interview

You mentioned growing a gardenia tree in high school. How did that come about?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. George Rathmann: I took care of the greenhouse in the school, and I took care of the garden in connection with the science teacher. But we just happened to see that you could buy a gardenia tree for $5, and we made the quick business calculation that if you could sell gardenias for 50 cents apiece, you certainly were going to get more than 10 gardenias off this tree, and it would be a worthwhile business. So a friend and I bought the gardenia tree, and then we decided to sell the gardenias. We didn't do all that well on the sale, but we certainly enjoyed giving them away. What actually happened was we approached my wife-to-be with a gardenia, rapped on the door of her house and said, "Do you know we've got a gardenia here?" and she was really quite impressed until we said, "It's 50 cents." That was a heartbreak time. We left her with a gardenia anyway. So we became a philanthropic organization instead of a profit-making organization. But it was fun. Milwaukee is not a good place for a gardenia tree. It lasts one year. If you don't take it in and have good luck inside, then you've got to buy another one next year because the winters are too tough for gardenias.

Was she appalled that you asked her to pay, or did she forgive you once you gave it to her for free?

George Rathmann: She's never forgiven me, no. She obviously thought it was pretty funny, and we were the topic of conversation with many friends after that. "They actually came to my house and wanted me to buy the gardenia, can you believe that?"

Was that your first company?

George Rathmann: That's right, our first business enterprise. Yeah, I really hate to think what it might have predicted: total failure.

You say were always interested in medicine, but you ended up with your Bachelor's, Master's and Ph.D. all in chemistry. How did that come about?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. George Rathmann: One of the influences of the professors at Northwestern was to encourage me. I really wanted to be a pre-med, but my professor advisor at that time redirected me to physical chemistry. He said, "Oh, you're so good at physical chemistry, and medical school is just a lot of memory, a lot of memory." So he really pushed me into Princeton, which was his alma mater, by the way. So it was hardly an objective set of advice, but Princeton was a wonderful, wonderful school. I was entranced by the idea that I was only a few blocks away from Einstein, and he was there. And I did meet him, and it was something that was important to me in going to Princeton, that Einstein himself was there.

What was your impression of him?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. George Rathmann: The impression I had was based on his reputation, but I just marveled and wondered, in wonderment at this brilliant individual. The time that I was there was the last few years of his life. He was not an active participant in the symposia that I happened to see him at. He would be there. He'd come in. He wore kind of a smock, and he would come in and sit near the rear. And I never heard him say anything, but everybody was aware he was there. There were others at Princeton who were absolutely spectacular in their ability to analyze a new symposium speaker or a new colloquium discussion. And from nowhere they knew how to probe and dig into the actual core of the subject and make very insightful comments. It was an exciting place to go to school. But no, Einstein never made any comments as long as I knew him and as long as I saw him. And I, at most, probably saw him half a dozen times. He would frequently show up for the physics symposium, the mathematics symposia. And he would be there, but that was it.

When you saw that he was named "Person of the Century" by TIME magazine, did you think that was appropriate?

George Rathmann: Oh, yeah. I have to think, because it chokes me up a bit. The marvel of his brain and the contributions that he made exploiting that. When you're a reasonable scientist, and I was certainly not anything on that scale, but there's a level of appreciation that just dazzles, because you realize how far beyond what you ordinarily are doing in your thought process he was. And how this all comes about! This whole conference deals with this issue of how does someone move from this and that environment and this and that experience. Certainly genes are in the game. There's no doubt about it. He must have had incredible genes. But a patent clerk -- in a patent office --deciding to understand the creation of the universe?

Back to your childhood a little bit. You say you had an older brother. Where were you in the overall birth order?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. George Rathmann: I was the last one. You know, there's certain predictions people love to make, and I don't know how valid they are. I think it's a huge advantage to be the last one. You've got brothers and sisters that are educating you from the first minute you're on the planet, and I had that benefit, absolutely. I had several parents and my older brothers and sisters. I was way late. I mean, my sisters were 14 and 15 years older than I was. My brother was seven-and-a-half years older. And I was being groomed for being a genius from the time I was two years old. They were all thinking they could pump me full of information that, if I could retain it, they'd have the fun of helping me learn faster than anybody around. So that was a huge benefit, being the last in the family. You get a lot of other advantages too. I think your parents are more mellow, and there's a whole bunch of nice things. So I think it's a very comfortable place to be. We notice in our own family -- we have five children -- and everybody feels like the youngest got the best deal.

What do you think of the idea that the younger siblings tend to be the more creative ones, if not outright rebellious?

George Rathmann: It certainly wasn't true with me. I was so orthodox it hurts. I was the person that went all the way through high school being despised by my classmates without realizing it, because I would carry on a dialogue with the teachers ad nauseam because I was so eager to make sure I pleased all the teachers as much as I possibly could. So I was not rebellious. My brother, who was the third in the family, but he quite a lot older than I -- and there's some corrections they take when there's a big gap in the family -- he was the rebellious member of the family, no question about it. Not me. I was docile, orthodox and a heck of a conformist.

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