Tim D. White Interview (page: 5 / 5) Pioneering Paleoanthropologist	Print Interview

You say you visited the La Brea Tar Pits when you were a child. You must have had parents who believed in this interest of yours, just to get there. Was there encouragement in your family? Or was there disbelief at this level of fascination in a ten-year-old? What were your parents' attitudes during all of this?

Tim White: I think more disbelief.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I can remember a session with my mother at the counselor's office at the high school. Of course, the high school I went to was a little tiny high school, and expectations... let's just say expectations were not terribly high. Most people stayed on the mountain and very few went to college. And those that went to college were warned, before they left to go to college, that it was way too hard and most people flunk out when they get there.

That's what they told you?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Tim White: We were told, "You know, you'd be very lucky to get into the University of California," and "Not many people who get in manage to stay there without flunking out." So all of that of course was in the future, and I went in with my mother to the counselor, and I remember the counselor saying, "Well, what are you interested in?" My grandmother had given me books on dinosaurs. I was fascinated by the old Colbert books, and I said, "I want to do this. I want to study dinosaurs." And both on the part of my mother and particularly the counselor, the answer was -- and I don't think you'd get this answer very much these days -- but in those days it was, "No. No, not really. People don't do that. There must be something more practical you can do. Of course you love natural history...." and so forth. Marine biology was becoming an interesting subject in those days, with the work of a lot of people in undersea vehicles and better accessibility. So I said, "Marine biology." And this was in, I think, junior high school, that this happened. I went on to leave that high school and go to the University of California at Riverside. I entered in a biology major, still thinking that I would go on and become a marine biologist.

While you were still in high school, was there a teacher who encouraged your interest, or a particular experience that inspired or influenced you?

Tim White: I think probably the most influential thing that happened during those years was the discovery of a hominid cranium from Olduvai Gorge, a discovery made by Mary Leakey in 1959, and of course publicized widely by her husband, Louis Leakey, particularly through the arm of the National Geographic magazine. This, was one of the first major discoveries that got substantial worldwide media attention. There I was, in a little junior high and elementary in the mountains of California, but like so many other children around the world, with access to the world through the National Geographic magazine. Those were not days with color television.

Or with the Web, for that matter.

Tim White: That's right. Those magazines came and opened that world to us, and the Geographic has done an outstanding job subsequently, in using all of these other media: film, Web and so forth. But in those days, it opened that possibility to me. I was just fascinated by that. So I think there the influence was very, very strong.

So let's follow you to university. You're a freshman biology major at UC Riverside, a very good university. Did you tremble before this awful prediction of how tough the university was, or did you just jump in and find it was like breathing air?

Tim White: It wasn't any of the above, actually. I arrived, and the people I was in college with were very smart people from very good backgrounds, and since folks were surprised that I managed to stay there without flunking out, it was really okay.

Because people had low expectations of you?

Tim White: Very low expectations, and I found it pretty easy to meet those expectations.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. For the first couple years, I was a biology major, and I got C's and a few D's in chemistry and physics. And then I took my first anthropology class when I was a junior in college, an introductory class. And ended up -- by that time I'd done a lot of archeology -- and the archeology teaching assistant in the class, a graduate student, was telling me things that I knew were not true. So I was able to engage in a debate with a teaching assistant, based on my field experience. And the teaching assistant, I remember saying, "Don't bring that argument in here. You're here to learn from me." At which point I said, "Thank you very much, I don't have that much to learn from you," and I left. I went directly to the professor, who it turns out today, he's a good friend of mine. He's our country's leading radio-carbon dating archeologist, and we've had a great relationship ever since. And he just said, "Come to the lectures. Don't worry about the discussion sections." And that was my introduction to anthropology. And what I did was to add it as a second major.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Let's talk about temperament for a moment. That was kind of a risky thing to do, taking on this individual. Do you find yourself doing that often? I mean, if you hear nonsense, you say so.

Tim White: Yeah. I have a reputation for that.

Didn't you think twice about that?

Tim White: No, not at all. After all, it wasn't a second major at that point, it was just an introductory class. I was doing fine in biology and had no aspirations of a career in anthropology at all. I was taking it as an interest, and I think actually that discussion and those kinds of debates stimulated me to look more deeply into the subject matter, to really ask questions, to be curious about pat answers, and to dig a little deeper. We're very much like journalists, with a much greater time dimension in our pursuit of what happened.

When did you figure out that you could do this full-time, and that there was a future for you in the broader field of anthropology and archeology? How did you get from that introductory course to a life choice?

Tim White: There really never was one.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. I took, as an undergraduate a series of courses that didn't, at first glance, have a lot to do with what I ended up doing. I particularly liked the paleontology classes, and anthropology, as a discipline, often hasn't encouraged folks to go out and take biology, geology, paleontology, and incorporate those things into an anthropology curriculum. I was interested to do all of that, but that left me, by the time I got to the end of my undergraduate career, left with me a couple of majors but not really a clear career path, if you like. At that point I went to the University of Michigan to do graduate school, and found myself in another great environment, with an intersection of museums dealing with geology and paleontology and archeology.

[ Key to Success ] Preparation

You went to Michigan after getting turned down by Berkeley. It worked out for the best, but it must have seemed like quite a setback at the time. How do you cope with disappointments and reversals like that?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Tim White: I think that the graduate school experience, the not getting into graduate school really caused me to stop and say, "Well, wait a minute. If I'm not going to be able to do what I want to do, which is to go and do field work in East Africa, and contribute to this ongoing quest for knowledge of our past, then maybe I'll look at different options." I think the story of all of that though, is that you often don't realize what other options there are. There are multiple pathways to the same objective, and if you carry that passion with you, you'll be able to find those pathways.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

Thank you, Dr. White.

Tim White: You're welcome.

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