Norman Guinasso Interview Essay

Norman Guinasso was a promising scholar when he confirmed his passion for math and science, and eventually oceanography. However, the real seeds to his eventual career were sown as early as second grade when he fell in love with numeric problem solving. He went on to take physics and advanced chemistry in high school, dedicating himself to doing what he enjoyed. At the time, in 1957, the Russians had just launched the first man-made satellite, Sputnik, to orbit around the earth, causing great concern and fear among Americans. Although this appeared to be a problematic event, it actually opened up a world of new opportunities for the scientific community. I decided to interview Dr. Norman Guinasso because he is a respected oceanographer with many career achievements. Dr. Guinasso was the director of the Geochemical and Environmental Research Group and an

The time period encouraged scientific expansion, which helped enable Norman to approach his work in a fearless, explorative manner. Before my interview, I imagined Norman might have had to go through numerous obstacles in order to achieve his success, but during the interview he informed me that wasn't the case; He said, “I had a very easy life, as an oceanographer, I could do what I wanted to do. There wasn’t a lot of pressure on me to do a lot of things. My whole life I studied what I wanted to study and did what I wanted to do.” Norman’s ethnicity and gender allowed him to succeed with little conflict, as being a white male in the time period, he was at an evident advantage. However, as a scientist, it appears to me that he was more comfortable with scientific ideas and exploration than he was with inter-personal relationships. I can easily imagine his preference to partake in a vast underworld of