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The Deborah Ross Interview: Sex and the single chemist
Independent, The (London), Oct 15, 2001 by Deborah Ross
Do you remember the Nazis? "Oh, yes. Yes! And when I came to America I had a phobia, like most Jewish refugees. `Are you Jewish?' someone would ask, and I'd worry they had an anti-Semitic agenda. I didn't hide the fact I was Jewish, or a refugee, but I did not advertise it. In Vienna, the Nazis put up a poster showing a smiling kid with a hooked nose. `Kill The Jews', the poster said. And then years later, when I was passing a news-stand in America I saw Mad magazine, with the picture of the smiling kid on the front, and I thought, that's the same kid! Of course it wasn't, but I started having a phobia about walking past news-stands where the magazine was on display. I saw anti-Semitism where it did not exist. Even now, my wife finds it amusing when I say: `Do you think this is too Jewish?' "
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His mother did not settle well in America. "She was a typical, dissatisfied European refugee." It was hard for him, too. It's not like they'd ever been a religious family. They were, in fact, more Austrian than Jewish. "So when we were kicked out, we had no religion to fall back on. We were totally naked." So did you use work, and achievement, to re-establish a certain identity for yourself? Here are my chemistry achievements? This is who I am? "Absolutely. Absolutely." What do you think collecting art says about you? "I think anyone who collects anything is trying to fill a certain void." And yours is? "Perhaps I have emotional blank walls I wish to adorn and embellish."
His ranch in California is also home to the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, which offers patronage to struggling artists, as well as a community in which to work. He set this up in memory of his daughter from his second marriage, Pamela, an artist who committed suicide in 1978. She took a fistful of pills, then walked off into the forest, where she was found dead some days later. This, of course, is not something a parent can ever recover from. "In the three or four years up to her death, we'd become extremely close. I saw her the day before, when she seemed in a very good mood." How does he account for it? Clinical depression, he says. "She had her ups and downs..." Is depression chemical, do you think? "Oh yes. For sure. People consider Prozac a dirty word, but it's been a life- saving drug in many instances." Still, something decent has come out of it, what with the Artists Program. By filling his own voids he has, ultimately, done nothing but good for others.
It's time to get back to London. Another walk, another train, another footstool set up in an aeroplane aisle. Then a taxi, which drops him first at his swish Maida Vale address. It's very late, but he'll still do another four hours work tonight. "I get 50 e-mails a day, vich I must answer." Tomorrow, it's an interview with BBC TV news at 8am, then an interview with the World Service, then an evening lecture at the Royal Institution. Do you ever get tired? "Only ven I'm bored." He hops up to his front door, with as much energy as he had when we first met at 7.30am. Me, though? I'm absolutely worn out. Tonight, I'll be keeping the light on, that's for sure.
