When the work at the Brooklyn Institute's Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor was expanded in 1928 to include research in Biophysics, it accomplished two of Director Reginald Harris’s goals: the integration of other scientific disciplines into biological research at the Lab and the transition to a year-round research institute. Dr. Hugo Frick, an accomplished biophysicist, was appointed as the Lab's first full-time investigator upon the suggestion of Dr. W.J.V. Osterhout, a biophysicist and Bio Lab trustee. The following year, the Walter B. James Memorial Laboratory was built explicitly for the application of physics to biological research.