Center for Humanities & History of Modern Biology

New Year’s is not only a time to look ahead, but it's also a time to look back and honor those that have enriched our institution. At the close of this year, we would like to honor Dr. Waclaw Szybalski, world-renowned molecular biologist and CSHL alumnus. Dr. Szybalski’s substantial gift to the Library & Archives enabled the essential renovation and expansion of the Carnegie Building in 2010.

Karl Maramorosch and Waclaw Szybalski in Cold Spring Harbor, summer of 1951 (Courtesy of the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia Collection)

This ghostly photograph is from 1899 and is part of a scrapbook depicting Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory that was made by Harry Perkins. Harry Perkins, a native Vermonter born in 1877, came under the influence of Charles Davenport and was active in the American Eugenics Society. Harry Perkins gave the scrapbook to Ada Watterson Yerkes, who took a summer course at Cold Spring Harbor. In 1966, Ada’s daughter Roberta Watterson Yerkes donated the scrapbook to the Laboratory.

The annual antiques fair held in Cold Spring Harbor Village in September draws many people, including lab employees. This year one lab employee purchased and so kindly donated to the archives a postcard she spotted at the fair. This postcard contains a photograph captioned “Carnegie Building, Cold Spring Harbor, L.I.” The Carnegie Building still exists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as the Carnegie Library. The Carnegie Building was the first research laboratory erected by the Carnegie Institution’s Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor in 1905. On the verso of this picture postcard is a message to Dr. R.A. Gortner at University Farms, St. Paul Minn. The sender’s message:

Margaret Jean Mitchell Watson, ca. 1920

James D. Watson’s mother, Margaret Jean Mitchell Watson, travelled to Cambridge, England in June of 1952 to visit her son and also her daughter, Betty, who was staying with Jim...

Barbara McClintock in the cornfield at CSHL, ca. 1950s

Barbara McClintock excelled at a time when there were very few women in science. She faced discrimination throughout her studies and work, such as being asked to sit outside the door while the men discussed her experimental results. She couldn’t understand why women and men couldn’t have better relationships and was so perplexed by it, that she believed there must be a biological reason behind it (Nancy Hopkins, Oral History).

I came across this clipping in Sydney Brenner’s Collection. It is a newspaper clipping from the May 10th, 1978, "Daily Camera," about Jean Watson, a Nursing Professor in Colorado. This clipping features a photograph of “Jean Watson;" however, this photograph is not of Jean Watson, but is actually of James D. Watson.

Besides a good laugh and probably some embarrassment for Jean Watson of Boulder, Colorado, this article serves as a reminder of the importance of checking primary resources and conducting research on your own. You can’t trust everything you read; even the professionals get things wrong sometimes.

Witkin and A.H. Sparrow at the 1947 CSH Symposium

The following is another post in our series highlighting the collections that are being processed through the NHPRC Basic Processing Grant.

The following is another post in our series highlighting the collections that are being processed through the NHPRC Basic Processing Grant.

Last Friday famed molecular biologist Francois Jacob passed away.  Jacob, along with Andrew Lwoff and Jacques Monod, was awarded the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for identifying messenger RNA and their work on gene regulation.  This research was conducted during the golden age of molecular biology--the period from the late 1940s until the early 1960s when our understanding of genetics grew leaps and bounds.  Jacob described the tight-knit community of scientists at the time in an oral history interview for Web of Stories:

The following is another post in our series highlighting the collections that are being processed through the NHPRC Basic Processing Grant.

The Cold Spring Harbor Map and Blueprint Collection consists of topographical maps, architectural drawings, pencil drawings, pencil sketches, and blue prints of the grounds and buildings over the course of 140 years.

In 1976, Charles Sammis Robertson, who lived in Lloyd Harbor, about 5 miles from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, gave his estate on Banbury Lane, together with an endowment for its upkeep, to the Cold Spring Harbor Lab for use as a conference center.  This postcard, incorporating a photo taken by R. Meurer, captures the Charles Sammis Robertson House looking towards Coopers Bluff.

Poem by Richard O. Roblin III, who was a student of James D. Watson at Harvard University in the mid to late 1960s.

Digitized as part of the "Codebreakers: Makers of Modern Genetics" project.