REVISED

In 1981 I had moved to the Whitehead Institute at MIT. I liked to fish and had bought a beachfront house on Vineyard Sound on Cape Cod. For me to give up three weeks of fishing to teach the course was no longer attractive. I discussed it with Jim Watson and I recommended excellent young scientists from my lab, such as Mark Rose, Fred Winston, and Chris Kaiser from David Botstein’s lab, to teach the course. We knew we were handing it off to people who would carry on the tradition of excellence.

Gerald Fink, geneticist, changed the field of molecular yeast biology. He is a professor of genetics at MIT, a founding member of both the Whitehead Institute and the American Cancer Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1981). After receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University, he was a part of the Cornell faculty for fifteen years and also served as president of the Genetics Society of America.

In 1976, Fink’s lab succeeded in performing yeast transformation. Gerald Fink currently researches baker's yeast and explores critical pathways in cell growth and metabolism; applications include cancer research and the development of new anti-fungal drugs. He also directs a plant research group heralded for new insights into root growth and salt metabolism.

Although Fink grew up on Long Island, it was not until he attended the 1966 Symposium that he visited Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1970, he began teaching the CSHL course on yeast molecular biology and continued doing so for 17 years. In 1999, he received the first honorary doctorate awarded by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.