REVISED

Once we discovered that you could transform yeast, we changed the Yeast Course Syllabus dramatically. Now you could put DNA into yeast and isolate any yeast gene and place any gene from any organism into yeast. So DNA technology entered the course. From then on, we had a third scientist, such as Tom Petes or Jim Hicks, to help as the course progressed. Jim Hicks, who had been a postdoc in my lab, moved to Cold Spring Harbor to work on yeast mating-type. Jim Hicks helped perform some of the molecular experiments with our students. And from then on, The Yeast Course impacted laboratories in Switzerland, England, Germany, and other countries. In addition, Jim Hicks then helped form the Cold Spring Harbor Yeast Group, which included Jeff Strathern and Amar Klar.

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.