REVISED

I think the yeast course was like the gospel, spreading the word that here's a new organism you can work on where it's an unexplored territory. Perhaps more important our CSH students seeded many universities across the country with terrific scientists who were energized to work on yeast. at last count, three Nobel Prize winners and 30 members of the National Academy of Science who were former students in the CSH yeast course.

Cultural contributions of the course were what it means to be a member of the yeast community: sharing reagents, careful genetic analysis, sharing strains and reagents so that they are generally available for people. In addition David Botstein and I began the first annual CSH Yeast Meeting in 1974, which put yeast on the international map.

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.