REVISED

Soon after the Gatlinburg meeting Jim Watson called me and said, “I’m thinking of having a Yeast Course at Cold Spring Harbor would you be willing to organize it.” This invitation was a real surprise because I had never met Watson. I have a feeling that Matt Meselson must have told Jim that he had heard this interesting talk of mine at the Gatlinburg meeting. And I said, “That sounds like a great idea!” He said the other person he wanted to invite was Fred Sherman, who was a well-known professor at the University of Rochester. And it sounded like a good opportunity to get the virtues of yeast out into the community. Fred Sherman and I met afterwards and agreed that the course would not be a classical genetics course. And, we drew up the design of a 3 weeks course emphasizing the newest technologies. The Molecular Biology of Yeast was the name of the course, which attracted many of the people to take the course.

After the first year that we taught the Yeast Course, and almost every year thereafter for 17 consecutive years, Each year at the end of the course Jim called Fred and me in to his officer to discuss the course. Each year he’d say, “I think this is the last year of the yeast course.” This was Jim's approach to quality control. And I'd say, “Why?” He'd say, “We already have too many people working on yeast” and then I’d say, “You're in charge if you want to end it.” But he didn’t really want to end it. So, what was the point of Jim’s interrogation? This was his way of doing quality control. The point was that he wanted Fred and me to defend the course and see if we still had enthusiasm for teaching it. So I would say, “I don't think that there are too many people, and you'll see how many applicants we get.” And we always got lots of eager applicants. And the course is still being taught more than 40 years later.

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.