REVISED

In 1970, after Watson invited us, and Fred Sherman and I went early to look at Davenport Laboratory, where the course would be taught. Most of the equipment specific for working on yeast wasn't there, so we borrowed equipment from Brooklyn College. Then we realized that there was another problem: Davenport Lab, which was right on the water, was very old and very humid, so when you poured Petri plates, they got contaminated. About half of the 10000 Petri plates poured during the course had to be thrown away because they became contaminated with mold.

Teaching the course was interesting for a number of reasons. First of all, in the first few years of the course, most of the students were older than I was and more senior than I was. Frank Stahl took the course, Clint Ballou, who was Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry at Berkeley and Gottfried Shatz from the Biocentrum in Basel. So, it was unusual in the sense that you had me, a youngster, teaching a course to the seniors in the field, people whom I had admired for years. So we had a remarkable group of students eager to learn. Unlike my academic experience these students didn’t need coaching or tutors to assist them in learning how to study.

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.