REVISED

Late one night a student from the course came to me and said, “They didn’t go to the bar. They’ve all gone to Banbury.” I said, “What do you mean?” Well, they decided tonight they're going to go swimming, they all went skinny dipping at the pool at Banbury. So, my wife Rosalie and I drove over to the campus at Banbury, and there were two state police cruisers parked in the parking lot with their lights flashing. They said, “What's going on here?” I said, “What's the trouble?” And they said, “The neighbors are complaining.” So, I went down to the pool, and the students there were all naked yelping and shrieking. I came back and the police said, “What's going on?” I replied quickly, “Dr. Watson is having a party down there.” And the police said, “Oh. Could you tell them to be a little quieter? The neighbors are complaining.” You can imagine how loud it was because the nearest neighbor was a mile away!

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.