REVISED

Many scientists who Jim knew had flirted with yeast as an experimental organism. Jacob had worked with yeast and Sol Spiegelman had worked with yeast, but they worked on it never combining biochemistry and genetics (which our course did). and then went on to work on other organisms. I don't know how Jim got the idea that yeast would be the next thing to work on, other than it was single-celled and easy to manipulate. What I do know is that he wanted the course to be molecular and not a classical genetics course. He made that clear to Fred and me at the beginning, and a molecular approach was consonant with what we thought as well. So it worked out well.

Watson attended many of the Yeast Course lectures as did Max Delbruck. They were very interested in what was going on.

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.