REVISED

The Yeast Course changed the course of science in many ways. It seeded many universities with yeast labs at major universities. And there was a population of scientists, all of whom were communicating with each other. They all got strains from Cold Spring Harbor from the course. We gave each student a little box which contained the major strains they had used. And so, there was this collaborative sense that started at Cold Spring Harbor with the course and that I think is missing from many fields. Some of my colleagues say they wish the cancer field were like this. None of this would've happened without the Yeast Course because it spread interest in this one organism. People from many different areas, including pharmaceuticals, ended up working on this organism. I just read recently that the latest successes with the potential malaria vaccine are again being made in yeast. So, I think it's difficult to overestimate the importance of the Yeast Course because it wasn't just the people who took it. It was their students, the next generation, and also the potential for using yeast for doing many things that one might not have expected otherwise.

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.