Waclaw Szybalski on Special Aspects of CSHL
  Waclaw Szybalski     Biography    
Recorded: 11 May 2001

Tradition. Because it’s very few places in the United States go back to 1891. That maybe not so, but it sounds good. But there was tradition, the symposia made the place because it was bringing all people in a beautiful setting all that together. And food was sometime horrible. I remember there was a year where everybody was getting only getting toast for dinner and for lunch and one slice of tomato. So, or something, a piece of cheese or slice of tomato. Its alright, I don’t mind that some people who complaining about things like that. So when Jim came, he said food has to be good. His idea was that you had to make a high price. Because we paid before $10, $20 for symposium, food included. Demerec ran it very cheaply.

Waclaw Szybalski is an authority on molecular biology, genetics and microbiology. He earned his Ph.D. at the Gdansk Institute of Technology in Poland and joined the University of Wisconsin in the mid-1950s where he is now Professor Emeritus of Oncology in the McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research.

Szybalski is known for the many significant contributions he has made throughout his career, beginning with his studies on mutagenesis and continuing through his contributions to genomics. He was among the first to formulate the concept of multi-drug antibiotic therapy.

Szybalski has also participated in the Human Genome Project.

Szybalski is the founder and head of many editorial boards including that of the journal Gene.

A long-time meeting and course participant at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Szybalski was a friend and contemporary of many pioneers in the field of genetics, including Alfred Hershey, Martha Chase, Max Delbrück, and Barbara McClintock.