REVISED

Freeport was a small town on the south shore of Long Island directly south of Cold Spring Harbor. Freeport High, the only high school in town wasn’t very challenging so I got my intellectual stimulation from my friends. Harold Varmus and I lived about three blocks from each other and I followed him to Amherst College. Surprisingly, given the poor preparation in the high school many of my classmates ultimately became very well-known scientists. Harold Varmus won the Nobel Prize, and my closest friend, Toby Berger, one of the smartest people I have ever met, received many honors in the field of information theory, most notably the Shannon Prize, which is the highest award in that field. Toby and I were very close. From 4th grade on, Toby and I did almost everything together. We played basketball and went fishing together. I lived in Freeport right near Jones Beach and my parents had a small boat, so Toby and I fished off my parents’ boat. Toby and I would challenge each other with math problems and, I recall the challenge of who could solve them more rapidly. Toby’s brother, who was two years older and became a mathematician at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratories taught us calculus. He confronted us with all sorts of mathematical problems so despite the poor high school we got a good education from friends.

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.