REVISED

I grew up on Long Island, the eldest of four children. My mother was a college graduate but, like most women at the time, she was a homemaker. She excelled in sewing and cooking and was a fabulous cook. Her Jewish recipes were delicious, and she handed them down to my wife, Rosalie. My father was a doctor and was the dominant influence in my family. Like him, both of my brothers became doctors, and my sister became a psychologist. My father was a general practitioner of the old type; he made house calls and had office hours several nights a week. He took phone calls from patients at the dinner table, so we talked about medicine and science a lot every night during family dinners. My father was a strong personality and had enormous influence on us. He wanted me to become a doctor, so, when I went to college, I thought that's the course I would pursue. At that time for the first two years Amherst College had a core curriculum required of all undergraduates with calculus and physics so I didn’t have much choice.

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.