REVISED

When I moved to Cornell, I had a wife and two young daughters. I didn't think too much about the work/life dichotomy that you hear about now. For many years, I worked seven days a week, but I always came home for dinner with the family every night, then went back to the lab at night and worked until after midnight. I was fortunate to have a wife, a life partner, who understood the dedication that outstanding science required as well as my drive to succeed. Perhaps her training and performance as professional dancer gave her the insight into the commitment that is required to become a professional. All of my training was done while we had two children, who she looked after during the day while I was at the lab. Once they were in school she went back to school and got a graduate degree from Harvard and a university faculty position. We made sure that we had a babysitter every Saturday night, which made a special time for us to enjoy each other. (I guess today they would call that “date night”.) If you don’t have companionship of someone with her insight I don’t see how it will work out. We’ve been happily married for 63 years with the same mutual support.

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.