REVISED

Norman Giles, a distinguished geneticist from Yale had come to Amherst as an invited speaker, and he encouraged me to apply to Yale’s Graduate School Department of Biology. So, I applied both to The Yale Medical School and The Yale Graduate School---- medical school to please my parents, graduate school because I was interested in doing science. I was accepted at both. Since I was interested in doing science and loved experimental work, I decided to pursue a PhD at The Yale Graduate School Department of Biology---a choice which I am forever grateful. My father was not happy. He tried to convince me to change my decision but to no avail. Even on the day that I passed my PhD qualifying exam and had a wife and daughter, he tried to get my wife to convince me to leave graduate school and go to medical school. Only, many years later, was he partially reconciled with my decision.

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.