REVISED

I moved to Cornell in 1967, when I was 26 years old. I had the image of a university professor in a rural atmosphere, similar to Amherst College, which is in a small town. Cornell was a beautiful university in what looked like a lovely small town in Ithaca, New York, and I liked it. I had considered many other universities and had actually interviewed and been offered jobs at several other excellent places. Cornell had just received a big Ford Foundation grant, and was building a new building with lots of new lab space. Cornell had money to support assistant professors at the time. Rosalie and I had two lovely young daughters, Julia and Jennifer, and Ithaca looked like a nice place to bring up a family.

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.