REVISED

I seem to remember calling Jim and saying that the three of us were thinking of spending a sabbatical together and he thought it was a good idea. Davenport at that time was empty in the wintertime, so that worked out perfectly well. We also wrote an NSF grant, which we got to support, we had a technician, so it was an exciting year in the sense that all of us were dedicated teachers, but were tired of teaching for a while. It was a good respite and having two smart colleagues share a lab with you was really good. The other thing was, at that time you could not buy restriction enzymes. You had to make them yourself. In order to make the yeast library, we needed restriction enzymes. What we had to do was somehow get restriction enzymes, and Rich Roberts purified them in his lab. I was very friendly with Rich Roberts' technician, Phyllis Myers, and she gave me little bits when they were purifying restriction enzymes. She gave me a little bit of whichever restriction enzyme I needed. So that was part of the pleasure of being at Cold Spring Harbor; there was a lot of interaction between laboratories. I'm not sure if Rich Roberts knew that his technician gave me restriction enzymes, but it certainly accelerated our research.

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.