REVISED

First, I was appointed Professor of Genetics at MIT and was the first Founding Member of the Whitehead Institute in 1981. David Baltimore was the Director for the first eight years of the Whitehead Institute of Biomedical Research. I second was Director of the Whitehead Institute from 1990 to 2001. The question is: Why did I accept the position of Director of the Whitehead Institute? I thought it would give me the opportunity to foster young people's careers. One of the things we had at the Whitehead was money to support young scientists in the Whitehead Fellows Program. And so, this offered lots of opportunities. We had a director's fund so I could do things, like I started a high school program where each week high school science teachers from Boston high schools came for lectures and a dinner with postdocs and grad students. This program which still exists gives the high school teachers an opportunity to hear what is going on at the forefront of science. The most important challenge was to increase the size of the Whitehead to accommodate the burgeoning programs especially the Human Genome Project. To do this I had to raise the money which mean I had to organize a capital campaign and raised the money for this addition of to the building.

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.