REVISED

Since I grew up in Freeport on the South Shore of Long Island, I had heard of Cold Spring Harbor long before I knew that it had anything to do with biology. My first encounter with Cold Spring Harbor scientifically was in 1966, while still in Bruce’s lab at NIH when I attended the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on The Genetic Code. It was a very exciting symposium that featured Francis Crick, Sydney Brenner, and Jacques Monod--- one of the great Cold Spring Harbor Symposia. I was 26 at the time.

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.