A Lovely Event

by Elio

The Amer­i­can So­ci­ety for Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy has des­ig­nated the Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ries on New York's Long Is­land as a Mile­stone in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy site. This is the ASM's way of rec­og­niz­ing lo­ca­tions where im­por­tant mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal his­tory was made. For pre­vi­ous sites so hon­ored click here. Cold Spring Har­bor has in fact been called the Mecca for mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy (read mol­e­c­u­lar mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy, as ini­tially the two were one and the same) and here's why. For a short video of the ded­i­ca­tion cer­e­mony, click here.

The Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­to­ries seen from the cove. Source

The early days of mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy, say from the late 1940s un­til about 1965, had a magic qual­ity that seems al­most quaint now. The founders of this sci­ence were ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily com­mu­nica­tive and col­le­gial. True, this was a time when abun­dant low-hang­ing fruits were ripe for the pick­ing, plenty for all com­ers. But per­sonal in­ter­ests counted for lit­tle. Every­body told every­body else what they were do­ing, and as soon as pos­si­ble. These be­ing pre-in­ter­net days, they de­vised a new means of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the "preprint." Peo­ple ha­bit­u­ally mimeo­graphed (this be­ing be­fore copy­ing ma­chines) their pa­pers at the same time they sub­mit­ted them to a jour­nal, and sent around copies for all to read.

These early mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­o­gists, hud­dled around the T‑phages of E. coli, had a great urge to get to­gether. Every sum­mer they as­sem­bled at Cold Spring Har­bor. They would spend a week to­gether, giv­ing talks, end­lessly scrib­bling on black­boards, telling each other with great in­ten­sity what they were do­ing and, with even greater in­ten­sity, what they thought of what every­body else was do­ing. The pa­pers pre­sented each sum­mer were col­lected and pub­lished in the fa­mous CSH Sym­posia on Quan­ti­ta­tive Bi­ol­ogy. One would have to go back to the early days of mod­ern physics, or per­haps a few thou­sand years ear­lier to Plato's Acad­emy, to find this same type of in­tense, open, in­ter­per­sonal in­ter­ac­tion where ideas were gen­er­ated and freely shared. With an eye to­wards the fu­ture of their field, in 1945 the group or­ga­nized a course on phage ge­net­ics that brought a steady stream of young in­ves­ti­ga­tors in to join the ini­ti­ated. In time, the course mor­phed into one that in­cluded bac­te­r­ial and ar­chaeal ge­net­ics.

The ASM plaque to be in­stalled at the Cold Spring Har­bor Lab­o­ra­tory. The 1953 photo is of Max Del­bruck (l) and Sal­vador Luria ®. To­gether with Al Her­shey, they re­ceived the No­bel Prize in 1969.

As a grad­u­ate stu­dent, I had the good for­tune to at­tend sev­eral of these gath­er­ings in the 50's. At one in 1953, I heard Jim Wat­son an­nounce the struc­ture of DNA for the first time in the US. I ad­mit to my ever­last­ing shame that I wasn't quite sure what the big fuss was about, be­ing that, at a glance, a he­lix was just an­other shape. Only later did the dou­ble structure's im­pli­ca­tions for DNA repli­ca­tion sink in. But I was cer­tainly swept along by the ex­cite­ment and know that be­ing in at­ten­dance was a trans­for­ma­tive ex­pe­ri­ence. I trea­sured it then and I trea­sure the mem­o­ries now. A vi­gnette: Every­body gath­ered for lunch at out­door ta­bles. On one oc­ca­sion, no sooner had I set down my tray that one of the great fig­ures in mol­e­c­u­lar bi­ol­ogy, Leo Szi­lard, came and sat next to me. He turned to me and said, "Well, young man, are you do­ing some­thing im­por­tant?" And an­other vi­gnette: I was in­vited to give a talk at one of the sym­posia. To my cha­grin, it elicited no ques­tions from the au­di­ence. The con­vener, tak­ing pity on me, turned to Sal­vador Luria and asked him to com­ment. Now Luria had nei­ther much in­ter­est in bac­te­r­ial growth phys­i­ol­ogy, the sub­ject of my re­port, nor, like most of the other no­ta­bles, did he bother with niceties. He said, "Nice sys­tem!" Was there ever fainter praise?

The cel­e­bra­tion of the ASM event was held in con­junc­tion with a yearly course, Bac­te­ria, Ar­chaea, and Phages. Stan­ley Maloy, a for­mer ASM pres­i­dent, un­veiled the plaque and gave one of sev­eral cel­e­bra­tory speeches. Also there for the oc­ca­sion was Pod­cast Mas­ter Vin­cent Racaniello who, along with Maloy, met with Wa­claw Szy­bal­ski (one of the dis­tin­guished fig­ures of the old days) and John Kirby to rem­i­nisce about how this site had ad­vanced the sci­ence and teach­ing of mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy. Their dis­cus­sion was recorded as episode #40 of This Week in Mi­cro­bi­ol­ogy.

All who were ac­tive in those heady days of our sci­ence were greatly in­flu­enced by the go­ings-on at Cold Spring Har­bor. This cel­e­bra­tion is an oc­ca­sion for them to sa­vor the mem­o­ries and for all to re­flect on the glory days of the found­ing of mod­ern Bi­ol­ogy.