On August 4, I’ll head up to Woods Hole for the first of a series of extended visits that will continue over the next five years of my editorship of The Biological Bulletin (www.biobull.org). This is an interesting scientific homecoming for me–I conducted my first experiment (an impalement of a Hermissenda Type B photoreceptor) there in 1978–which is quite a long time ago, even for me.
I arrived in Woods Hole, fresh from a bachelors degree in Chemistry from Amherst College and a summer in DC, where I had interned for the New England congressional delegation. After a summer of policy related activities, I have to say I was very skeptical of how much I would enjoy actual experimental biology, particularly because, at least on the map, Woods Hole looked like it was at the very end of the planet (relative at least to the US Capitol Building where I had been working). But arriving on a beautiful early Fall day, coming around the famous bend in the road the reveals the Village, I remember very specifically becoming optimistic that maybe this would be a good experience.
It was, of course. There was an invertebrate zoology course with collection trips on Woods Hole’s famous research vessel, the A.E. Verrill (which was called affectionately by students the “Vomitin’ Verrill”), the library that in those days had wide open stacks 24/7 365, and the electrode-pullers that were so primitive as to induce superstitious behaviors in all of us trying to pull the perfect glass micropipette electrode. At least one of our regular scientific visitors to Krasnow was there with me–we were both initiating our training prior to heading off to graduate school. And I know he remembers those heady days also very vividly.
Well, enough reminiscing. I do hope that, for those of you who haven’t been there, you get some feeling for the affection that many of us in science feel for the place. I’ve returned many times since those first days in the late ’70’s, but never before in a position to pay back to the place, some of what I think I owe to it for making science come alive to me.
Jim
Discoverers and Discoveries 