Dear Abe:
It is unimagable for you to be almost 95, as you were much younger when we first met about 50 years ago. I recall your university pathway through the American Midwest, from the University of Illinois (where you were influenced by Martha Baylor, who later was responsible for seducing me to a lifetime of molecular microbiology) and later to Manhattan (where if I recall correctly you and Gordon Lark also encouraged me) and from Manhattan you moved to Columbia both west of the Mississippi and not in NYC. We interacted during my 20 years at Washington University (when I was young!).
Congratulations. Salmonella typhimurium LT2 is one of my favorite bacteria. [It was renamed confusingly from work of Peter Reeves in Sydney Australia another of your homes in an earlier time.] This wonderful occasion brings back another Missouri memory: when I started working with S. typhimurium LT2 at WashU in 1966, the mouse people (in particular Florence Moog) expressed fear that I would spread mouse typhoid through their animal colony. You have stayed with LT2 with many changes in emphasis of interest.
In this day when there is strong pressure on young people to do translational research, it is worthwhile to educate them on the importance of chasing their dreams. Two earlier Mizzou geneticists who did that come to mind, Barbara McClintock and Frank Stahl, neither of whom was appreciated or stayed long at Mizzou.
Abe, you were a model also for concerned hands-on human administration, mostly in your Division of Biological Sciences and later (after what some called retirement) at the Cancer Research Center. Before I came to Chicago in 1986 as Head of the UIC Department of Microbiology and Immunology, I drove one day to Mizzou to gain wisdom and advice from you and from Richard Finkelstein (another Gram negative bacterial guy) in your Department of Microbiology.
As you know, I have always been long-winded, but I follow you now at 78 in another manner: I come to UIC (more office than lab, sadly; the lab is still better) 7 days a week and I send this on a Sunday afternoon. But I need to survive for another 17 years and still come in for useful work each day. Life of molecular microbiology has been joyful for more than half a century and we have been lucky to be around and to participate in small ways during all that time. And it continues to change in amazing ways. For example, I think I read last week of a proposal to use the bacterial CRISPR knockout system to target and eliminate chromosome-integrated HIV. It is a long shot; but a good one. CRISPR certainly should be used in the Mizzou Cancer Research Center in still other ways.
I hope soon that we get a chance to visit you and Joan in Columbia. In a month I will be close by, as my youngest kid drags his aged father along on a Clean the Merrimac River canoeing weekend about ½ way between St. Louis and Columbia. However, on your 95th birthday in September, Le and I will be in transit to St. Petersburg (maybe flying over Warsaw but avoiding Ukrainian airspace) followed by 2 weeks teaching modern molecular microbiology in Siberia.
Keep working! It is more fun than anything else.
Simon Silver
It is unimagable for you to be almost 95, as you were much younger when we first met about 50 years ago. I recall your university pathway through the American Midwest, from the University of Illinois (where you were influenced by Martha Baylor, who later was responsible for seducing me to a lifetime of molecular microbiology) and later to Manhattan (where if I recall correctly you and Gordon Lark also encouraged me) and from Manhattan you moved to Columbia both west of the Mississippi and not in NYC. We interacted during my 20 years at Washington University (when I was young!).
Congratulations. Salmonella typhimurium LT2 is one of my favorite bacteria. [It was renamed confusingly from work of Peter Reeves in Sydney Australia another of your homes in an earlier time.] This wonderful occasion brings back another Missouri memory: when I started working with S. typhimurium LT2 at WashU in 1966, the mouse people (in particular Florence Moog) expressed fear that I would spread mouse typhoid through their animal colony. You have stayed with LT2 with many changes in emphasis of interest.
In this day when there is strong pressure on young people to do translational research, it is worthwhile to educate them on the importance of chasing their dreams. Two earlier Mizzou geneticists who did that come to mind, Barbara McClintock and Frank Stahl, neither of whom was appreciated or stayed long at Mizzou.
Abe, you were a model also for concerned hands-on human administration, mostly in your Division of Biological Sciences and later (after what some called retirement) at the Cancer Research Center. Before I came to Chicago in 1986 as Head of the UIC Department of Microbiology and Immunology, I drove one day to Mizzou to gain wisdom and advice from you and from Richard Finkelstein (another Gram negative bacterial guy) in your Department of Microbiology.
As you know, I have always been long-winded, but I follow you now at 78 in another manner: I come to UIC (more office than lab, sadly; the lab is still better) 7 days a week and I send this on a Sunday afternoon. But I need to survive for another 17 years and still come in for useful work each day. Life of molecular microbiology has been joyful for more than half a century and we have been lucky to be around and to participate in small ways during all that time. And it continues to change in amazing ways. For example, I think I read last week of a proposal to use the bacterial CRISPR knockout system to target and eliminate chromosome-integrated HIV. It is a long shot; but a good one. CRISPR certainly should be used in the Mizzou Cancer Research Center in still other ways.
I hope soon that we get a chance to visit you and Joan in Columbia. In a month I will be close by, as my youngest kid drags his aged father along on a Clean the Merrimac River canoeing weekend about ½ way between St. Louis and Columbia. However, on your 95th birthday in September, Le and I will be in transit to St. Petersburg (maybe flying over Warsaw but avoiding Ukrainian airspace) followed by 2 weeks teaching modern molecular microbiology in Siberia.
Keep working! It is more fun than anything else.
Simon Silver