UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1076
AUERBACH, ROBERT

AUERBACH, ROBERT (1929-)
Professor Emeritus of Zoology
At UW: 1957-

Interviewed: 	2009 (3 sessions)
Interviewer: 	Robert Lange
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	7 hours, 40 minutes

Abstract: In his three February 2010 interviews with Bob Lange, Robert Auerbach details his personal history, training in zoology, and involvement with the University of Wisconsin-Madison from the 1950s to the 2000s. He recounts how his family escaped Nazi Germany in the 1940s and immigrated eventually to the US. From here, he describes key influences in developing his interest and expertise in music and mouse genetics, eventually training with the high-profile genetics department at Columbia. He then discusses the main lines of his research in trypsinization of the kidney, embryonic thymus genetics, and immunology, which eventually led him to UW, where he taught among other things developmental biology. Throughout, Auerbach offers his reflections on such key figures and issues as music and science, T. Dobzhansky, research and publication, the tenure process, university service, teaching philosophy, the functioning of a lab, and the division between researchers and teachers in the zoology department. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Key Words: Berlin, Germany; World War I; Adolf Hitler; World War II; London; New York City; High School of Music and Art (now part of LaGuardia High School); Berea College; Columbia University; Leslie Dunn; Salome Gluecksohn-Welsh; National Science Foundation (NSF); Oak Ridge National Laboratories; Clifford Grobstein; National Institutes of Health (NIH); Lee Russell; technicians; teaching; developmental biology; University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jim Crow; American Cancer Society (ACS); thymus; Judah Folkman; angiogenesis; Harvard; Rockefeller Foundation; University Committee; Charles River Company; “micegate”; zoology department; University Committee.

First Interview Session (February 8, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:21	Question: Talk about your birthplace and family. Answer: Auerbach was born April 12, 1929 in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish lawyer father who served in the German army in World War I (and was thus allowed to practice law even when Jews were increasingly being oppressed). His mother was born in January 1900, went to a very progressive HS, and became a lawyer during a time when women lawyers were virtually unknown.  He reminisced about life during the early Hitler era.

00:06:08	Question: Intellectual life was prized? Answer: Yes; thought the “Jewish life was casual”—they celebrated the high holidays, but also Christmas. He described the family as primarily German, then Jewish. He compared German Jewish population to Orthodox and Eastern Jewry, and explained the importance of this when they moved to America.

00:10:58	Question: Was there science in your family? Answer: None whatsoever—there was music and law in the family.

00:13:05	Question: Education? Answer: He started at German public schools, where he was a good student but had horrible handwriting.  For this reason he became a very skilled typist. He discussed the growing pressures on Jews, even in cosmopolitan Berlin, and the necessity for him to transfer to a school preparing Jews for emigration. He also began taking music lessons from a renown German musician.

00:16:30	Question: Was your family affected by Kristallnacht? Answer: A little earlier than that, they began hearing that Jews were being taken to concentration camps, at which point his father had to flee and hide until they could leave. Because his father was born in former Poland, he was not able to get out, but his mother and the children were able to emigrate to the US. His mother, however, was able to get an exit permit for his father by purchasing airplane tickets to Siam, but going through London.

00:22:11	[no question] He discussed his experience moving to London temporarily. He didn’t remember being frightened, and shared the experience of learning English, going to an English school, receiving support from the US, and learning to shop to make every pence count.

00:27:30	Question: Was your interest in science emerging? Answer: No; he was becoming interested in mathematics. He explained how frustrated it was for other children that he quickly went to the top of his class in math.

00:29:51	[no question] When WWII started in 1940, the British interned the Jewish refugees on the Island of Man (partly to protect them). When he arrived, his father quickly became a kind of “house-father” for a particular German Jewish fraternity in which his father was a member. Follow up: Why intern them? Answer: Because southern England was so close to the German coast and they were little prepared for war, England was afraid if Germany were to invade. “It was almost like protective custody.”

00:34:14	[no question] He discussed his and his sister’s hasty evacuation to separate schools, and reminisced about having no idea where his mother was. He explained again why his father’s visa was the reason they couldn’t go immediately to the US, and discussed their eventual voyage back to London (once they’d obtained visas) and then to the US.

00:40:08	Question: What happened when you got to the US? Answer: He talked about how they had some relatives in NYC who were able to come and meet them. His father entered a correspondence school while they were being supported temporarily by a wealthy relative, and Auerbach chronicled his father’s tortuous path toward getting an accounting job (since émigré lawyers couldn’t practice law in the US). 

00:44:30	[no question] He explained how his parents’ decision to live in NYC was influenced by his grandfather’s situation. He’d been sent to a concentration camp for one day, and due to the political situation in the US, relatives there agreed to support his immigration if he would change his name from Levi (which he initially refused). His grandfather settled in Washington Heights  in NYC.

00:48:45	Question: This was quite traumatic? Answer: Yes; he explained the situation in which they lived in NYC, which was quite a bit poorer than their situation in Germany.  He compared their lifestyle in Germany, where they had house-help, to that of NYC, where his mother worked, tried to spend the family’s money carefully, and did the housework.

00:52:21	[no question] He added some context about the early years in the US, when his father did some legal work arranging Cuban visas for relatives in Germany. This resulted in his entire family getting out of Germany, and then in 1946 he got readmitted to the German bar and was able to fight for restitution money for German Jews. This allowed him to make a good living but required that he travel back to Germany.

00:54:52	Follow up: What was it like to return to Germany? Answer: He described his feelings returning to his former home in 1970 and told an anecdote about how the mentality of older people was to do what was expected without asking questions. He observed that he only felt uncomfortable going to Germany once, when he came face to face with the Nazi way of doing things.

01:01:53	Question: Public School in New York? Answer: He attended public school and skipped two grades there, because he spoke fluent French and was much better at arithmetic than his classmates. He also recounted how he continued to take piano lessons for free in the UK, and when he played a Bach piece for his school, his teachers suggested that he go to the High School of Music and Art, where he attended for his last 3 years.

01:05:47	Follow up: Curriculum at HSMA? Answer: He responded that the faculty taught compressed regular classes and then added 3 classes of music or art. Pianists were required to learn an orchestral instrument. He quipped about having to take oboe and how his daughter took the instrument at UW.

01:08:37	Follow up: Did you like it? Answer: Yes; he said he was perceived as a refugee/ German only in grade school, but at HSMA everyone was traveling to get there. Follow up: Were you attracted to science? Answer: Not at all. Follow up: You were thinking of yourself as a musician? Answer: He wasn’t sure at all.

01:12:12	[no question] He talked about applying to liberal arts colleges, noting that his parents wanted him to get away from NYC if he could and that his sister had gone to Berea College, a Christian liberal arts institution that was interested in helping refugees. He was also accepted at Berea, which was a tuition-free school.

01:16:07	Question: Did your family talk about the death camps in 1946? Answer: The existence of the camps was fairly common knowledge in his family.

01:17:22	Question: Graduation? Answer: He explained how he “parlayed” early graduation (in January) through his knowledge of French and German, and also graduated from Berea early (in 3 ½ years).

01:18:43	Question: Education at Berea? Answer: He explained how part of the “differential economy” at Berea was that each student was require to work, initially in institutional jobs. He also said that he started with a better HS education than the majority of Berea students, and discussed how his interest began to turn to hard science after his father dismissed the option of law. Deciding to become a doctor, he applied to medical schools in the spring of his junior year. But with so many returning veterans, Louisville deferred his entrance by a year.

01:23:50	Question: How big was Berea? Answer: About 1200 students. He explained some of the history of Berea being an integrated black-white student body.  

01:25:03	[no question] In the year between graduating and going to medical school, he decided to go to graduate school for a year in genetics? Follow up: Why genetics? Answer: He explained that it was the biology course he’d taken and he liked it and had a good instructor. He said he applied to the University of Tennessee primarily to stay close to his now-wife, but she encouraged him to apply elsewhere, and he was accepted to Columbia University. 

01:29:30	[no question] He talked about his time at Columbia, which had a number of the most prominent geneticists in the country. Though invited to work in T. Dobzhansky’s lab, he turned that down because he “didn’t want to count fruit flies” and got interested, instead, in mouse genetics.

01:31:37	Question: Talk about Columbia. Answer: He said from 1949-1950, he took 30 credits and got an MA as an insurance policy. He then got married. 

01:32:40	Follow up: Were religious differences an issue? Answer: He responded by telling stories about having to go to church on Sunday as part of being at Berean, being hired to play the chimes, and “letting his Jewishness show” when he played chimes on Sundays. This initially interested his wife in him, though as they got more serious some faculty called her in to warn her away from getting so involved with a Jew. He also shared stories about a letter his mother-in-law wrote his wife reassuring her, and how pleased his parents were when the minister marrying them said the benediction in English, Hebrew and German.

01:41:18	Follow up: So did your parents consider themselves German? Answer: No; they considered themselves American, but were very active in the German community.

01:43:54	Question: Back at Columbia? Answer: After getting married, his wife applied to the NY School of Social Work, though she was denied financial aid because of being married. Thus they took other jobs to pay their way through school. He told anecdotes about some of these jobs and their first apartment.

01:49:11	Question: What’s your course of study? Answer: Working officially with [Leslie] Dunn, famed mouse geneticist, he said he was actually a student of Salome Gluecksohn-Welsh.

01:52:56	[no question] He summarized his dissertation project, which examined and described splotch, a mouse mutation that was lethal. He explained his transplantation studies and also explained why he decided to write his thesis as a manuscript for the Journal of Experimental Zoology. It was one of the shortest theses Columbia ever had.

01:57:27	[no question] He described the years of coursework at Columbia, working with some of the best geneticists of the time. He gave examples of the challenging kinds of questions that formed his preliminary exams, as well as the expectations of classes and labs.

02:04:54	Question: You’re TAing? Answer: Yes; he was teaching zoology to the general studies undergraduates—he explained how he liked these students, who “weren’t rich,” more than any others, and also explained how he learned how to teach by explaining things to his best friend and colleague in college. Follow up: Did performing help? Answer: He said he was sure that helped; performing in music had parallels to teaching. 

02:08:24	[no question] He continued by talking about his last two years of graduate school, during which he had a grant from the National Science Foundation; his wife during this time worked as a social worker at Jewish Family Services.

02:09:47	[no question] Toward the end of his PhD training, as he was thinking about jobs, he applied, among other places, to Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This was partially to avoid the Korea draft and partly because he wanted to work with Lee Russell. 

02:13:34	[no question] He said that he hated every day of it because it wasn’t really experimental. While it was close to his wife’s family (when they had their first child), and he wasn’t going to be drafted, when he suggested to Clifford Grobstein that he do a post-doc with him and Grobstein accepted, he gladly moved to NIH. 

02:20:13	[no question] Regardless of whether he enjoyed the year at Oak Ridge, he said it was a wise decision to take the post-doc, since he learned much about radiation biology, biological indicators of radiation, animal husbandry, and “trade-offs” in military tactical analyses. He said he also learned to work alone, and discussed the pioneering work of Lee Russell. 

02:24:36	End of First Interview Session

Second Interview Session (February 9, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:20	Question: Talk about moving to NIH. Answer: He talked about Clifford Grobstein’s career at NIH, UC-San Diego, and Stanford. His work at NIH was pioneering in terms of the differentiation of cells and the art form of tissue culture.

00:02:42	Follow up: An art form? Answer: He talked about how there was no “catalog” to order cells or tissue; that one needed practical knowledge to grow tissue. This was the exciting part of science for him—before things were easy to do—which led them to reflect on the spirit of adventure and possibility that existed back in the 1950s and 1960s, though this didn’t necessarily produce better science.

00:06:37	[no question] Continuing to talk about the environment of research at the time, he talked about using chicken embryo extract on a daily basis and knowing everyone in the sub-field. He thought this was a net gain for the community and helped him get the job at UW. He explained how going to NIH was a great place for him to get a further education in his field.

00:12:29	Question: When did you go to NIH? Answer: Summer 1955. He talked about living and working at NIH, including vacation time and life in Washington DC (and at Oak Ridge previously).

00:17:07	Question: Grobstein’s lab? Answer: He talked about being charged with “whatever he wanted to do,” including NOT putting Grobstein’s name on publications unless they’d collaborated on the project and paper. This was part of the professional culture then.

00:20:29	Question: Did you identify your projects? Answer: He said it was a joint venture; first he learned the techniques behind the embryology of primary induction and the lens. After three months “getting nowhere,” he then moved to work on a technique using a dissociation technique (trypsinization) to study the kidney. 

00:23:02	[no question] He observed that he ended up this two year project with only one pub-lication, but this wasn’t an issue at the time. He and Lange talked about the variety of tenure requirements and how journal strictures and experimental constraints affected it. He discussed his mixed feelings about these realities.

00:25:57	Question: What did you learn at NIH? Answer: Auerbach said that “almost every-thing” was significant—learning to design experiments, working with technicians (which is increasingly necessary), etc. He discussed how in Grobstein’s lab the tech-nician’s respect had to be earned and talked about how this happened over time. He emphasized how he always treated technicians as colleagues, and how this resulted in extreme loyalty by the help in his labs.

00:32:01	Question: Involvement with Grobstein after the first 6 mo.? Answer: Not much. 

00:32:35	[no question] He reflected on how he worked with the Washington DC musicians union and teaching at U and Maryland during his two NIH years in order to make ends meet. Follow up: Did you think this teaching would be helpful later on? Answer: No; their purpose was more mundane—to pay the bills.

00:37:07	Follow up: Were you resentful of having to work as a musician? Answer: Not at all; he said he still enjoyed the collegiality of being involved in music, something he’d continued to do in Madison. He observed that he’d always played dance music, and talked about the camaraderie he’d had playing music.

00:42:42	Question: Did you think you’d stay at NIH longer? Answer: He’d hoped to do so, but after 2 years he had to start job-hunting. He explained how when Grobstein went to Stanford to team up with others to “solve some of the problems of developmental biology,” he passed through Madison to talk with Josh Lederberg—this led him to suggest that Auerbach go to Madison. He also applied at Brandeis, but that opportunity fell through.

00:46:33	[no question] Observing that he’d always been interested in applied (human) genetics, he discussed some cutting-edge research on the effect of the thymus in leukemia that was going on at the NIH, and how Grobstein’s interpretation was the one that appeared in an influential paper on the subject, though it was not Grobstein’s project. Auerbach decided he’d like to stay at NIH to study the mouse embryonic thymus.

00:50:16	[no question] Continuing to discuss the job search, he said that while NIH was his number one choice (the Brandeis faculty procrastinated) and UW didn’t seem ideal, he observed that faculty at UW seemed to be staying and enthusiastic about the department. Thus, when they offered him a position to teach half of a genetics course and develop a graduate course in embryology, he accepted gladly.

00:53:16	Follow up: Who did you meet when you interviewed? Answer: He said he met with all the faculty one by one, but had an evening meeting with Jim Crow.

00:54:08	[no question] He related a question he was asked somewhat sarcastically about his research in the interview (research wasn’t at the time a priority in the zoology department) to the trend in the field that funding agencies were less pioneering than one’s colleagues. While he wanted to research the thymus, there was skepticism as to whether he’d be able to carry this out since all his previous work was on the kidney. Thus Grobstein gave him the interesting advice that when he wrote his first NIH grant, he should write it on the kidney and then work on the thymus.

00:58:59	Follow up: An offer? Answer: He said he waited several weeks, and recalled the other candidate they were considering, thinking that his teaching experience was what made the difference between him and the other candidate.

01:00:42	Follow up: Brandeis? Answer: He felt that the environment was better at UW, and said that he didn’t have any apprehension about moving to the Midwest. He said he and his wife were always ready to move if necessary.

01:03:11	Question: Coming to UW? Answer: He talked about coming during August 1957, feeling like they couldn’t afford Madison, going househunting, and getting other jobs so that they could pay for the house they ended up buying.

01:07:02	Question: Did you teach in the fall? Answer: Because his course hadn’t been approved, and he didn’t teach genetics until the spring, he taught undergraduate zoology to start. He thought this was valuable teaching experience, sharing an anecdote about how he felt strongly that labs should experiments, not demonstrations. Labs should teach, not be about results. When an aberrant result occurred in one lab, he encouraged the students to investigate rather than ignore the occurrence.

01:13:45	Follow up: Did other members of the department endorse this approach? Answer: Some did, some didn’t. He quipped about how he wasn’t a great teacher to begin with and shared how collegial the department was at the time about teaching—when he started his developmental biology course the next year, they encouraged him to try new techniques but to not be afraid to return to old ones should it not work out.

01:17:29	Follow up: So you felt justified to come to UW? Answer: Immediately, yes. He shared several more anecdotes about the collegiality and egalitarianism of the department, which was willing to sacrifice their own space in order to allow him to do his experiments and went to great lengths to make sure there was appropriate air-conditioning to allow for tissue culturing.

01:25:04	Question: Talk about your few years? Answer: He talked about liking to teach early in the morning, which led to an unusual class curve that demonstrated that half of the students signed up for these classes because they liked early classes and the other half just registered too late and did poorly. He also explained why he never wrote out or practiced his lectures.

01:29:20	[no question] He discussed how the second time he taught developmental biology, he got water taps installed into the lab so that students could “start doing real live things in the lab.” The Med School, which had previously required this course for admission, discussed his course with him and removed it from their pre-requisites. He saw this as evidence of the way the campus was less hierarchical than the departments were and the flexibility one had at UW at the time.

01:33:05	Question: How did you find the students? Answer: He quipped about how he’d had good and bad students and he enjoyed them both.  He discussed how, after a few years team-teaching developmental biology, he developed his own course which was less “classical” than his colleagues’ and more experimental. This led him to discuss how important it was to him to stay up-to-date on current research in one’s courses.

01:39:00	Question: Research? Answer: He said that his research was exciting; after a year, his first culture was a success, which let him know his lab was functioning. From this research he gave a paper at the Museum of Science and Industry, which was later published. 

01:41:24	[no question] Continuing to talk about his research, he discussed how research money he’d gotten from the American Cancers Society (through UW) was used as a prime example of how ACS’ money could be well-spent.

01:43:13	[no question] He recounted how in 1960, he published his first thymus paper, which showed that the thymus could be dissected and how separated, the parts of the thymus wouldn’t develop. He described the state of knowledge in these “early days” of studying the thymus, though he wasn’t initially aware of pioneering work that went back to the turn of the century. He learned much from the first conference on the thymus in 1962 in Minneapolis, which was intellectually exciting.

01:51:30	Follow up: Did your work on the thymus raise your esteem among your colleagues? Answer: Yes; because it started when the thymus was unknown and it was at a time when “b cells” and “t cells” were just coming onto people’s radar (incidentally, by a TA’s observation of an incongruence in an experiment).

01:56:55	[no question] He discussed how, in his own classes, he limited class size, split into 4 sections, and gave students 6 weeks to do their own projects. He explained how he taught this class and how he generated natural interest in projects going on in the class

02:00:09	[no question] He discussed in detail one particular project from his developmental biology class, which investigated the effects of LSD. When they learned LSD caused brain defects, he helped the student repeat the experiment so that they could publish the results. This generated tremendous public attention, including a Saturday Evening Post article.

02:07:49	Follow up: Did it come to the attention of your colleagues? Answer: He didn’t know if it garnered criticism, but the work was published in Science. He went on to talk about how the student with whom he did this experiment went on to medical school.

02:10:31	[no question] As an aside to his story on the LSD experiment, he emphasized how one had to brave failure in order to do science, saying that if you can’t take failure you shouldn’t start. He shared some other anecdotes about how failure could lead to success.

02:15:06	[no question] He observed how eventually he gave up on teaching developmental biology as his lab grew and supervising all the personal projects took too much time. He also expressed his disappointment with what the university did with his mammalian biology class.

02:20:47	Question: Was department collegiality maintained during the 1970s? Answer: For the most part, he thought. He explained how his wife’s experience with taking classes was an important influence on his own teaching and how even during the tensions of the 1960s and 70s the department remained cordial.

02:22:30	End of Second Interview Session

Third Interview Session (February 10, 2010): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:19	Question: Continue with your research program. Answer: He contextualized that Harold Wolfe, who was an immunologist and helped him enormously, was dying at the time of the fundamental 1962 conference. He thus inherited a number of Wolfe’s students and increasingly got involved in immunology.

00:03:46	[no question] He talked about his collaboration with Fritz Bach, including a course they developed on immunology.

00:05:51	[no question] By getting involved in immunology, he got involved in updating techni-ques in immunology. He talked about flow cytometry and the development of several iterations of this technique to show that it was important to stay up-to-date on the technology and techniques of a field, even if later technology made these techniques out-of-date. Follow up: Why are you always ahead? Answer: He said that when you worked in an area in which you don’t know, you need methods that don’t exist.

00:11:26	[no question] He gave the example of his first graduate student, who took on the project on the lens that Auerbach had not been able to figure out. After doing this and writing a seminal paper, he went on to win an NIH grant, teach in India for years, and continue to be a leader in the field. Auerbach took satisfaction that he’d pushed him to be entrepreneurial, innovative and persistent when things went against him.

00:16:37	[no question] Continuing to talk about his research on immunology, he discussed shifting earlier and earlier to look at the yolk sack. In the process, he talked about the granting process, how he’d once had a grant he’d had to ask to have reviewed by a different panel, and a time when the granting committee judged very unfairly.

00:21:40	[no question] He observed how his graduate students gradually began working on the yolk sack, giving several examples.

00:24:16	Follow up: How did you get outstanding graduate students as early as 1965? Answer: He said, first, that UW had a very high reputation; he was also asked to go to a high-profile meeting in Scotland by Grobstein and did a lot of speaking about the thymus, when the thymus was still relatively unknown.

00:30:04	Follow up: In the 80s and 90s? Answer: By this point, he had his own reputation. He observed that in all of his years at UW, he only worried about granting once. Follow up: But you were already recognized by the 1960s? Answer: He didn’t think he was that significant by then, and didn’t think of himself that way. He thought even later he was best known for his experiment that yielded the wrong results.

00:32:58	Question: Talk about the disruptions of the late 1960s. Answer: He said that it didn’t disrupt his work at all since they were away from the main campus. Digressing a bit to talk about the new zoology research building, he complained that though they’d raised all the funds to build the building, they still had to pay heavy parking fees.

00:36:24	Follow up: Were you surprised to see popular rebellion occurring at a university? Answer: No; universities have always been hotbeds of rebellion. While he sympathized with the protesters, he didn’t engage in political discussion in his classes. 

00:38:57	Follow up: But you see intellectual discussion as something that can bridge political differences? Answer: Yes; he said he didn’t know much of what was being discussed politically in his labs, much as he didn’t know the social discussions. He gave exam-ples of the only time he had problems with his lab—because he was away—and how he worked to smooth over social issues.

00:43:42	Question: Tenure? Answer: He explained that tenure wasn’t ever an issue or a problem to him, observing that when they asked him if it could be delayed he hadn’t even thought about it. At the same time, the university was expanding at the time, so UW was concerned about finding faculty, not tenuring them.

00:47:22	Question: University service? Answer: He said the only thing he did was attend staff meetings faithfully. But he emphasized that he “went home” to be with his family every day, so that he and his wife could raise their children together, and came back to care for the animals in the lab. This attention to detail won the respect of his technicians in many cases.

00:51:27	Question: Teaching any different courses by the 1970s? Answer: He recounted how he started his own developmental biology course and graduate seminar.

00:53:23	Question: Talk about the next stage. Answer: He talked about why he decided to move elsewhere for 2 years. When his wife decided to change fields in 1969 but needed 2 years of experience to be hired at UW, he looked for somewhere else to go where his wife might get a job. He’d met Judah Folkman, a pioneer of angiogenesis, in 1971, and Folkman invited him to come work in his lab at Harvard.

00:58:03	Follow up: Was it difficult to get leave from the dept? Answer: No, “they were glad to see me go, I think.” He quipped about how the bartender at a regular performance he did the summer before leaving did more to celebrate their departure than the dept. Follow up: So the tenor of the dept had changed? Answer: Yes; it had changed after the building of the research building, when an antagonism developed between the well-funded research staff and the teaching staff.

01:00:44	[no question] During his year in Boston, he said, he developed methods for growing things in culture so you could get a test system going for blood-vessels. This led to a significant paper on how to grow chicken embryos in dishes, which later became a normal class exercise in developmental biology.

01:02:29	[no question] After the year in Boston, his wife still needed another year of experi-ence, so they moved to University of Texas-Southwestern under support from the Rockefeller Foundation. 

01:04:48	[no question] He explained how, while he was in Boston, he began collaborating with a colleague with whom he traded techniques and published some work together. He cited this as an example of how everything is connected. 

01:06:12 	[no question] He brought his observations about the field of angiogenesis by noting how rapidly it expanded (especially clinically) after his work on it in the 1970s. Folkman was to be honored in 2010 by the Nobel Prize until his untimely death.

01:08:54	[no question] He continued the narrative about how his wife was immediately able to get a job in Madison upon their return. He added that he was ready to move elsewhere should she not be able to get a job, and interviewed at Stonybrook, Pitt, etc. Follow up: Were you a “figure” by this point? Answer: Yes. 

01:11:27	Follow up: Were you continuing to teach? Answer: He taught flow cytometry when the mammalian development course couldn’t get a lab from the school, and he continued to teach developmental biology with a colleague. He said, despite not wanting to, he taught a 3rd of the intro zoology class during this period. This was made more difficult by intense service on the University Committee. 

01:13:02	[no question] He discussed being part of an NIH training grant in developmental biology, which he directed for 25 years. The goal of the program was to find money to support research students. He recounted an interview that showed how the grant was intended to support young, starting professors and good students who could choose whomever they wanted to work with. He discussed how the grants started in the 1960s and went on for over 20 years.

01:18:27	Follow up: What did you mean that you didn’t want to teach introductory zoology? Answer: He said he enjoyed teaching it when he did, but felt that if he taught it he should be personally involved, even in labs and discussion sections. He didn’t think it was a good course and knew at the time that he couldn’t devote the kind of time to the course he thought it deserved.

01:20:11	Question: Track the evolution of your research from 1975 on. Answer: He said he couldn’t—they “followed leads” even when it led them into clinical work. He gave the example of a study of an endostatin-producing cell that showed how this clinical work developed (though he knew the actual trial based on his advice wouldn’t work).

01:24:40	Question: Were you being asked to give major presentations? Answer: Some.

01:25:06	Follow up: Other observations about research? Answer: He added that while he was traveling in Boston and elsewhere, one of his post-docs, with a graduate student, engaged in a project whose results revealed that the mice they’d used were not BALB/c, though the Charles River Company refused to admit this. In the end, they published the fact that millions of mice were involved in “micegate” and had effected a major crisis in animal science research. He also explained why Charles River delayed so long in admitting that there was a problem.

01:35:31	Follow up: How did this happen? Answer: He said all it took was “one mistake” in which one “laboratory Swiss” could infiltrate an inbred BALB/c strain within a year. 

01:36:58	[no question] He discussed as a side note how his budget initially did not include animal costs, which were covered by the state, which understood that these were necessary costs to scientists. This was part of the calculus of why he came to UW rather than go to the Cancer Center, which would have required him to raise extra funds for animal costs. This led him to reflect on changes in the university structure, which initially had an unlimited supply budget and where it was customary to share unneeded equipment—this was no longer true in part because the NIH now required cost accounting.

01:40:33	Question: Department service? Answer: He said that he served on virtually no depart-mental committees, since he didn’t think they were worth serving on. He said he served on committees that were worth serving on, such as the University Committee and the library committee.

01:44:17	Follow up:	Talk about being chair of the department. Answer: Under the rotating chairmanship in zoology, though he and Hans Ris didn’t want to be chair, he was approached by Jim Crow, who asked him to be chair. He approached dean Certain to have an assistant, got a new zoology research tower on the campus planning priorities list, and talked to the botany department about the possibility of merging. So he played with the idea of taking the chair.

01:48:29	[no question] Continuing to talk about his chairmanship, he noted that “two things happened.” First, he got a visitor from Birge Hall who asked for “this and that” in the new building in order to approve the new building and said they wouldn’t merge with botany. Second, they gave the lowest departmental salary ratings to Gary Borisy and Jim Pauley, which he felt was the wrong approach to rewarding research. Thus in the end he turned down the chair, though he felt capable of doing it. Follow up: Did this reflect the split in the faculty? Answer: Yes; because much of the funds were going to research, and therefore younger faculty. It also reflected a particular view of zoology.

01:52:42	[no question] Continuing to talk about his role in the department, he observed that he did help to raise money through grants, the training program, and capital exercises.

01:54:28	Question: The University Committee? Answer: Though he thought that it had been a “mistake”, he said he felt honored to have been asked to run for it and knew that it did important work. In this regard, he also mentioned his work on the divisional commit-tee, which he thought important in setting standards for tenure. He said he thought if someone did important work nationally in teaching, this should also be rewarded come tenure. He gave examples of teaching that impacted beyond UW’s campus.

02:00:11	[no question] He described the two years during which he was on the University Committee as “exciting,” in part because they tried to smooth over relations with the Regents by engaging them socially. He thought this was a good idea. But he also felt that this service caused his research to suffer and took time away from his students. He cited examples of this and noted that a third issue was a personnel issue in which he was the only candidate to be chair of the UC.

02:04:25	Follow up:	 Did you enjoy any aspect of the UC? Answer: Yes; he enjoyed the tenure committee and a women’s equity issue that was a lot of work, but satisfying. He also enjoyed dealing with the issue of where to put Jim Pauley after his center was shut down. He talked about dealing with David Musolf and the Vice Chancellor.

02:08:51	Follow up:	How was your resignation received? Answer: Badly—he was told that he had an obligation to the electors, but he responded he had other obligations. He explained how the second year on the UC was less enjoyable for him than the first because of the politics involved.

02:10:36	Follow up:	You’re very self-confident? Answer: He quipped that it was easier to seem self-confident afterward, citing some examples of how he’d “been lucky.” He talked about how a particular article he wrote only became well-cited until much later, when it became one of the only works on a particular subject.

02:13:46	[no question] He observed that among the collegial parts of international science was his work sending cells out upon request, like the endostatin work. This led him to reflect on the changing nature of publication in science, where it was almost impossible to be broadly knowledgeable even about a whole field. He felt this was a bad thing, citing a student who passed prelims by reading one journal only and discussing how older scientists all seemed to feel the younger ones should be broader.

02:17:47	[no question] He talked about how two foreign languages used to be a requirement for getting a doctorate in zoology, but didn’t think there was any language requirement now. He talked briefly about a book project he and his wife worked on.

02:20:04	Question: Reflect on your career at UW? Answer: He said he enjoyed his career at UW, though it might have been good for him to move to Harvard as an associate professor. He explained why he turned down several offers, some for financial reasons and some in order to stay in Wisconsin.

02:22:42	[no question] As a matter of historical interest, he recounted the decision by the college to not go to a 12-month salary system, and how the department responded by noting that all research done during the 9 months would be covered by the college.

02:24:15	[no question] He reflected on how he believed UW had changed, first in numbers and second in the more hierarchical structure now. While he didn’t think the inter-campus programs hadn’t changed, he did think the collegiality had changed in part due to financial strictures that didn’t exist before.

02:27:03	Follow up:	Is UW as well-regarded now as it was? Answer: He didn’t think so; but he didn’t think this was entirely its fault. He explained how zoology salaries were a laughingstock, which made it hard to recruit good people.

02:54:01	End of Third Interview Session

End of Oral History #1076