UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #276
WILSON, JOSEPH B.

WILSON, Joseph B. (1914- )
Graduate Student; Professor of Bacteriology and Medical Microbiology; Associate Dean of Graduate School
At UW: 1939-1942; 1946-1981

Interviewed: 1983	
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 2.5 hours

Background; Graduate work at UW; Courses and professors; Work during WWII; Return to UW and work on Bang's disease; New equipment for research in late 1940s; Prominent researchers attracting people to campus; Kenneth Raper's work on penicillin; Delay in hiring geneticist; Appointment as chairman of Medical Microbiology; New space; New faculty.

[Note: As of May 2013, tape 3 cannot be found.]

Digitized Tape 1

00:00:00	Interviewer’s Introduction

00:00:35	Upbringing in Texas.  College; major in chemistry.

00:03:25	Reasons came to UW.  Perry Wilson. 

00:06:50	Fred as teacher: thorough, not good lecturer, demanding, well organized, not stimulating, knew work of others.  Baldwin's course given by Wayne Umbreit.  

00:11:19	Marvin Johnson.  Stimulating teacher.  Exacting, students didn't welcome him on orals exams.  Hardnosed questioner in seminars.  Went out of way to help, explain.  Willing to share ideas.  His relations with Fred and Peterson.

00:18:58	Courses in biochemistry.  Link, others. 

00:22:23	Carl Bogholt.  Plan to take Max Otto's course on humanism. 

00:26:39	Knowledge of situation in Europe.

00:29:01	Work during World War II. 

00:31:04	World War II work continued.

00:32:20	Appointment at UW to do research on control of Bang's disease.  Cooperation with veterinarians.  Work on brucella.  Looking for strain 19.  Fraser hired him. The research.  Genetic problem.  Most important discovery. 

00:54:48	Work in staphylococcus and streptococcus had been his specialty. Talked about working with others, too. 

01:00:55	Elizabeth McCoy also working on staph. JW explained why McCoy was interested in it.

01:01:49	End of Digitized Tape 1

Digitized Tape 2

00:00:00	[No introduction.] Lab equipment.  Legislators interested in his research.  Ph meter, Marvin Johnson.  In 1940s little elaborate equipment in bacteriology.  Burris's work with Urey on heavy nitrogen and use of mass spectrometer.  Being developed in physics department.  Not until late or mid 1950s possible to buy one.  Late 1940s could get equipment to measure radioactivity.  Had money to buy.

00:06:23	Use of electron microscope in Soils Building.  Bought by Ag.  Paul Kaesberg hired as physicist Ph.D. to run it.  Trained people.  Hans Ris had one.  Bacteriology now has a lab with two electron microscopes.  In medical school, several.  No longer in use as much.

00:08:53	Scanning microscope put in 1977-78.  JW helped.  Used a lot.  Bacteriology department having trouble financing EM lab now.  Used to be paid for out of research funds, but not enough use now.

00:11:57	Learning how to use new equipment.  Radioactive isotopes an example.  Courses usually given on techniques, e.g. in biochemistry.

00:14:01	Joshua Lederberg.  JW sat in on courses, seminars.  A hot area of research.  Steady stream of people to work with him.  Harlyn Halvorsen same.  They would give seminars.  James Crow another.  Mike Foster, Food Research Institute.  Molecular biology brings people in.  Oncology people attract others--Potter, Pitot, Millers.  Raper, one of eminent mycologists of country.

00:18:43	Story re Life (Time?) cover in 1940s at time of penicillin discovery.  Raper's technician.

00:20:05	Question of extent to which bacteriologists did postdoctoral work in Europe.  Sources of funding in late 1940s.

00:23:41	Q. re impact of DNA discovery; Q. why geneticist work not exploited in bacteriology.  Explanation.  JW remembers discussions of whom to bring here in bacteriology.  Microbial genetics being talked about already.  Tatum pushing Lederberg so genetics got him.  Not appropriate for bacteriology to hire another geneticist just to round out its program.  Bacteriology finally did hire microbial geneticist to teach undergraduate course--Martha Howe, 1973 or 74.  Lists some geneticists who came.  Lederberg cross listed in bacteriology.  LS cites Bowers letter to Sarles, "Look for a geneticist."  But no money to hire. Sussman had been hired in genetics.  Mentions others, e.g. in oncology.  Not sensible to duplicate, just to have in own department.  

00:31:25	Bacteriology hired David Pratt 1961-2.  Tomato genetics at Davis.  Then to Copenhagen.  Bacteriophage-virus geneticist.  Came in 1961 or '62.  Taught virology; later taught it with Howard Temin.  Temin a bacteriophage geneticist. 

00:32:35	Accessibility of information about research going on in other departments.  Surprise of outsiders at amount of interdepartmental research.  Cites examples.  Molecular biology training program grant (NIH) involved faculty from different departments.  JW first director.  Administered it through biophysics.  Not courses.  Money for graduate students, supplies, equipment.  Takes students from all life science departments, but their support is from the grant.

00:36:48	LS quotes DeLuca's remark re biochemistry getting behind at one time.  JW says physiological chemistry same way.  People wanted rounded program.  JW doesn't agree. Gave example of Millard Susman’s course.

00:39:32	Why create a department of Dairy Science and Animal Science. Why? To get Heizer here they made new department--dairy science. Comparison to starting molecular biology to keep Halvorsen.  Needed space.  NSF had money for building for new developments.  Molecular biology one of them.  Biophysics at same time.  Molecular biology degree program not same as training program. Describes degree program. 

00:47:10	Q. re research in Medical School.  Phil Cohen's department did do research, and oncology.  Bacteriology and medical microbiology had little interaction. 

00:49:59	Medical microbiology and veterinary science interested in problems of infectious diseases--the host-parasite relation.  They had a joint NIH grant.  Bacteriology concentrated on the parasite. 

00:51:27	Medical-microbiology averaged six or seven graduate students a year; bacteriology, sixty.  Describing some of graduate students.

00:54:40	Middleton.  Fred's effort to push research. Today some good research.

00:56:50	Duard Walker's agreement when accepting chairmanship of medical-microbiology.  In 1976 JW asked to become chairman.  Opportunity to invite three people.  Got more.

01:02:47	End of Digitized Tape 2

[Note: As noted above, tape 3 cannot be found.]

Tape 3/Side 1

001	The new people.

016	Had to fight for new space on 4th floor.  Walker wanted to get back to his research.

029	Department moved in mid-1981.  Whole fourth floor.  JW thinks department will make contributions to biology on campus.  Got people in areas not represented on campus.  The hiring situation.

070	JW came over because had time.  A new course they offered.  Difficulty of getting Medical School to allocated more time for a course.

080	End of interview.

End of Oral History #276