Waclaw Szybalski, 2001-05-11

Item — Box: AV08, Hi8: CSHL1311

Staff Only

Oral History | Waclaw Szybalski

Scope and Contents

Waclaw Szybalski, an authority on molecular biology, genetics and microbiology, is interviewed by Mila Pollock on May 11, 2001, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

Scene 1. Studying science in Poland during World War II -- Scene 2. Coming to America and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 3. Scientific work: multiple drug therapy -- Scene 4. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: social life -- Scene 5. Milislave Demerec -- Scene 6. Directors at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 7. Jim Watson -- Scene 8. 1951 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium: Genes and Mutations -- Scene 9. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia: Then and now -- Scene 10. Trends in publishing scientific papers -- Scene 11. Women in science -- Scene 12. Special aspects about Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 13. Alfred Hershey -- Scene 14. The Hershey-Chase experiment -- Scene 15. Martha Chase -- Scene 16. Alfred and Jill Hershey.

Dates

Creation: 2001-05-11

Creator

Szybalski, Waclaw, 1921- (Interviewee, Person)
Pollock, Ludmila (Interviewer, Person)
Clark, Clare (Transcriber, Person)
Viteri, Carlos (Videographer, Person)
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Library and Archives (Publisher, Organization)

Conditions Governing Access

Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online: https://library.cshl.edu/oralhistory/. Select tapes have been digitized thanks to support from CLIR Recordings at Risk Grant awarded in 2021, these tapes are available for research online via our Oral History Website and in person at CSHL Archives. Please contact CSHL Archives archives@cshl.edu with any questions regarding availability.

Biographical / Historical

Waclaw Szybalski is an authority on molecular biology, genetics and microbiology. He earned his Ph.D. at the Gdansk Institute of Technology in Poland and is a Professor Emeritus of Oncology at the McArdle Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Szybalski is the founder and head of many editorial boards including that of the journal Gene. He was among the first to formulate the concept of multi-drug antibiotic therapy. Szybalski has also participated in the Human Genome Project. A long-time meeting and course participant at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Szybalski was a friend and contemporary of many pioneers in the field of genetics, including Alfred Hershey, Max Delbrück, and Barbara McClintock.