Evelyn Witkin, 2000-06-01

Item — Box: AV08, Hi8: CSHL1318

Staff Only

Oral History | Evelyn Witkin

Scope and Contents

Evelyn Witkin, a leading bacterial geneticist, is interviewed by Mila Pollock on June 1, 2000, at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.

Evelyn Witkin discusses the following in her interview: Scene 1. Becoming a scientist -- Scene 2. Discrimination at New York University -- Scene 3. Arrival at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 4. Leaving Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory -- Scene 5. Remembering the Carnegie Institute and the Biological Laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor -- Scene 6. Humorous story from the lab -- Scene 7. Barbara McClinitock: personal friend -- Scene 8. Barbara McClintock: a sense of humor -- Scene 9. Barbara McClintock: personality -- Scene 10. Milislav Demerec -- Scene 11. Al Hershey -- Scene 12. Impressions of Jim Watson -- Scene 13. Theodosius Dobzhansky -- Scene 14. Cold Spring Harbor Symposia: past and present -- Scene 15. Mary Bunting: women in science.

Dates

Creation: 2000-06-01

Creator

Witkin, Evelyn (Interviewee, Person)
Pollock, Ludmila (Interviewer, Person)
Clark, Clare (Transcriber, Person)
Viteri, Carlos (Videographer, Person)

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

Evelyn Witkin is a leading bacterial geneticist. She earned her Ph.D. in 1947 with Theodosius Dobzhansky at Columbia University for her Drosophila research. Her interests evolved from Drosophila genetics to bacterial genetics, and she spent the summer of 1944 at Cold Spring Harbor, where she isolated a radiation-resistant mutant of E. coli. Witkin remained at the Carnegie Institution Department of Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor until 1955. In 1971, she was appointed Professor of Biological Sciences at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and was named Barbara McClintock Professor of Genetics in 1979. Witkin moved to the Wakeman Institute at Rutgers University in 1983. Among her many honors are membership in the National Academy of Sciences (1977), Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (1980), American Women of Science Award for Outstanding Research, and Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. She has also won the Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research (2015) with Stephen J. Elledge and The Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences (2015).

Evelyn Witkin retired in 1991.