| MEET GEORGE WEBSTER |
To begin at the beginning, my ancestry traces back to Governor John Webster of Connecticut
(1590-1661) and on back to John Webster, Esquire, of Bolsover, who was born in England in the early
1400s. My ancestors migrated in the early 1600's from Cossington, England, to Massachusetts, then to
Connecticut, and in the 1800's to Ohio, to Missouri, back to Indiana, and to Michigan.
I grew up in South Haven, Michigan, a pretty town nestled on the shore of Lake Michigan a
hundred miles north of Chicago. It has wide, clean beaches and a harbor teeming with yachts. My
earliest memories are of endless play on the beaches and in the sparkling water of Lake Michigan.
This idyllic life shattered when I entered the Air Force during World War II and flew combat
missions over Germany. It was pure horror. The average life of a bomber over Germany at that time
was eleven missions, but we were required to fly twenty-five. Of the ten members of my bomber
crew, five were killed, and two, including me, were wounded. On my final mission, German fighters
blasted my plane, turning it into a flaming torch. By a miracle, the fire went out, but the bomber was
too badly damaged to fly back to England. Instead, it limped across North Germany and the Baltic Sea
to crash land on the coast of Sweden. I was interned by the Swedish Government. The Swedish people
treated me wonderfully, and I loved the stay in Sweden.
After the Air Force, I earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, with Albert Frenkel as my
major professor and Nobel laureate Paul Boyer as my minor professor. I went to Pasadena, California
as a Research Fellow to work with the brilliant James Bonner at the California Institute of Technology.
I was thrilled because CalTech was regarded as the top scientific school in the world. Our department
chairman was Nobel laureate George Beadle. In the building next-door was Nobel laureate Linus
Pauling. Down the hall from my lab was Nobel laureate Max Delbruck. Across the hall from my lab
was Nobel laureate Renato Dulbecco, and upstairs was Nobel laureate Ed Lewis. After two years,
CalTech promoted me to Senior Research Fellow to join the other Senior Fellows: Nobel laureate Jim
Watson of DNA fame, Jacob Dubnoff, Dick Schweet, and Marguerite Vogt.
I did research at CalTech and later as Professor of Biochemistry at Ohio State. The research
produced discoveries that I reported in nearly 100 research articles in scientific journals During this
time, I wrote my first book, which sold so well that I bought a red Corvette with the first year's
royalties. This brought a caution from the dean that a red Corvette was not appropriate for a professor.
It was at Ohio State that I met my wife, Sandy, who means more to me than anything in the world, as
do our children, Jeffrey, a Ph.D. biochemist, and Kimberley, an M.D. endocrinologist.
But exciting things were afoot in the world, and I was appointed Chief of the Environmental
Health Laboratory in the Medical Department at Cape Canaveral during the years leading to the moon
landings. After the landings, I accepted an offer to be Professor and Head of Biological Sciences at the
Florida Institute of Technology. There, I did research on why we age. Later, I became Associate Dean
of the College of Science and Engineering. I was at Florida Tech for 15 years. I am a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Member of the American Society of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the honorary Society
of the Sigma Xi. Sandy and I now live happily in Orlando, Florida, where writing books and keeping up
with progress in biomedical science are great joys for me.
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(1590-1661) and on back to John Webster, Esquire, of Bolsover, who was born in England in the early
1400s. My ancestors migrated in the early 1600's from Cossington, England, to Massachusetts, then to
Connecticut, and in the 1800's to Ohio, to Missouri, back to Indiana, and to Michigan.
I grew up in South Haven, Michigan, a pretty town nestled on the shore of Lake Michigan a
hundred miles north of Chicago. It has wide, clean beaches and a harbor teeming with yachts. My
earliest memories are of endless play on the beaches and in the sparkling water of Lake Michigan.
This idyllic life shattered when I entered the Air Force during World War II and flew combat
missions over Germany. It was pure horror. The average life of a bomber over Germany at that time
was eleven missions, but we were required to fly twenty-five. Of the ten members of my bomber
crew, five were killed, and two, including me, were wounded. On my final mission, German fighters
blasted my plane, turning it into a flaming torch. By a miracle, the fire went out, but the bomber was
too badly damaged to fly back to England. Instead, it limped across North Germany and the Baltic Sea
to crash land on the coast of Sweden. I was interned by the Swedish Government. The Swedish people
treated me wonderfully, and I loved the stay in Sweden.
After the Air Force, I earned a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota, with Albert Frenkel as my
major professor and Nobel laureate Paul Boyer as my minor professor. I went to Pasadena, California
as a Research Fellow to work with the brilliant James Bonner at the California Institute of Technology.
I was thrilled because CalTech was regarded as the top scientific school in the world. Our department
chairman was Nobel laureate George Beadle. In the building next-door was Nobel laureate Linus
Pauling. Down the hall from my lab was Nobel laureate Max Delbruck. Across the hall from my lab
was Nobel laureate Renato Dulbecco, and upstairs was Nobel laureate Ed Lewis. After two years,
CalTech promoted me to Senior Research Fellow to join the other Senior Fellows: Nobel laureate Jim
Watson of DNA fame, Jacob Dubnoff, Dick Schweet, and Marguerite Vogt.
I did research at CalTech and later as Professor of Biochemistry at Ohio State. The research
produced discoveries that I reported in nearly 100 research articles in scientific journals During this
time, I wrote my first book, which sold so well that I bought a red Corvette with the first year's
royalties. This brought a caution from the dean that a red Corvette was not appropriate for a professor.
It was at Ohio State that I met my wife, Sandy, who means more to me than anything in the world, as
do our children, Jeffrey, a Ph.D. biochemist, and Kimberley, an M.D. endocrinologist.
But exciting things were afoot in the world, and I was appointed Chief of the Environmental
Health Laboratory in the Medical Department at Cape Canaveral during the years leading to the moon
landings. After the landings, I accepted an offer to be Professor and Head of Biological Sciences at the
Florida Institute of Technology. There, I did research on why we age. Later, I became Associate Dean
of the College of Science and Engineering. I was at Florida Tech for 15 years. I am a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Member of the American Society of
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the American Society for Cell Biology, and the honorary Society
of the Sigma Xi. Sandy and I now live happily in Orlando, Florida, where writing books and keeping up
with progress in biomedical science are great joys for me.
Return to Main Page
