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 Germany and the Baltic Sea to crash land on the coast of Sweden, and I was interned there by the Swedish Government. The Swedish people treated me wonderfully, and I loved the stay in Sweden.
After the Air Force, I earned a doctorate 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 hallfrom my lab was Nobel laureate Renato Delbecco, and upstairs was Nobel laureate Ed Lewis. After two years, CalTech promoted me to Senior Research Fellow to join the other Senior Research Fellows: Nobel laureate Jim Watson of double helix 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 offered the post of 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 - until the university promoted me to Associate Dean of the College of Science and Engineering. I was at Florida Tech for 15 years. Sandy and I now live happily in Orlando, Florida.
When you get on a crowded airplane, or have to wait hours somewhere, I hope that one of my books will take you to a different place where time passes quickly for you. If I can do that, then I am happy.
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