Reminiscences of a virologist wandering in Serendip
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Reminiscences of a virologist wandering in Serendip R. R. Wagner Department of Microbiology,Universityof VirginiaSchoolof Medicine,Charlottesville,Virginia,U.S.A.
Introduction Most of scientific discovery is by serendipity, a term derived from the 18th century tale by Horace Walpole entitled "The Three Princes of Serendip," who made fortuitous discoveries purely by chance. This tale aptly describes the story of my scientific life, the direction of which was largely determined by chance encounters with distinguished scientists and academicians of a bygone era. The primary reason for undertaking to write this contribution to the series "Famous Institutions in Virology," in addition to the urgings of Marian Horzinek, was because the field of virology I entered in the 1940s was so different than the current profession. My recollection, which unavoidably is personal and autobiographical, is of the availability then of an abundance of jobs, research funds and new data begging to be discovered. No one seemed concerned about tenure, security, salaries, equal opportunity, affirmative action, animal rights, biohazards and safety; grant applications were simple and usually successful (at least at first). There is no intention to extoll this bygone era but merely to indicate its simplicity in the 1940s when virology was a new and inexact science without its own journals. Very few viruses had been identified and those that had been were difficult or impossible to grow. Quite obviously, few scientists called themselves virologists and those who did knew almost every other virologist. Virtually all scientific interaction was personal, including the offer of jobs. It was into this new field of virology that I entered in the 1940s by the back door. Prior to that time I was a medical student at Yale University where I became interested in infectious diseases, which then meant bacteriology and immunology. As a medical student, I did a very small research project with Henry Bunting, a Yale pathologist, who had built himself some fluorescence microscopy equipment which intrigued me. Dr. Bunting advised me to visit Albert Coons at the Harvard Medical School, who was doing the most innovative research on fluorescent antibody staining. I drove to Boston accompanied by a young Australian postdoctoral fellow, who asked to come along because he wanted to meet John Enders whose research on bacteria was at the forefront of his area of research interest. I visited A1 Coons, who was very cordial and helpful. Then I accompanied my Australian colleague to visit the laboratory of John Enders, who I quickly discovered was one of the most engaging and genuinely open-minded scientists I have ever met. Fred Robbins and Tom Weller were postdocs in the Enders laboratory and graciously discussed their tissue
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culture and virology research with us, two novice bacteriologists. I confess to having little foresight into the enormous potential of the work that led to a Nobel Prize [5]. All I could think
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