Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People

Gerald Fischbach - Missing Boston and friends (39/75)

To listen to more of Gerald Fischbach’s stories, go to the playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFx3DRAuU3bpy3bxgC3OzmB6 Gerald Fischbach (b. 1938) is an American neuroscientist and pioneering researcher. He pioneered the use of nerve cell cultures to study the electrophysiology, morphology and biochemistry of developing nerve-muscle and inter-neuronal synapses. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2023] TRANSCRIPT: While I was chairman of the department we recruited nine people, each one a long search, so that took a lot of time and effort and consensus. Eight of those nine were promoted to tenure, which was unheard of for any department, let alone the stodgy neurobiology group. But they've all worked out well and I think people there are extremely happy. In fact, I have the urge now to go back to Boston. Not to live, but to spend time, take a train up and spend a couple of days just trying to learn more about neural circuits and molecular science going on there. We'll see if that works. I could take a train up and hang out at the local hotel. I think I'd be welcome. And I feel badly about all the friends who I miss. One of them, Rod MacKinnon, left Harvard and went to Rockefeller, where he had a cryo-EM and won a Nobel Prize studying potassium channel structure. We had dinner at Rod's house with Bruce [Bean] two years ago, I think it was two years, on Long Island. And pledged that we would get together more frequently than every 20 years, and it's up to me to get us together. But I think my interests in individuals and in the department actually grew beyond that, to issues of the school and the university.