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INTRODUCTION |
Peter V. Minorsky
By a curious twist of fate, I have
returned this year to Vassar College, my undergraduate alma mater. I am
42 years old now, and if the actuarial tables are to be believed I
shall live another 42 years. In short, it is a good time to reflect on
one's fate and one's future.
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CHILDHOOD |
I was a typical American boy. Home from school, I would fortify
myself with a bowl or two of heavily sweetened cereal and rush off to
the adjoining woods to join my friends in our daily reenactments of the
Battle of the Bulge. Besides giving me a certain proficiency in the
slaughtering of phantasmic Wehrmacht soldiers, these exercises also
gave me a singular but practical knowledge of the local flora. This
vine adheres to trees; this one hangs free. This stick is too heavy for
a sword, this one too light. Not only is this hollow tree a good place
to hide, the tree is still alive! I did not know it then, but I was
observing Nature up close, the first step to becoming a biologist.
Vietnam came to the United States like an ideological whirlwind. One
could not remain neutral in these polarized times. I became an anti-war
hippy, or as much a hippy as I could be, living under my parents'
roof. De rigeur for this new lifestyle was disdain for all
things "unnatural." One afternoon, while my parents were away at
work, I plowed up half the side lawn and planted an "organic" vegetable garden. At first, they were aghast at this marring of their
crab-grassed suburban splendor, but as children of the Great Depression, I think the idea of free vegetables eventually won them
over. And I delivered; the vegetables were plentiful and delicious. My
zeal for gardening and landscaping soon spread to the rest of the yard,
a passion of mine that has not faded.
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SCHOOL DAYS |
I enrolled at Vassar College with vague plans of becoming a
physician. Thumbing through the photographs in my introductory biology
textbook, I tried to imagine myself taking the rectal temperature of
the elephantitis victim or breaking the sad news to the parents of the
kids with progeria. My imagination failed me. There's more to
doctoring I realized than removing splinters from the fingers of
children and pocketing $250,000 a year. I switched majors to History
and then to Literature. Because I enjoy the smells of greenhouses, I
took a botany course my junior year, and to my amazement found that
reading about phytochrome was infinitely more fascinating than reading
Spenser's The Faerie Queen. My senior year I switched back
to Biology, and took seven biology courses my senior year.
I began my graduate studies at Cornell University in the laboratory of
Roger Spanswick. It was a fortunate choice because Roger, an English
émigré, carried with him the laissez-faire attitude that characterizes the British style of education. I had at my
disposal a well-equipped laboratory and a fantastic library. The idea
for a thesis topic, however, I had to provide myself. One of the best
attributes of a liberal arts education in general is its emphasis on
thinking and challenging the status quo. This background I believe
enabled me take on a bigger problem than do most graduate students.
After three solid years in the library, I wrote two radical
re-syntheses of the literature pertaining to the effects of cold
temperatures on plants. In the first, I proposed that chilling injury
arises from a loss of calcium homeostasis; in the second, that plants
respond to rapid cooling by a transient increase in cytoplasmic
calcium. Regrettably, the technology of the time was not sufficiently
developed to measure changes in cytoplasmic calcium, but I believe that
is was me who, in a visit to Edinburgh in 1987, inspired Tony Trewavas
to begin the process of transgenically engineering the
calcium-sensitive photoprotein aequorin into plants. As a result, my
electrophysiological experiments concerning calcium and rapid-cooling
stimulation have been complemented by this elegant technique.
Ironically, far from being a boon to my career, my reviews, having
earned me the not quite accurate reputation of being a "theorist,"
have actually hobbled it. For example, an anonymous reviewer, in
torpedoing my last grant proposal, wrote, "Minorsky has made some
important theoretical contributions to the study of low temperature
biology in plants, perhaps even more important than the average
experimental paper, but theorists don't need money." Such are the
rewards for challenging the status quo! Even in the purely pedagogical
sphere, these "theoretical" papers have been detrimental. I almost
didn't get one teaching job because the selection committee divined,
based on the fact that most of my articles were single-authored, that I
didn't get along well with others!
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HAVE PhD, WILL TRAVEL |
After Cornell, I signed up as a post-doctoral fellow on a
Saccharomyces project. From my physiologist's perspective,
Saccharomyces proved to be an inscrutable little organism. I
began to appreciate what Barbara McClintock meant by having a
"feeling for the organism." The truth is, I didn't care about
Saccharomyces. Unbeknownst to me, my health was also
failing. My pituitary had ceased its dialogue with my thyroid, and a
crushing depression was settling upon me. Moreover, I felt as if I was
getting to know more and more about less and less. My instincts told me
to escape to the salt mines of institutional research and to embark
upon the insouciant life of an undergraduate professor.
Things haven't worked out quite as I imagined. A tenure-track position
has remained elusive and the life of the nomadic visiting professor is
discouraging, particularly if one has familial or social entanglements.
I will soon be beginning my fifth stint as a visiting assistant
professor at Mercy College. Since visiting professors generally have
little or no opportunity to do research, it can be a slippery slope to
oblivion. Fortunately, my other career as a scientific writer has kept
me up-to-date and productive.
I take great satisfaction in being a scientific writer. I recently had
the privilege of revising and updating the Plant Form and Function unit
of Campbell and Reece's Biology 6th
edition, the leading introductory biology textbook in the
English-speaking world. It turned out to be one of the greater
challenges of my life. The problem in writing textbooks, I discovered,
is not so much deciding what material to include as what to exclude.
There is also the challenge of being clear and concise, and engaging but scientifically rigorous. Perhaps the most difficult part is to
think like a 19-year-old who is confronting the material for the first
time. I have also immensely enjoyed my first year as the Science Writer
for Plant Physiology. This position has enabled me, indeed
in a few instances, forced me, to continue learning. Every month I read
every abstract in Plant Physiology, and about 30% of the
articles in their entirety. What a marvelous opportunity to keep up on
cutting edge research!
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AM I HAPPY? |
There is not much lucre or glory in being an undergraduate
professor. Its main selling points are the broad intellectual
stimulation and freedom it provides. For example, Vassar was recently
the site for the filming of a new version of H.G. Wells's The
Time Machine, and to mark this event, I organized a
multi-disciplinary symposium concerning Wells and his literary works.
As I lectured on the life and literature of Wells, I could not help but
wonder whether my peers in the large research institutions have such intellectual freedom? What could be better than the freedom to pursue
one's interests wherever they lead? If there be a better life, I would
need more time to think about it. Right now, however, I must grade 30 freshman laboratory reports before tomorrow (OK, so every job has its
downside!).
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