Improvising with the lights out

[David Stewart]

In the great north-eastern blackout of 2003, facilities went over to the gas station at Cold Spring Harbor and were able to pump gas into a tanker so then they could bring the tank back to actually run the generators all night. The yeast meeting actually went ahead the following day and Grace was functioning not with air conditioning but at least with power for projectors, for computers and laptops and everything. It was that morning that I heard that one of the 3 organizers was in Manhattan; she had not driven in like me, she had taken the train in, Brenda Andrews from Toronto. She had taken the train and the power had gone out when she was somewhere in Queens. So they climbed out of the train and went looking for a bike shop, bought two bikes and then cycled out with a hand drawn map that someone had given them. They did not have a map. There was no map shop open so they asked someone and they said, "well CSH is on the North Shore of Long Island, so they cycled out. In fact, they were pretty happy about it. They stopped for sushi and beer at some candlelit restaurant and arrived back at 11 o'clock at night. The meeting was still going. It was a real party atmosphere.

In 1947, Delbrück returned to Caltech as a professor of biology where he remained until 1977.