Memories of 1958 and 1995

[Petter Portin]

My predecessor Professor Tarvo Oksala (1915 - 1982) was the first Finn in the 23rd CSHSQB in 1958 where he presented his famous paper Chromosome pairing, crossing over, and segregation in meiosis in Drosophila melanogaster females, showing independently of Rhoda Grell the phenomenon of non homologous chromosome pairing Drosophila female meiosis. Together with the Danish Dieter von Wettstein they put cockchafers from the window into the room of the German Frizt Kaudewitz like Max and Moritz, the very well known figures of the German Wilhelm Bush.

I myself was for the first time at CSHL in the fall of 1995 at a conference on neurogenetics of Drosophila. At the very day when the conference was going on, it was reached by great news from Stockholm telling that Christiane Nusslein-Volhard, Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis had been awarded the Nobel prize in Medicine or Physiology for their pioneering studies on the developmental genetics of Drosophila melanogaster. An enormous rejoining broke out in The Grand Auditorium.