Prefi 



ace 



The Marine Biological Laboratory began in 1888. As first director Chcirles 

 Otis Whitman said, it was a mere germ, only barely fertilized. The first year 

 brought a simple cellular form with only seventeen "ids in its protoplasmic 

 body— two instructors, eight students, and seven investigators (all begin- 

 ners). The two instructors could be likened, with no great stretch of the 

 imagination, to two polar corpuscles, signifying little more than that the 

 germ was a fertile one, and prepared to begin its preordained course of 

 development." This fertile germ then underwent various cleavages and 

 began to assume a multicellular shape. With growth, it advanced to the 

 tadpole stage. It encountered troubles along the way, just as any growing 

 individual does. Fortunately, these troubles have never proved fatal. 



Whitman saw the MBL as a living being. It still is today— a being made 

 up of all the cellular individucils who visit and work there. The life of the 

 organism is part of the life of the individual members and visitors. This book 

 is about the MBL's first one hundred years of life. 



This work represents a biography of the MBL, which has had a life very 

 like any other individual, with its cycles of adolescence and growth and 

 maturity and maybe even metamorphic stages as well. Indeed, this is really 

 an autobiography, a reflective sketch of a full and rich life told through 

 recollections and reflections recorded wdthin the archives and the people of 

 the MBL. This is only one of the many autobiographical stories that could be 

 told; other times and other efforts will bring additional perspectives. If 

 anyone feels that something has been left out, he or she is invited to write 

 down those stories and facts and deposit them in the MBL Archives. This 

 story reflects what lies in the current public and archival record. 



As an autobiography, this is not the sort of study that provides a litany 

 of vital statistics and details from birth to death in precise, chronological 

 order with everything in its proper place. Rather, this is an effort to present 

 the spirit of the MBL's life, that spirit of cooperation and cross-fertilization 

 of ideas that makes science a living process. This interactive life is some- 

 times pervaded by a certain untidiness and even unreality. Recorded mem- 

 ory occasionally may bring seemingly insignificant details into sharp focus 

 or forget others. Sometimes the past comes into clearer focus than the 

 present. So be it. The life recounted here is an important one, and the 

 quirks of the storytelling mirror are quirks in the life itself and in its records. 



What, exacUy, is the MBL? Biologist-writer Lewis Thomas has called it 

 a virtual National Biological Laboratory for the United States because so 



