FOREWORD ^ xi 



have collaborated by providing interviews and personal recollections that 

 always add so much to historical accounts. 



Certain collaborators have added their own very special touches. In 

 particular, MBL archivist Ruth Davis, along with Robert and Millie Huettner, 

 has been invaluable in selecting the photographs to illustrate the volume. 

 This history of the MBL, therefore, is the work of a team of researchers, and 

 presents the best of their collective effort. 



As a result of this collaborative approach. Professor Maienschein's 

 book is unique in its own right. It is intended as a living testament to an 

 institution with a special mission and a special history. It is not a sequel to 

 or replacement of F. R. Lillie's book. The Woods Hole Marine Biological 

 Laboratory (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1944), which has been 

 reprinted in a special edition for the MBL centennial by Lancaster Press. 

 Nor is Professor Maienschein's book an official centennial eulogy, an essay 

 in self-aggrandizement of the sort that often accompanies the celebration of 

 institutional anniversaries. Rather, it is what any good biography should be: 

 a loving but frank portrayal of a special friend. 



Like all celebrities, the MBL has had its ups and downs. The ups have 

 far outnumbered the downs, but the downs have been there nonetheless: 

 the perennial financial problems, disagreements within the corporation 

 about its own mission, and even controversial proposals to have the MBL 

 managed by other institutions. But the MBL has managed to come through 

 these bad times more or less unscathed, retaining, as Jane Maienschein 

 shows so well, its essential magic. 



This book is aimed at the specialist and the nonspecialist alike. It is 

 written so as not to presuppose any particular background, or any famil- 

 iarity with biology or the MBL itself. As a personal history, it should be 

 accessible not only to biologists who know the MBL first-hand, but also to 

 the curious reader, the Cape Cod visitor, or the foreign dignitary who wants 

 to know something about American scientific research institutions. It may, 

 therefore, disappoint some research biologists, who might wish that there 

 were more detailed descriptions of the scientific work of the past or present 

 at the MBL. It may also disappoint some staunch MBL regulars, who would 

 like to see more details of local history and institutional lore. It may even 

 disappoint that special breed of modern historian of science, the institu- 

 tional historian, who prizes quantitative data — graphs and tables of num- 

 bers of investigators per summer, numbers of dollars spent, square footage 

 of lab space utilized. All that would be largely irrelevant, however. It would 

 not reveal nearly so well as does Professor Maienschein's more personal 

 account what it is that really makes up the spirit of the MBL. No book can 

 be all things to all people. One must take this portrait of the MBL on its 

 own terms. 



