Foreword 



Imagine a warm summer night in mid-August. You are standing on a dock at 

 midnight in the light of a full moon, peering down into the dark water below. 

 The surface of the water ripples as if it were alive. As your eyes grow 

 accustomed to the moonlit darkness, you realize that the water is alive. You 

 are watching the mating ritual of thousands of writhing, swirling polychete 

 worms as they seek out their mates under the influence of the full moon's 

 light. A timeless event unfolds before you, connecting you back to primeval 

 oceans, where ancient progenitors of these polychetes repeated a similar 

 ritual, before any human eyes were there to see. Before you is an expression 

 of life at its most fundamental, its most dynamic, its most breathtaking. Like 

 thousands of students of marine embryology who stood on this dock before 

 you, you wall always remember this scene and the institution that led you to 

 it: the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 



In 1988 the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) celebrated its centen- 

 nial. As it enters its second century, the MBL not only looks back to a great 

 past, but forward to a great future as the United States' premier biological 

 research institute. It is therefore fitting that its unique story be told at this 

 time. In this well-researched, sometimes humorous, always human 'biog- 

 raphy" of this eclectic institution, historian of science Jane Maienschein has 

 caught a glimpse of what it is that has made the MBL so special to all who 

 have spent any time there. 



Essayist Lewis Thomas has described the MBL as a "National Biological 

 Laboratory, " an institution that brings together each summer a collection of 

 biologists from across the United States and abroad. From its founding in 

 1888 onward, the MBL has indeed served as a gathering spot for biologists 

 who come to Woods Hole not only to work with their favorite marine 

 organisms, but also to converse with each other and exchange ideas in a way 

 that seldom happens in the more limited confines of university biology 

 departments. 



Almost from the beginning, the MBL attracted international as well as 

 American investigators, becoming increasingly a "World Biological Labora- 

 tory" since the turn of the century. Unlike its European counterparts, where 

 the focus has always been almost exclusively on research, often by only the 

 most established senior investigators, the MBL has always had a diversity of 

 programs and personnel. There is, of course, a major emphasis on re- 

 search. In addition, however, the MBL has always been equally devoted to 



