36 i^ 100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



Szent-Gyorgyi suddenly had to leave Hungary in 1947, ten years after having 

 received the Nobel Prize for his work on vitamin C, he recalled the lobsters 

 and the lab. Here was a laboratory where he could rent research space and 

 not have to owe anybody arrything. He moved to Woods Hole for good and 

 made a great impact on the MBL. As recent director Paul Gross put it, 

 "During the height of his career, when I was a student here, he was for 

 many of us the paradigm of the scientist as the spearhead of culture. " He 

 was, in short, "the very model of a man." 



Szent-Gyorgyi rented a house for a year, then decided to buy. The real 

 estate agent was not much more optimistic than a realtor might be today, 

 insisting that there really was nothing to look at. Szent-Gyorgyi persisted, so 

 the agent drove the car around to point out the remote possibilities. When 

 he saw a boarded-up house on Penzance Point that he simply had to have, 

 the agent insisted that it was too big. In addition, Szent-Gybrgyi's money was 

 all tied up in Hungary. He bought the house anyway, complete udth furni- 

 ture, lovely china for twelve, glassware, and silverware, all from the very 

 gracious and generous former owners. Many MBL houses have been ac- 

 quired in similarly unorthodox manners, though seldom so fully equipped 

 and with so little immediate money down. 



Yet that increased desire among scientists to own houses also put 

 pressures on the existing housing, so that there were far fewer places to 

 rent in town. The MBL was going to have to provide for its visitors. Today 

 those visitors may find themselves in any of an increasing number of 

 rooming houses owned by the MBL, and embryonic plans for a second 

 modern dormitory building are taking shape. Some of today's housing is in 

 noisy old wooden buildings with rooms rambling everywhere, so typical of 

 remodeled Cape Cod houses. Others are brick buildings wdth rooms ar- 

 ranged along the long hallway in 1920s fashion, when the brick apartment 

 building was constructed in 1926 to meet the perennial housing shortage. 

 Inevitably, these will probably make way for larger and more modern 

 facilities that will use the space more efficiently or provide more laboratory 

 space as well. 



Some visitors, including those who aiTive for shorter times to use the 

 library or to work briefly in someone else's laboratory, find themselves 

 assigned to the more modern Swope Center, built after the post-World War 

 II "marriage boom." Swope features private bathrooms and a hotellike 

 atmosphere, quite a luxury compared to the old wooden dormitory days. 



Swope also has a built-in wake-up calling system, despite its absence of 

 telephones. The bell tower next to the Eel Pond and associated with St. 

 Joseph's Church rings the traditional calls at 7 a.m., noon, and 6 imvi., tlianks 

 to Fr-ank Lillie's wife, Frances Crane Lillie. In 1929 she presented tlie tower, 

 with its small chapel and garden areas, to Woods Hole, calling for the 

 regular ringing of its two bells, Mendel and Pasteur, The Mendel bell — 



