5 I THE PEOPLE A 93 



tlie roles of the MBL in addition to his own. The resuh appears as a series 

 of Mr. Smith shots: in the laboratory doing research, at the electron 

 microscope making observations, reading diligently in the library, and so 

 forth. The prototypical dedicated scientist at work, in other words. Did 

 anyone notice that it was the same indispensable Homer Smith each time? 

 The MBL spirit normally resides in the population of researchers, students, 

 and administrators working together rather than in any one man. 



Edwin Grant Conkiin and Chades Otis Whitman 



In earlier years, when there were fewer people, the leaders stood out more 

 clearly. Whitman — solemn, dedicated, with his shock of white hair and 

 upright stature — inspired trust. He was clearly a leader, those earliest 

 students recognized. Edwdn Grant Conkiin recalled his first encounter vvdth 

 the already well known man. Conkiin was a student at Johns Hopkins under 

 William Keith Brooks, and Brooks continued to prefer the Fish Commission 

 to the MBL. As a result, Conkiin found himself in Woods Hole at the Fish 

 Commission table doing research in 1891. Brooks had sent him up to the 

 seashore to begin his embryological research and had advised him, when 

 Conkiin asked, to study the siphonophores. Upon his arrival in Woods Hole, 

 Conkiin asked where he could find some specimens. Nowhere, came the 

 reply. Woods Hole had no siphonophores. Thus thrown onto his own 

 resources, and without a telephone to ask instantaneously for further 

 guidance from the home advisor, Conkiin turned to the plentiful and 

 efficiently compact local slipper snail Crepidula. 



As he began to study the development of Crepidula from its earliest egg 

 cell stage, Conkiin observed the morphological details of cell division and 

 nuclear as well as cytoplasmic activity. Conkiin found the earliest stages of 

 development fascinating. He turned closer and closer attention to them, 

 thus embarking on what became known as cell lineage work, in which 

 researchers meticulously traced the detailed changes in each cell as it 

 underwent division. They thereby charted the lineage of each cell as it 

 became increasingly differentiated towards its eventual role in the adult 

 organism. 



One day, Conkiin reported, Columbia University cytologist Edmund 

 Beecher Wilson walked across the street to talk with him. Wilson had also 

 studied with Brooks at Johns Hopkins but had completed his Ph.D. roughly 

 a decade earlier. He had already achieved a reputation with his careful 

 cytological and embryological work. Conkiin was thrilled that Wilson was 

 visiting and he was even more excited when he learned why. Wilson had 

 been working on his own cell lineage studies, using the marine worm Nereis 

 instead of Conklin's Crepidula. Perhaps they could make a close compar- 

 ison of the two organisms and their changing cleavage patterns. Such a 



