5 I THE PEOPLE ^ 107 



valuable time to help anyone with experimental work. While Reznikoflfs 

 group was getting about 60 to 70 percent successful cleavage, Just would get 

 98 to 99 percent. They asked him how he did it. In his typical way, he showed 

 them. He kept his starfish and sea urchins in a covered bucket, even during 

 the very short time it took to move them into the lab. He thus avoided the 

 accelerating and confounding effects of the sun. 



Foreigners have always been officially welcome, though the relative 

 proportions of visitors from different countries have changed significantly 

 with time. The wars and depression brought refugees to America, among 

 them many excellent scientists, but the MBL did not have sufficient re- 

 sources to take them in in substantial numbers. Refugees often arrived with 

 nothing to support their research or even to live on, but helpful scientists 

 did sometimes adopt some of them and gave them space in their labs. 



Japanese students have played a prominent role at the MBL at various 

 times, beginning in the earliest years when Whitman's student Shosaburo 

 Watase attended. Whitman regarded Watase as probably the leading cytol- 

 ogist in America and promoted him at the University of Chicago and the 

 MBL. Spending his summers in Woods Hole, Watase evidently felt himself 

 well treated and comfortable, despite his imperfect English. In Chicago, he 

 met with less hospitable treatment as the administration criticized his 

 teaching and failed to award him promotions. This leading cytologist even- 

 tually left the United States and the MBL to return to Japan. 



In the early years Whitman also hired Japanese artists for the summer 

 staff, to help with drawing and final coloring of plates. Eventually they found 

 American artists and photographers as well. Whitman's connection with 

 Japan dated to the years he had spent teaching biology at the Imperial 

 University of Tokyo. He had had only four graduate students and fairly 

 limited facilities to work with, but all four became published, successful 

 professional biologists. Whitman gained tremendous respect for the Japa- 

 nese people but not for the University of Tokyo bureaucracy. He left his job 

 in Japan partly because they told him that his students could not publish 

 their owii work under their own names. The professor's name must be 

 given as autlior. Whitman rebelled against what he saw as a gross stupidity 

 and helped to have the papers published in other, more tolerant journals 

 elsewhere. In Japan, he nonetheless acquired a love for the people that set 

 the atmosphere of acceptance at the MBL. 



A framed notice on the wall of the library's card catalog room also tells 

 of the sympathy between Japanese scientists and the MBL. The handwritten 

 sign reads: 



This is a marine biological station with her history of over sixty years. 



If you are from the Eastern Coast, some of you might know of Woods 

 Hole or Mt. Desert or Tortugas. 



