laa g^ 100 YEARS EXPLORING LIFE, 1888-1988 



thing is not working, 99 times out of 100 someone here at the MBL will have 

 something to help." The absence of teaching responsibilities and of many of 

 the more mundane administrative chores allows researchers intense con- 

 centration on those problems of shared interest during the summers. MBL 

 workers seem to collaborate far more often with other MBL scientists than 

 w\\h their longer-term colleagues back at their winter quarters. And they 

 generate an astonishing array of well-attended special symposia and collo- 

 quium series all summer long. 



Late in his life, Lillie worried that the intense summer research away 

 from the home lab encouraged quick descriptive work and did not allow the 

 careful development of more sustained research programs, particularly 

 demanding experimental programs. It is a problem to pick up and move for 

 the summer, but the "intellectual rejuvenation" and the opportunities for 

 exchange of ideas and techniques, as well as the ready availability of ft-esh 

 marine material, far outweigh the disadvantages. 



EorCy Days of Marine BioCogy 



The sophistication of the problems and of the equipment today is a far cry 

 from the earliest days in marine biology, when the Frenchmen Henri 

 Milne-Edwards and his friends Victor Audouin and Jean Louis de Quatre- 

 fages took to the seashore with only their nets, lots of baggy jacket pockets, 

 and an assortment of collecting bottles. Germcin physiologist Johannes 

 Miiller then took his group of students to North Sea holiday spots and added 

 a small boat and larger collecting nets in order to make what he called 

 pelagic sweepings. With such simple equipment, a few men sought to learn 

 about life in the sea, life that they had only recently begun to recognize for 

 the richness and diversity it exhibited. 



One of the students who made the pilgrimage to the North Sea with 

 Miiller was ardent evolutionist Ernst Haeckel, who sought to find the 

 earliest life forms in the ocean. In turn, he too took his students to tlie 

 seashore. In his desire to establish a permanent marine station, one of those 

 students, German Darwinian Anton Dohrn, founded the Naples Zoological 

 Station in Italy in 1872. Dohrn did not envision any simple system of nets and 

 collecting bottles. His grand laboratoiy instead contained a magnificent 

 public aquarium dovvoistairs and wonderfully modern research laborato- 

 ries upstairs. Visitors could gather there ft^om all around the world, as long 

 as they had a serious research purpose and as long as they or a sponsor 

 subscribed to a table for their use. 



Our friend Whitman was the first American at the Naples Station, 

 though as a guest of Dohrn's, since no Americans had subscribed to a 

 research table yet. Then came Emily Nunn, later Whitman's wife. Wilson 

 arrived a few years later, followed by a steady stream of otlier Americans, 



