Epitogue 



In the early 1970s the American Institute of Biological Sciences pub- 

 lished a collection of essays to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of AIBS. I 

 served on the editorial committee of that volume, which included twenty- 

 one chapters written by leading scientists from nearly every area of biology. 

 We asked our eminent authors not to look back over AIBS's first twenty-five 

 years, but to look forward and speculate about the problems biologists 

 would be tackling in the next twenty-five years. The resulting essays were 

 provocative, ambitious, and, for the most part, wrong: neaiiy everything we 

 hoped to accomplish in twenty-five years was accomplished within a decade. 



Although it is always difficult to look forward in science with any 

 precision, an anniversary— especially a centennial anniversary— is an ap- 

 propriate time both for looking to the future and for remembering the past. 



At the Marine Biological Laboratory, recalling the past has occupied 

 numerous historians, philosophers, scientists, and writers over the last few 

 years. Among those who have undertaken historical projects, Jane Maien- 

 schein and Ruth Davis have produced one of the most accessible and 

 personal portraits of the MBL. Professor Maienschein's text and archivist 

 Davis's pictures recall the men and women of science who founded the 

 MBL, and the subsequent generations of investigators and students who 

 came to work in the village that served as the crossroads of American 

 biology. These, of course, are the stories you'd expect to find in a popular 

 history of a science institution. Less predictably, 100 Years Exploring Life 

 remembers the nonscientific side of life at the early MBL: conversations in 

 the old mess hall, songs sung by students at the MBL Club, canoe races, and 

 amateur whaling expeditions. The book remembers people like Charles R. 

 Crane, who rallied to the support of the fledgling laboratory in its early 

 decades. 



As you read about the sense of adventure and discovery that prevailed 

 in the laboratory's early days, you begin to understand why Woods Hole 

 residents who were not themselves directiy engaged in science nonetheless 

 welcomed the MBL — donating scarce parcels of land, erecting new build- 

 ings, lobbying with foundations on behalf of the sometimes financially 

 pressed laboratory, and, on many occasions, writing checks to cover 

 year-end budget shortfalls. In the early part of the century, the local 

 community— everyone from merchants to boardinghouse owners, from 

 fishermen to captains of American industry— understood that the MBL 



