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138 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z S C O T T SCOTT DAVID W. THEN AND NOW 4 M.S., University of Chicago 4 Ph.D., Immunology, Yale FAMI LY 4 Wife, Judy Gold 4 Sons, Jason and Joshua 4 Grandchildren, Kaia, Jedi, Ella and Layla ADDRESS 4 5902 Bradley Blvd. Bethesda, MD 20814 CONTACT 301 641-9684 scottd43@gmail.com http://mmp.planetary.org/scien/ scott/scott70.htm I G R E W U P in a small town in central New Jersey (Exit 131, Metuchen). My parents had emi- grated from Latvia and Poland in the 1920s and settled in Trenton, where my brother and I were both born with the surname “Scutelsky.” In 1953, my father, a tailor now liv- ing in Metuchen, changed our name to Scott so that his kids would grow up with anAmerican name. It was in the middle of the McCarthy era and the Rosenbergs had just been exe- cuted as Russian spies! My parents were Roosevelt Democrats, but oth- erwise apolitical; the name change was the most political thing my fa- ther did but it was a protective act for his children. I got interested in science during junior high school and thought I would go into chem- istry based on the inf luence of a chemist who was a mentor for the astronomy club at the local YMCA. Despite growing microorganisms in stinky hay infusions, I didn’t ex- pect to go into biology until I came to Antioch. How I got there was un- usual! My generation was the first to attend college. The only college I knew was Rutgers, five miles away, my older brother’s alma mater. I vis- ited no other campus but knew I wanted to go farther away to college. Six hundred miles sounded good.My high school guidance counselor en- couraged me to go Ivy, but I applied to small midwestern schools like Antioch, Oberlin and Carleton. I chose Antioch based on an article in the Sunday New York Daily News magazine section,which talked about co-op. That made so much sense to me! My Antioch interview was in NewYork City so I arrived in Yellow Springs, having never seen the campus. My parents dropped me off with all the wrong clothes and my mother cautioned (as she observed the bearded longhaired students on the Union stoop) “stay away from the beatniks.” A week later, I asked her to send out my jeans and blue work shirts! Aiming for a B.S. in chemistry, I took calcu- lus from Tom Holyoke and it was clear from Calc II that a B.S. was not in my future. I turned to biology and was blessed like so many others to have Ed Samuel as an advisor. I was in his office when he heard that the genetic code had been broken by Nirenberg. His enthusiasm and love of life and science were infectious. His quote of e.e. cummings in his fi- nal bio lecture is still with me: While you and I have lips and voices which Are for kissing and to sing with, Who cares if some one-eyed son of a bitch Invents an instrument to measure spring with? As someone with limited vision in one eye, I was not offended but rather inspired. I was not politically very active but did go to a peace vigil at Wright Patterson my first Thanksgiving (to the disapproval of a second cousin who worked there and picked me up at the vigil).Then there was the Gegner’s barber shop sit-in, where I was in the last wave before the arrests, and of course hearing the Rev. King at the 1963 march on Washington. I still have a double exposure of the March from my brownie camera! My first co-op was inWashington at the National Bureau of Standards. So this naïve, innocent kid got a room on Connecticut Avenue near Calvert Street and became an entry level government employee (ironi- cally, the latter is what I am today, gov’t that is) in a physics lab study- ing flame patterns for fire depart- ments.On my own at age 18 in a big city: what a learning experience! Thank you,Antioch. Subsequently, I got an “own plans” job at Rutgers where I discov- ered immunology, my life’s work in research. (I did live at home to save money). I followed that with another