Life in Science

Abstract

Armin Dale Kaiser, Professor of Biochemistry and of Developmental Biology, Emeritus, Stanford University Medical School My love for experimental biology has grown over the years. My father was a YMCA secretary who ran the Y’s summer camp, Camp Wakonda. It was on the Miami and Erie Canal, which at the time was wild and was reminiscent of going back to nature. At camp, Dad taught me to love nature’s world, which is why I became an experimental biologist. While I studied at Piqua High School, I worked on Saturdays at Ruble’s radio repair shop. Radio sets in those days used vacuum tubes, transformers, resistors and capacitors. It was fun trying to figure out which part was “bad” from the set’s symptoms, then trying to fix it. These attempts were my first brush with experimental science. I attended Purdue University, paid for by the GI Bill, since I had served in the US Army in 1946–47. Freshman year at Purdue provided my first struggle with experimental errors. The freshman engineering course in surveying consisted of tracing a “Dumpy” level circuit around campus from the top of one fire-plug to the next. Somehow, the plug on which we had started the circuit seemed to have changed its elevation significantly 3 days later when we closed the circuit. I liked all my college teachers, notably my math, physics and chemistry teachers. Humanities classes were also interesting, particularly the discussions of moral and political philosophy. In my sophomore year I realized that I preferred science to engineering, and I shifted from engineering to a science curriculum so that I could study biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. I applied to several graduate schools in biophysics, which seemed to include all of my interests.