IN the early 1920s, the Maize Genetics Cooperation (MGC) began in an informal way among R. A. Emerson and his students. His ethical and cooperative spirit paved the way for an expanded network of maize researchers who freely shared their materials and unpublished research, thus resulting in rapid progress in fundamental genetic research (Coe 2001; Kass and Bonneuil 2004). The first letter summarizing both published and unpublished maize linkage data was compiled by Emerson and his student George Beadle and sent to students of maize genetics on April 12, 1929. This communication was an outcome of a “cornfab” held in Emerson's hotel room in December 1928, during the annual American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) meetings. The “Historical Notes on Maize Cooperation” identifies Emerson's 1929 communication as the first Maize Genetics Cooperation News Letter (MNL; Emerson 1940). Beadle was the first secretary of the MGC and he solicited material for additional summaries of linkage data, which were distributed in two parts in 1930. Rhoades succeeded Beadle as secretary and continued to summarize and publish the reports of cooperators in the MNL, which continues to be published annually. The cooperators met at the Sixth International Congress of Genetics (ICG) at Ithaca in 1932 and organized a committee to establish the maize stock center at Cornell University and to seek funding for their enterprise. Emerson's grant application to the National Research Council (NRC) was denied and he was encouraged to apply immediately to the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), who granted him funds to support his information and supply network in 1934. The work of Barbara McClintock in cooperation with Beadle, Rhoades, Creighton, Burnham, and others at Cornell between 1928 and 1934 resulted in a definitive correlation of chromosomes and linkage groups in maize—ultimately published in 1935 by Emerson et al. The cytogenetics of maize was also reviewed in that year (Rhoades and McClintock 1935). The exhibits that Emerson submitted to support his Rockefeller Foundation grant included a historical summary of the MGC and MNL. These documents allowed us to reconstruct the events that established these important resources for the maize genetics community. Emerson's legacy lives on in the cooperative spirit of maize researchers and in the News Letter he founded 75 years ago. At the 1932 ICG held in Ithaca, New York, Rollins Adams Emerson (Nelson 1993), Head of the Department of Plant Breeding at Cornell University, gave an opening address titled, “The Present Status of Maize Genetics.” In his introduction he declared, “I cannot refrain from noting here a very real advantage experienced by students of maize genetics … I am aware of no other group of investigators who have so freely shared with each other not only their materials but even their unpublished data. The present status of maize genetics, whatever of noteworthy significance it presents, is largely to be credited to this somewhat unique, unselfishly cooperative spirit of the considerable group of students of maize genetics” (Emerson 1932, p. 141; Kass 2001). During this Congress, Emerson called a meeting of ∼45 students of maize genetics and formalized what would soon be called the Maize Genetics Cooperation. Following their meeting Emerson and his graduate student Marcus Rhoades issued on October 5, 1932, what has long been considered the first Maize Genetics Cooperation News Letter (Rhoades 1932a). Our research (Bonneuil and Kass 2001; Coe 2001; Kass and Bonneuil 2004; E. H. Coe and L. B. Kass, unpublished results), which we offer in keeping with the long tradition of maize cooperation, provides a historical perspective on the actual origin of the MGC and the beginnings of the MNL, which was first issued in 1929. We present here the history of Emerson's successful negotiations with the Rockefeller Foundation to fund his cooperative enterprise at Cornell University following his unsuccessful attempt to obtain funding from the NRC. Future Nobel laureates George Beadle, Emerson's student, and Barbara McClintock, Lester W. Sharp's student and Beadle's collaborator, freely submitted their results to the MNL; this laid the groundwork for a similar publication, the Drosophila Information Service, for the Drosophila geneticists in March 1934 (Bridges and Demerec 1934) and for the Worm Breeders Gazette, the community newsletter of the roundworm biologists (Edgar 1975; Cohen 1995), among others. We rejoice in the founding of Emerson's ideal and celebrate the 75th anniversary of the MNL.