Commentary. Looking back

The opportunity to participate in this Festschrift provides an irresistible temptation to look back to the early 1950s when the Institute of Environmental Medicine was established and Norton Nelson's pivotal role in its devel? opment took shape. My participation was limited to four happy and productive years in the Institute from 1951 to 1955. It began with an invitation from Anthony Lanza and Norton Nelson to return to NYU from the Sloan Kettering Institute to which I had gone to join David Pressman on a study of antigens in normal and tumor cells. As I recall the circumstances, the invitation grew out of a grant from the Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey to the Institute for research in immunology involving skin. The grant pro? vided $10,000 per year and it was intended to support the research and to provide a stipend for a young faculty person, with the understanding that the stipend could be augmented because of its limited nature. When offered the grant, I accepted without hesitation. The amount it provided seemed a princely sum at the time; and the need I faced to support a growing family seemed also to be pro? vided for by the opportunity to practice medicine parttime in mid-town Manhattan, in an office that was a 10-min walk from the laboratory. The laboratory was then located in handsome quarters in the then new medical sciences building on 1st Avenue. I have never for a moment regreted accepting that of? fer. As an assistant professor, I was completely independent to develop a research program in immunology; and the stipulation that the skin be involved was no restriction at all, for it fit very well with my intention to depend upon allergic skin reactions to simple chemicals as an as? say system for examining the structure-function relationships in immune responses to haptens. My move to the In? stitute proved all the more congenial where I was joined by a group of effective enthusiastic colleagues. Sid Belman was nominally a technician, but quickly became a re? search colleague, then a graduate student, and later (af? ter I had gone to St. Louis) a member of the faculty. Leo Orris, and then Mary Carsten and Milton Tkbachnick as