Michael Potter Exhibit

“In the 1950s, a ferment of new theoretical ideas on the cellular and genetic basis of antibody formation electrified the field of immunology and began a new age in experimentation.  Two problems dominated the thoughts of scientists during most of this decade—the cellular basis of antibody formation (how did it work?) and the genetic basis of antibody diversity (how could the genes in one individual generate antibodies for the thousands and thousands of antigens?).  …The pace of research was remarkable. One bridge between fields such as immunology, cancer research, protein chemistry, and molecular biology was the plasma cell.”
  —Michael Potter “The Early History of Plasma Cell Tumors in Mice, 1954-1976.”

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Christian Boehmer Anfinsen

n the spring of 1959, a little-known biochemist at the National Heart Institute of the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, named Christian Anfinsen, sent an ambitious manuscript to the respected academic publisher John Wiley & Sons. They were clearly impressed. The resulting book published just a few months later, titled The Molecular Basis of Evolution, was the first rigorous attempt to integrate the newly developing field of protein chemistry with the classical concepts of genetics. Anfinsen stated in his preface, that “Everyone in science must be interested in the evolutionary process as the central theme of biology.”

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