Thinking about Howard Temin

Twenty years after the discovery of oncogenes, we have come to Keystone to assess progress and find new pathways to discovery. To begin this homage to the power of molecular biology, I want to go back to the historic roots of this discipline. Each spring there is a gathering of scientists at Cold Spring Harbor to discuss some aspect of contemporary biology and they are published as the Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology. That phrase, "quantitative biology" seems quaint today--who among us could imagine non-quantitative biology? But those symposia are a record of a new and revolutionary influence on 20th century biology, the desire for quantitative measurement in a field that had been dominated by observation.