June 8, 2002, was a momentous date in my lifetime. It was the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The education that I received at RPI has allowed me to live a life of great satisfaction; the intervening years have permitted me to give back in some small way the marvelous advantages I reaped from such learning.
The return to campus this summer evoked fond memories of my undergraduate days, from 1948 to 1952. I was one of the commuter students who shared rides from Albany, who trudged through the snow during the severe winter storms, who skidded up the slippery steps of The Approach, and snuck lunch in the cloakroom of the library along with other commuting students. I especially recall the returning GI’s, who flooded the campus and who set another tone; they had seen the horrors of war and they were going to get the most out of a college education that was our country’s gift to these valiant men.
I started as a major in chemical engineering but after one semester realized that I was more theoretically inclined and switched to chemistry, which I have loved since early in high school. I remember there being only 12 chemistry majors at the time so that we were able to have easy access to our professors in all our specialized courses.
Probably because of my close interaction with the faculty, I decided that I wanted to spend my life in academia also. My first year of graduate school was in the chemistry department at Cornell University. However, I had already met my future wife at Russell Sage. She lived in New York, so I was accepted and transferred to the renowned chemistry department at Columbia University in New York City. The department’s requirement for anyone pursuing a Ph.D. degree was to pass qualifying exams in Organic, Physical, Analytical, and Inorganic Chemistry. The exams were given over a four day period; no student in twenty-five years had passed them all on a first try. Because of the education that RPI afforded me, I broke that record and was thus able to start my thesis immediately.
I attribute my success to the rigorous coursework in my undergraduate years. Many of the courses were equivalent to those in graduate school. I elected to work on a thesis in the growing field of protein chemistry/biochemistry where I felt my training in chemistry would be quite valuable. The structure of DNA had just been described in 1953 by Watson and Crick and there was soon to be an explosion of knowledge in the evolving field of molecular biology. I felt the need to be part of it.
After completing my thesis in three years and graduating in 1956—another feat which I attribute to my solid foundation and training at RPI—I received a three-year post doctoral fellowship from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and continued my training, spending two years at the Rockefeller University and one year at the Carlsberg Laboratory in Copenhagen Denmark. In 1959, I accepted an offer as an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center where I have spent my entire career. In 1972, I was made Professor and Chairman of Biochemistry, a position I still retain. In 1998, the University named me Distinguished Professor, a designation given rarely as a recognition to those few individuals who have achieved an international reputation in research.
My academic career and my recent activities in the biotechnology arena continue to be exciting and rewarding. They have afforded me and my family the opportunity to live in foreign climes and to travel extensively to all parts of the world.
In these pursuits, my friendships extend to scientists around the globe. All of us recognize that science is a continual learning process which occurs through personal contacts, reading journals, attending lectures, seminars, and symposia. For example, a whole new era of molecular biology has developed in my scientific lifetime, requiring the acquisition of an entire new “language.”
In reviewing the career that has been mine as a scientist and then later as an entrepreneur, many of the achievements can be attributed to the firm foundation in chemistry for which RPI was responsible. Chemistry and biochemistry are, in my opinion, the basis of all biological sciences and the vocabulary of medical languages. While RPI offers many different majors, my experience suggests that the training received at Rensselaer will guarantee the highest level of performance in any career and be the foundation for a lifetime of learning.
Rensselaer can provide every young person with all the attributes necessary for a successful career. But each individual must select carefully that option that will guarantee an eagerness to return to work every morning. That’s what has helped make my life so worthwhile!
——————————————————————————
To comment on this article, write to Dr. Stracher at strachea@ hscbklyn.edu.
