farm, as he meshed them together until the problem of interest
was solved. Having been able to retain only three expressions
for probably less than a second with considerable effort, I was
amazed by this account of an incomprehensible talent of an
unquestioned genius.
The preceding was intended to describe some of the activities
that went into our early contributions to research on specific
aspects of the bacterial division cycle. It is not comprehensive
and it only reflects our work and not those of numerous others
whose studies during the same time frame all contributed to the
accomplishments in this field in the late 1960s. In particular, the
design of our experiments was made possible by the critical discoveries
of Schaechter et al. (1958) on the relationship between
cellular properties and culture conditions. Additionally, interpretation
of our findings in rapidly growing cells was facilitated by
the earlier report of multifork DNA replication in Bacillus subtilis
(Yoshikawa et al., 1964). I will never know whether the work
described here would have been performed, or interpreted correctly,
absent these prior findings. Steve Cooper left Buffalo in
1970 for the University of Michigan, but we remained in touch
for years, including at the occasional meeting (Figure 3). Several
colleagues whose published work, private discussions and
encouragement were of great help during this time have already
been mentioned, but I also wish to especially acknowledge my
long-term collaboration with Olga Pierucci, a number of valuable
inputs from K. Gordon Lark, Arthur Pardee and Joe Clark,
and the important insightful subsequent contributions of Alan C.
Leonard.
A Simplified Baby Machine
My primary reasons for agreeing to write this exhumation of the
past are contained in this and the following section. So if you have
skimmed through the preceding, but have a developing interest
in synchronous cells or the bacterial cell cycle, this is the point