MEGASTARS
Some Memories of
Time Spent With
Prof. Victor A. McKusick in Baltimore
By Prof. Digamber S. Borgaonkar PhD
While a graduate student at Oklahoma State University, I saw Victor McKusick’s review book Medical Genetics 1958-60 on the new book shelf of the library. Since, I had taken a course in Human Genetics, taught by Dr. Sheldon Reed, at the University of Minnesota in the Spring of 1959, who had coined the term ‘Genetic Counselling’, I was interested in pursuing that field. My first contact with Victor was to write a letter, in 1962, asking him if he would have something for me after I get my doctorate. He had nothing for someone like me at that time. Later in 1963, I became an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks.
During the Spring of 1964, I was able to visit the Cytogenetic laboratory in the Pathology Department of the Medical School run by Dr. Wasdahl and Ms. Jean Saumur and was thrilled after seeing the human chromosomes under a microscope. So, I wrote to Victor, again, stating that I am on faculty in North Dakota and committed to teach there during the summer of 1964 but would he have something for me during the summer of 1965. The Chromosome Laboratory, established by Dr. Malcolm Ferguson-Smith in 1959, was headed by Dr. Peter Bowen. Dr. Bowen, a Canadian. Peter was leaving Baltimore to and start a Department of Medical Genetics at Edmonton, Alberta at the end of June. So, Victor sent me a telegram and invited me to give a talk in Baltimore, all expenses paid. I was stunned. In early April, with about knee deep snow on the ground, my new wife, Manda, and I left Grand Forks for Minneapolis where I left her with some Maharashtrian friends and took a flight to Baltimore where forsythias were blooming. Victor put me up in the guest room under the Dome, a Hopkins landmark building. On a bedside table, lay the books written by Allen Chesney - History of Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. I noticed that the Hopkins Hospital was established in 1876 while General Custer was still fighting American Indians in North Dakota! Imagine my conversation that night with my wife detailing that coincidence.
Upon my return to Grand Forks, Victor kept on sending me telegrams: stating that he would send me and my wife to Puerto Rico to attend the Mammalian Cytogenetics meeting in the Fall of 1964, to observe leading cytogenetics laboratories around the country, and offering me a faculty position to head the Chromosome Laboratory and a five figure annual salary. I learnt later that many human cytogenetic labs were heading by people like me who had been trained in other fields. My chairman, Paul Kanowski, did not even bother to ask me anything else but sought my help in recruiting someone to take my place in the department.
The genetics course that I offered in the department for the first time in the spring of 1964 was hugely popular. It had more students than all other upper level courses combined! We were able to recruit Dr. Syed Jalal from Wisconsin to Grand Forks. Several years later, at an American Society meeting, Dr. Jalal’s graduate student, Gordon Dewald, had greeted me saying that his entry into human genetics was because of me! I had spent my life in USA till then in the Midwest and did not know if I would like living in Baltimore, Maryland on the East Coast. Now, I have been on the East Coast for more than 40 years. I have spent more years in Delaware than my native city of Hyderabad in India.
I left Johns Hopkins, in 1978, when I found that I would be able to continue my main research activity of putting out the book Chromosomal Variation in Man which now is available on line at www.wiley.com/borgaonkar in other institutions in the country.
Both our children spent their first decade of life in Baltimore. Victor’s two boys are just couple years older than our son. So, Victor and I took turns in taking the three of them to the Baltimore Oriole’s ball games! Victor also diagnosed my daughter Sonya’s Osteogenesis imperfecta condition and helped us a great deal in her management. Sonya is now a mother, an attorney in Virginia.
|
|
|
|
Digamber S. Borgaonkar, Ph.D., LNG/NIA/NIH, Wilmington, DE, USA. His email is dsborgaonkar@hotmail.com
