3 The New York Years (1931–1953)

Cold Spring Harbor (1943–1952) 243
whenever she wanted to leave the state of New Jersey. However, visits to the dentist
or doctor in New York were easily granted and she could then stay all day, go
shopping and visit friends. Uncle George and Aunt Helen Simon (p. 103) who lived
in Bernardsville, had an apartment in New York and the Mayrs could occasionally
see them there. In 1943 they obtained permission to spend their summers in
Cold Spring Harbor (see below). After the initial anxiety, life was not unbearable
during the war. Of course, they were worrying about their families and friends in
Germany. Occasionally it was possible to send and receive a message of 20 words
via the Red Cross.
Several months after their “arrest” at the Tenafly police department their case
came up for a hearing before a board in Newark which had been set up to deal
with enemy aliens living in New Jersey. The prosecutor’s only aim was to prove
that the Mayrs were guilty and dangerous. They were interrogated separately, but
afterwards it was decided that they could remain free on parole. In addition to the
weekly visits to the Tenafly police department, they now had to go once a month
also to Ellis Island, off the southern tip of Manhattan, to report to the Department
of Immigration and Naturalization. This involved a lot of traveling and took nearly
a whole day. In spite of these inconveniences the Mayrs were not unhappy realizing
how lucky they were to be far away from the events of the war.
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (1943–1952)
A “Biological Laboratory” had been founded on the shores of Long Island Sound
in 1890 followed by a “Station for Experimental Evolution” in 1904 (renamed the
“Department of Genetics” in 1921). Both were under the direction of M. Demerec
during the 1940s and 1950s (Watson 1991). During the 1940s, the Biological Laboratory
sponsored the work of summer researchers, while the Department of Genetics
supported by the Carnegie Institution had a number of permanent staff members.
Several European experimentalists who had fled their homelands gathered at Cold
Spring Harbor (CSH). By the mid-1940s these scientists had forged to a large part
a new discipline in the biological sciences–“molecular biology.” Among them were
the physicist Max Delbrück and the microbiologist Salvador Luria who conducted
joint experiments on bacteria-eating viruses (bacteriophages). For most of the year
they had teaching duties at the universities of Nashville and Indiana, respectively,
but took advantage of the opportunity afforded by the summer research program
at CSH to continue their own research. From 1945 onwards they taught for many
years at CSH their highly popular “Phage course.”
When Mayr’s attempt at studying experimentally the nature of isolating mechanisms
in birds had failed (p. 228), he complained about this to Dobzhansky who
answered “Why don’t you do this kind of work with Drosophila? I shall spend next
summer at Cold Spring Harbor. Let us then do some joint papers. I contribute
the Drosophila technique and you set up the experiments asking the right kind of
questions.” Hence, beginning with 1943 and continuing until 1952, Mayr and his
family spent their summers in Cold Spring Harbor (CSH), Long Island, one hour