Early days at the University of Maryland Available to Purchase

In 1971, John Corliss was Chair of the Department of Zoology at the University of Maryland and had just hired Gene Small as an Associate Professor. I was a nascent graduate student with Gene, Portia Holt (Lynn) was working on ciliate ultrastructure as a postdoctoral student in Corliss’s lab and Denis Lynn was studying sea-urchin ciliates as a doctoral student with Jacques Berger at the University of Toronto. In the summer of that year, Denis and Jacques traveled to Maryland to meet Gene Small. That trip laid the groundwork for what would be a long and productive collaboration between Denis and Gene, introduced Denis to the romance of his life and gave me the opportunity to acquire a scientific older brother and wonderful friend. One evening after good food, bad beer, and cigarettes of questionable composition, Gene and Jacques began a lively discussion about ciliate symbionts of cockroaches. During that...