Becoming a scientist: what I learned from Gunny.

It was the spring of 1968, I was 19 years old and a sophomore at University of Illinois in Urbana, and I very much needed a job. A chemistry classmate had mentioned that he was working some afternoons in the research lab of an organic chemist, washing glassware and preparing solutions. I went to see my friend at work and meet his boss, who told me that he didn’t have another job available but suggested that I go down the hall into the East Chem building and talk to a Professor Gunsalus, who he said often hired part-time people. My first memory of I.C. Gunsalus (Gunny to everyone who knows him) was hearing his unforgettable, mellifluous baritone voice as he welcomed me into his office. Gunny looked over my resume, which listed my previous work experience on a farm, as a caddy, a busboy, a factory worker, and dorm dining hall worker, plus my grades and courses in the chemistry curriculum, as I nervously awaited his verdict. When I left his office that day, I was walking on air about my good fortune in landing a laboratory job paying, what was to me at the time, the luxurious rate of $1.50 per hour. But I hadn’t an inkling that the course of my life was changed at that moment because I had taken the first step on the path toward becoming a research scientist. I started in Gunny’s lab at what must be the lowest rung on the research career ladder: part-time assistant to a part-time lab assistant. I first was given the responsibility of keeping the lab’s coffee pot filled and then was taught how to isolate mutants of a strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas putida that was able to degrade camphor [1]—a subject of investigation that seemed very odd to me in the beginning. I learned that Gunny was interested in this organism because it provided the opportunity to use the new tools of microbial genetics to understand the structure and function of oxidative enzymes, including P450 cytochromes, which