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5— Transition 2
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5—
Transition 2

The war was finally over.

The future was now open, but which path to choose? I had been away from biology for four years. I had of necessity acquired a considerable and valuable expertise in some of the most advanced areas of electronics. This skill was soon recognized. Major electronics firms—RCA, General Electric, Bell Laboratories—were gearing up for the return to a civilian economy. Realizing the considerable pool of talent at the Radiation Laboratory, recruiting teams soon appeared. Also, new electronics companies—some small and others not so small—were being organized, several by the new Radiation Laboratory alumni. I was interviewed by several of these companies and offered employment at salaries approaching ten thousand dollars per year, a quite handsome sum in those days and three to four times my Radiation Laboratory salary.

My alternative was to return to graduate school to obtain a Ph.D. But how would I and my wife be supported? It seemed unreasonable to ask my family to provide my support again, since I was approaching the age of twenty-six. For the interim, the Radiation Laboratory had undertaken to provide a written record of its accomplishments and thereby make publically available all of the technical knowledge the laboratory had collectively acquired. The Radiation Laboratory Series ultimately came to twenty-eight volumes. I agreed to stay on a few months to provide two chapters: one on the conception and design features of the APS-10 radar, one on radar altimeters.


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The money from industry certainly was tempting and to discard four years of hard-learned expertise was grievous. But in my heart I was a biologist. I wanted to explore the mysteries of living organisms, not to design sophisticated electronic gadgets. Manifestly, a life in the electronics and communications industries over the past four decades would have been exciting and surely more financially rewarding, but I have never regretted my choice.

I became aware, through Art Solomon, of a proposal for the American Cancer Society to provide fellowships to make possible the entry, or re-entry, of several of the younger scientists at the Radiation Laboratory into biology. I applied for this program; others included Bob Taylor and Ed McNichol (later director of the National Eye Institute). Approval of the proposal and award of a fellowship of two thousand dollars followed. Where should I study? I briefly considered other institutions, including Caltech. But we had a place to live, Joan had a job, and my mentor, John Loofbourow, was returning to MIT. There seemed no especial advantage to going elsewhere and several disadvantages, so in February 1946 I enrolled as a graduate student in biology at MIT.


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