Some Personal History

Abstract

It would sound reasonable if I were to say that the research work I have discussed in this book began as a result of a grand design, with a vision of the goals in mind. Unfortunately, this would not be true. This work began the day I took a detour through Yellowstone National Park on my way to Seattle. As many, I had avoided Yellowstone for years, having visions of vast crowds of tourists gaping at Old Faithful. This time, in the early summer of 1964, I decided to see for myself, and after a bit of climbing in the Grand Tetons, a detour was made up onto the Yellowstone plateau. The first stop was the West Thumb Geyser Basin, a small but attractive thermal area on the west shores of Yellowstone Lake. The weather was marvelous, as it often is, and the waters of Yellowstone Lake were a deep blue, but what really hit me were the algal mats, bright orange, red, and green, spread out along the silica channels under sheets of hot, steaming water. I knew that algae lived in thermal environments, but I wasn’t prepared for this, these thick gobs of living protoplasm sticking tenaciously together in the rippling water. As I arrived, a naturalist was giving a talk, and afterwards I stopped him briefly to inquire about the algae. Aside from the fact that they were blue-green algae, he could tell me little. I had little time to inquire further, and went on my way to the west coast, where I spent the summer doing marine microbiology at the Friday Harbor Laboratories.