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Volume 12, No. 2, Summer 02 | Return to Table of Contents
Corporation Members Laura and Arthur Colwin Establish Major New Summer Research Fellowship Fund
$2.3 million endowed fund will significantly increase the number of research fellowships offered each summer
Embryologists and MBL summer investigators Laura and Arthur Colwin are passionate about research, educating young scientists, and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. To nurture these passions for years to come, the Colwins recently made an extraordinary gift to the Marine Biological Laboratory: $2.3 million to establish the Laura and Arthur Colwin Endowed Summer Research Fellowship Fund.
“This is a remarkable and farsighted gift,” said William T. Speck, MBL Director and CEO. “The MBL is committed to ensuring that the very best scientists have the opportunity to conduct research here every summer. We can help do this by providing financial support in the form of fellowships to scientists who wish to conduct their research at the MBL. This important gift will substantially increase the number of research fellowships we are able to offer annually.”
This is a permanent, endowed fellowship fund. When it matures, income from the fund will provide full support for approximately 10 independent investigators conducting research in the fields of cell and developmental biology at the MBL for a minimum of two months during the summer. Support will cover the costs of laboratory rental, housing, travel, and other expenses of doing research in Woods Hole.
Laura and Arthur Colwin have had a long association with the Marine Biological Laboratory. Both first came in the 1930s to conduct independent research. Laura was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania when she first arrived in Woods Hole. Arthur was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University when he spent his first summer at the MBL a few years later. Laura and Arthur met here, and later married. “You know the old saying,” Arthur Colwin says, “Marriages are made in two places: Heaven and the MBL.”
During World War II, Arthur served with the U.S. Air Force from 1943 to 1946, and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Except during the war and a few sabbatical years, the Colwins have returned to the MBL nearly every summer thereafter, conducting groundbreaking research in embryology and fertilization. They became members of the Corporation, served terms on the Board of Trustees, and later became Trustees Emeriti. In the 1950s, the Colwins used the nascent technology of electron microscopy to describe morphologically what happens when a sperm first encounters an egg during fertilization. When not in Woods Hole, they continued their research and taught generations of undergraduates at Queens College of the City University of New York.
“Laura and Arthur’s long-standing commitment to excellence in science education and to fostering the research careers of scientists is re-affirmed by this extraordinary gift,” noted Sheldon Segal, Chairman of the MBL Board of Trustees and a close friend of the Colwins. “Laura and Arthur epitomize the biological scientist whose career has been structured around summer research at the MBL. Their advances in the fundamental understanding of fertilization are lasting contributions for which they will always be remembered.”
“We’ve always considered the MBL to be our intellectual home,” Arthur Colwin explains. “We hope that our gift will enable many scientists to have the same wonderful experience of conducting summer research at the MBL that we have had over the years,” says Laura. |
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