Childhood and education, New York City; higher education, New York, Pennsylvania State University, Washington University, St. Louis; postdoctoral research with Arthur Kornberg and Herman Kalckar; research on amino acid activation, tumor viruses, recombinant DNA; Asilomar I conference (1973), recombinant DNA biohazards controversy, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA Molecules (1975); commercialization of recombinant DNA and molecular biology; Nobel Prize, 1980; DNAX Research Institute of Molecular & Cellular Biology, Inc., relations with Schering-Plough; Beckman Center for Molecular & Genetic Medicine, Stanford Medical School; Stanley N. Cohen, Herbert W. Boyer, Peter Lobban, James D. Watson, John Morrow, Joshua Lederberg, and other scientists.

oral history transcript with corrections.