The conditions and the discussion which took place during my first meeting with Professor Atwood say it all. I was interviewing at an SFN meeting in New Orleans for a postdoctoral position, but it was not though the formal process. Instead, it was more ‘come by my poster and when I am finished we can go get some lunch and talk’. We walked over next to the Riverwalk with the inside eateries next to the convention center, but it was so crowded there was nowhere to sit. When we got our bratwurst, Professor Atwood suggested we just sit on the steps on the stairway to one side and talk as people walked by and stepped around us. He asked what my interests were in joining his lab, and I relayed that I was interested in learning more about synaptic transmission and why different synapses showed differential synaptic output. Then, he went on to explain more about varied neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) within crustacean species and within the crayfish and that he was also starting to work on the NMJs of larval Drosophila, which offered a lot of possibilities for future research. By the end of our conversation, he asked if I wanted to join his lab. He then told me that he would be able to fund me on a postdoctoral salary for 3 years, and that if we needed longer we could write a proposal for a longer stay. The ambiance of talking science on a stair way, eating with crowds of people walking around us and offering me a position is the epitome in the unpretentious and full dedication to the science of Professor Atwood.
During the first few months, I was apprehensive of asking Atwood for 2 months off to proceed with an IBRO workshop I was organizing in Seoul, South Korea as I had obtained money for it from IBRO and Brain Research Foundation, Tokyo. One day I got the courage to ask if I could still proceed with the workshop plans. Not only was he welcoming to the idea but also he suggested that he would love to help and had a bunch of ideas for the workshop. So it was a success as he suggested we write a workshop manual and work though all the details of each planned experiment, listing the tools and compositions of the various salines so they could order all this ahead of time in Korea. When we got to Korea there had not yet been one unified Korean Society for Neuroscience, and instead there were some independent groups functioning. With the IBRO stamp, we started the first IBRO sponsored neuroscience workshop in Korea at Korea University medical campus (1993). I had no idea how some of the old Grass equipment which various faculty in Korea brought to us to use for the workshop was supposed to work, and we were only days out before the first of 10 international students (i.e. from Vietnam, China, Iran, etc.) were to arrive to join the students from Korea. Atwood looked over the equipment and said he had not seen such equipment in a long time and that he thought some connections would allow for intracellular recordings while others would be best for extracellular. Of course he was dead on and the workshop was a success with and international line up of attendees and speakers (Masao Ito and Akimichi Kaneko from Japan, Te Pei Feng from China, Joeseph Chang and Hee Chul Han from South Korea).
The 4 years of working in the laboratory of Atwood was a pleasure beyond imagination, as he would always be in and out of the lab having both a desk in the lab as well as one in an office in another building. He would usually show up every day around 3 in the afternoon for tea and, of course, cake on cake days (Wednesday afternoons if I recall correctly). I quickly learned that he was usually in and out on weekends as well. It appeared to be a laissez faire environment, and as long as one was progressing one never felt rushed or pressured to get a project done. However, the subtle ‘how are the recordings going’ I think were hints. When one saw the drive and constant dedication to discussions with students, helping them with their dissections as well as attending to other matters while still chair of the Physiology department when I started, one realized he has a constant drive to be productive. This was no more evident than on Christmas day I was trying to obtain macropatch recordings over nerve terminals and marking them with fluorescent beads so later we could serial reconstruct at the TEM level the same site physiological measures were taken. I had a wonderful recording and showed Atwood the wonderful demarcation of the physiological site with a bead ring outlining where the focal electrode was taken quantal. I said I was on a role with the recording and marking sites but needed to break to process the tissue for TEM fixation. He said he would take on the fixation procedures for the rest of the day if I wanted to keep recording from nerve terminals. He set his timer up for the fixation procedures and off we went for the next few hours. That particular recording and photo of the bead ring made the figure for the Journal of Neuroscience paper later that year.
The time spent at socials at Atwood’s home with past lab members (Joffre Mercier, C.K. Govind), some visits to Strawberry Island, and a cross county sky/sled lab trip were bonuses I will always cherish. I still recall on a trip to Strawberry Island when we went to a floating bog and he jumped up and down, making the comment that the bog was just floating above the deep water. Here, he was jumping on it as I could not get myself to the boat fast enough. On the way back, a strong wind storm had started up, and we were laden with supplies as we were headed back home. The water level was nearly to the edge of the boat and the cold wind was strong with waves splashing the boat and there was Atwood at the back, standing up, managing the engine, and guiding the boat to a place where we had to portage as a short cut to the other side of the lake as the waves were too high to proceed around the lake. I learned what portage meant as I had no idea what he was refereeing to at the time (defined as braking one’s back pushing a boat over land). Atwood was like a stoic captain in a tale of Moby Dick or the ancient Mariner standing up in the cold wind with water splashing at him as I am folded over the gear in the boat watching water splashing over the edges and wondering if I still remembered how to swim.
The nature of persistence in the lab, research projects, nudging of students to work at their pace for their own desire to succeed, as well as our lab adventures made my brief time in the Atwoodian sphere a period I will always cherish, and it is what I have been trying to embellish in my own lab environment with my students.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.