No. 807 Raymond F. Gesteland, 2013

File — Box: 75, Folder: 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Ray Gesteland grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, with two older brothers. After high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin where he focused on science. He stayed at Wisconsin to do a master’s degree. His project was in nutrition and he had a herd of thirty cows to look after and research. Dr. Gesteland then went on to do his graduate work at Harvard and worked with Nobel Prize winner Jim Watson and occasionally with Francis Crick. He also worked with Mario Capecchi while at Harvard. Most of the work Dr. Gesteland did was studying RNA. He also spent time in Cold Spring Harbor going to lectures and taking pictures of the great luminaries of molecular biology. Dr. Gesteland wrote his dissertation on an RNA virus. He then went to Geneva, Switzerland to do his postdoc. After his postdoc, Dr. Gesteland got a job at Cold Spring Harbor. At Cold Spring Harbor, Dr. Gesteland worked with Nobel Prize winners Al Hershey and Barbara McClintock. He again worked with Jim Watson, who became the director of the lab. While at Cold Spring Harbor, Dr. Gesteland had an academic appointment in the biochemistry department at Stony Brook. He also had a lab to study tumor viruses and yeast cells. With the help of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Dr. Gesteland then moved to Utah where he began working on what would become the Human Genome Project. Dr. Gesteland was involved in the design and building of the George and Dolores Dore Eccles Institute of Human Genetics and was also integral in putting the Department of Human Genetics together at the University of Utah. Dr. Gesteland and his family were surprised by the freedom and joy of living in Utah after living in Long Island. They spent a lot of time in southern Utah, where they built a home in Torrey. They also had a home built at the end of Killyon Canyon. At Utah, Dr. Gesteland studied the role of tRNAs. He worked with John Atkins and Norma Wills, who also moved to Utah from Long Island. Dr. Gesteland worked to set up the HUMBG research program to train students. He was involved in the beginnings of the Human Genome Project and describes how the process of genome mapping has progressed. Dr. Gesteland was also a big proponent of public outreach at the University of Utah. He became the Vice President of Research for the University of Utah in 2000. In 2007, he went into phased retirement. In 2012, Dr. Gesteland taught a class for the Osher Institute called “Your Genes and Your Health Care.”
Project: University of Utah oral history project.
Interviewer: Anne Peterson

Dates

2013

Conditions Governing Access

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.