And so I was sent two places for interviews. One was General Foods in Hoboken, New Jersey, and the second was Merck and Co. in Rahway, New Jersey. I received offers from both, but the Merck offer came first and I accepted it and that put me into the area of pharmaceutical fermentations. So I went to a penicillin factory in Danville, Pennsylvania for my first job and after a year and a half I moved up to the main laboratory in Rahway, New Jersey. Then came along the world of biotechnology.
Biotechnology is as old as industrial microbiology going back to pre-Biblical days.
But what we call the new biotechnology was born in California in 1973 with the discovery of recombinant DNA technology. This opened up the whole field of microbiology to include many things that are not microbial at all, like making interferon in an animal cell and things like that. For example, right now in the laboratory, we're working on immunosuppressing agents, cholesterol-lowering agents and antibiotics such as cephalosporins. We're studying secondary metabolism in microgravity for possible application in space. We're working on processes to make liquid fuel from waste materials.