Fifty Cheers for the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology

The folks over at the AmericanScience blog (a wonderful resource, by the way), had a post last week celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology.  It sounds like it was a wonderful opportunity to look back at fifty years of reporting research  in the history of biology.  Grad students have always played a key role in this conference.

I have fond memories of the Joint Atlantic Seminar.  I presented my very first conference paper at the 1986 Seminar.  My supervisor, Polly Winsor, encouraged me to do so, and so I wrote a paper based on my MA work on the history of ecology in the Great Lakes region.  The best part of the experience was a conversation with Everett Mendelsohn of Harvard University, who encouraged me to submit the paper (once I had completed my MA thesis) to his Journal of the History of Biology.  Those kind and generous words were enough to ensure that I floated all the way home� and the paper itself eventually appeared in the JHB in 1990.  I had a similar experience with the second paper I presented at the Seminar, in 1990, which was about ecology at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and which appeared in the JHB in 1995.

So, a toast to the Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Biology!  It's a very good thing that such an institution exists to encourage and support students making their first forays into the academic world.