Gerald Edelman - Getting drafted and ending up in Paris (8/86)

To listen to more of Gerald Edelman’s stories, go to the playlist: Biologist Gerald Edelman (1929-2014) was born in America. His early work concentrated on the study of immunology and he was jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1972 for his work leading to the understanding of the antibody’s chemical structure. [Listeners: Ralph J Greenspan; date recorded: 2005] TRANSCRIPT: I got a call from the United States Army. Most of my colleagues, when they saw that potential of threat it was just after the Korean War, elected to go to the National Institutes of Health. I had another idea: that I would go to work with Joe Smadel at Walter Reed Hospital on rickettsia viruses. And so I allowed myself to be inducted; I went to Fort Sam, Houston, Texas, training under machine guns, because in those days a lot of MDs in the service didn’t know which end of a rifle was up, and a lot of them were slain. And, i