When I was discharged I went back to Penn and was uncertain as to what I wanted to major in. I decided that when I was forced to choose my major, I had just started a course – I think I had been part way through it – in microbiology, and that was fascinating. Also... that also perked me up when on the first day of that course, during the laboratory, we had a laboratory experiment, a laboratory that was associated with the lecturing, a laboratory assistant, a girl, walked in with a tray and on the tray were test tubes. Of course I knew by then... I knew what test tubes were, but what I didn't know was that in those test tubes were what we call slants, which means that the test tube is slanted on a surface with one end raised about 15 degrees into which one pours molten agar, which is like... which is a gelatine. And after the gelatine sets the tube can be then set on its end so that that slanted surface remains covering along half the wall of the test tube. And then the agar is streaked with a fine needle with some micro... some bacterial organism. And usually the streaking is done in a wave fashion so that you laid down a wave of individual microorganisms, which of course you cannot see at that point. Then you put this business in an incubator at body temperature and within a day or a few days you get the microorganisms growing. And what she had brought in on that tray were about 30 or 40 of these slanted test tubes on which were wavy patterns of microorganisms with different colours, brilliant colours – red, yellow, brilliant white, green – and that, for some reason or other, triggered my... my fascination with 'what that was all about.' Of course I knew nothing about that at the time.

And because of that experience I settled on microbiology as my major in... at the University of Pennsylvania. Took a lot of courses in microbiology, biochemistry, single cell animals, amoeba, parasitology, and of course I took all of the other courses that were required for a rounded education in history and arts and language, etc. Graduated and because by this time I had caught the eye of the professor of microbiology, he found a job that he thought I would be interested in at a company called Sharp and Dohme in... right outside of Philadelphia.

So I decided to take that job, because it was working with bacteria. And I also knew at the time, before even taking the job, that Sharp and Dohme had just been acquired by Merck, of course a giant pharmaceutical company, and that I would soon be moving from that location outside of south west Philadelphia, to a point north of Philadelphia, called North Wales, but I took the job understanding that.