I think most people thought that it was kind of one of Jim's wild ideas. It was only really articulated for me at a party. There would be parties at various people's houses, and I was there and who knows how many drinks I had or how many drinks anyone had had, but Joe Sambrook, who was the leader of the molecular biology labs, he was really the scientific leader of Cold Spring Harbor, came up to me and pointed my – I remember pointing his finger at me and he was a shouter, shouting: there is no biology in neurobiology, there is no biology in neurobiology, repeating himself again and again. And I didn't understand what he meant. I mean, neurobiology, these are cells. And I realized that what he meant was there's no molecular biology and neurobiology. And he was right.

Molecular biology had invaded only a few fields. I think immunology first, that's a biological system of individual cells. So, easier to understand than something complex like an organ with a lot of different cells in with precise architectures and precise relationships to one another. So, I don't know whether he changed his mind, but I think that's what he meant. And it is what Jim had in mind about starting the neurobiology group to get molecular biology injected into neurobiology. It was the transformation of the courses, and importantly, the flag went up when the symposium, the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium , one of the most important scientific events of the year when the topic was, what was the year ‘83 ? When the topic was Molecular Neurobiology.

Susan Hockfield is a neuroscientist whose research focuses on brain development and glioma, pioneering the use of monoclonal antibody technology demonstrating that early experience results in lasting changes in the molecular structure of the brain. She is a Professor of Neuroscience and President Emerita at MIT. She was the first woman and life scientist to serve as MIT’s sixteenth president from 2004-2012.

Hockfield earned her B.A. in biology from the University of Rochester (1973) and a Ph.D. from Georgetown University at the School of Medicine (1979). In 1980, Hockfield completed an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at San Francisco. She then joined the scientific staff at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York where she ran her own lab for five years. She also served as director of the Summer Neurobiology Program from 1985 to 1997. In 1985, Hockfield became the William Edward Gilbert Professor of Neurobiology at Yale University. She went on to serve as the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1998-2002, and Provost from 2003-2004.

In December 2004, Hockfield assumed office as the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She held this role until June 2012 and continues to hold a faculty appointment as professor of neuroscience and as a member of the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research.

Hockfield has received numerous awards including the Charles Judson Herrick Award from the American Association of Anatomists, the Wilbur Lucius Cross Award from the Yale University Graduate School, the Meliora Citation from the University of Rochester, the Amelia Earhart Award from the Women’s Union, and the Yale Science and Engineering Association 2021 Award for Distinguished Service to Industry, Commerce or Education.

She also holds honorary degrees from Brown University, Duke University, Georgetown University, Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, Northeastern University, Tsinghua University (Beijing), Université Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Edinburgh, University of Massachusetts Medical School, University of Rochester, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory School of Biological Sciences.