Interview with Dr. Diana Wall, University Distinguished Professor and Professor of Biology at Colorado State University. The interview begins with Wall reflecting on her childhood in Kentucky, the importance of the Girl Scouts in her life, and her early appreciation for the outdoors. She discusses her undergraduate studies in biology and botany at the University of Kentucky and her decision to stay there to pursue a doctorate degree. Wall describes her research on microscopic animals living in soils as well as her thesis on nematodes. She then discusses her postdoctoral position at University of California, Riverside and her field work in Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. Wall explains the factors that influenced her to begin her work in Antarctica and talks about the shift from individual work to a more collaborative research environment. The interview concludes with Wall’s reflections on international collaborations, the Antarctic Treaty, and climate change.
In this interview, David Zierler, Oral Historian for AIP, interview Ad Bax, section chief in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics, at the NIH. Bax recounts his childhood in the Netherlands growing up on a farm and his undergraduate experience at the University of Delft. He describes his developing interest in nuclear magnetic resonance and the exciting theoretical opportunities that this new field presented. Bax discusses his graduate work with Ray Freeman at Oxford in NMR spectroscopy, and he explains the early role of computers on NMR research. He discusses the circumstances leading to his postdoctoral work at Colorado State University on solution and solid state NMR. Bax explains his initial work at the NIH using NMR to study protein structure. In the last portion of the interview, Bax provides an overview of the clinical and research value of NMR to the overall mission of the NIH, and he describes how the culture of collaboration makes the NIH a unique place to pursue basic research.
