“A Strange Kid”: Dr. Gary Felsenfeld’s Scientific Journey

Name: Dr. Gary Felsenfeld

Age: 94

Date of Birth: November 18, 1929 

Graduation Year: 1947

Occupation: Molecular Biologist at the National Institute of Health (retired) 

Dr. Gary Felsenfeld was born on November 11, 1929. Ninety-four years later, on his birthday, he sat down to talk about his life and time at Stuyvesant with The Spectator. “My family was typical: my mother kept household; my father was an attorney,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. “In the early 1930s, [my father] was getting started practicing bankruptcy law. Because it was the Depression and people were constantly going out of business, his job was to get them bankrupt, and then out again.” 

Living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Dr. Felsenfeld played tennis every Saturday with his friends at “the nice tennis court only two blocks away from where we lived,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. Unlike tennis, Dr. Felsenfeld’s other hobby wasn’t as common. “Nobody knew what you called it, but in retrospect my hobby was science,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. “[My parents] finally allowed me to have a Gilbert Chemistry Set. It was one of the things that the kids like me wanted very much. It was a big box with all kinds of chemicals and little vials and a list of experiments you could do. So by the time I was about 11 or 12, I would monopolize the one bathroom in our apartment and carry out experiments.” 

Dr. Felsenfeld’s boundless curiosity for science led him to what would become a lifelong passion. “At about 12, I went away to summer camp. Sports didn’t interest me that much, but there was a counselor who operated a dark room, and I attached myself to him. He taught me all I needed to know about black and white photography, and that’s how photography was my main hobby all these years.” This experience never left Dr. Felsenfeld: “I’ve always had the latest version of whatever the camera technology is, and I have 1,000 prints.”

Dr. Felsenfeld attended Joan of Arc Junior High School on the Upper West Side a year after it was established. During his childhood, the turmoil of World War II in Europe extended to America. “Unusually, [my school] had loudspeakers in every room. And so when [the Attack on] Pearl Harbor [happened on December 7, 1941], we were able to sit in our classrooms and hear President [Franklin D.] Roosevelt on air as Congress declared war on Japan and then shortly afterward on Germany and Italy.” 

After graduating from Joan of Arc Junior High School, Dr. Felsenfeld entered Stuyvesant and could immediately tell that it was a place like no other. “To go from junior high, where no one really had any idea what [science] meant, to Stuyvesant, where there were some people who knew what it might be to be a scientist and didn’t think we were strange? [...] It was amazing,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. Science was not yet an established career path in the 1940s. “There were no salaries, so nobody did science really. I remember friends of my family asking me if I studied science, what [would] I do besides work in a pharmacy? I mean, the level of knowledge was negligible,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. Even those at the top of the field struggled with the lack of science funding. “I remember that my ultimate mentor when I got my Ph.D., Linus Pauling (a two-time Nobel laureate), gave a speech in which he said that anyone who chooses a career in chemistry should take a vow of poverty—that was accurate,” Dr. Felsenfeld recalled. At Stuyvesant, however, Dr. Felsenfeld was no longer alone in his interest in science. “Stuyvesant was the place where at least there were a few ‘strange’ kids like me, and we became friends.” 

Dr. Felsenfeld participated in many clubs and projects. He wrote for the Alumni Bulletin and Caliper literary magazine and was the president of ARISTA, Stuyvesant’s Honor Society—at the time, he had the highest grade point average in Stuyvesant’s history. Outside of school, he participated in the early Westinghouse Science Talent Search, now known as Regeneron, which he learned about through a friend’s father. “I went over to Brooklyn and carried out this research project in which I tried to develop a film that was x-ray sensitive but not light sensitive or normal light frequency sensitive. And that was sort of fun—it was a lot of fun,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. Through the Science Talent Search, Dr. Felsenfeld even earned a trip to Washington and got to meet President Harry Truman. “While I was there, they had young adults who were scientists trying to persuade us that careers in science were possible—that you didn't have to go to medical school and practice medicine if you didn’t want to. And that was the beginning of the change.”  

After graduating from Stuyvesant as valedictorian, Dr. Felsenfeld attended Harvard University and was accepted to Harvard Medical School. This was a big deal to Dr. Felsenfeld’s family because at the time, getting into medical school as a Jewish student was incredibly difficult. There were strict quotas severely limiting the number of Jewish students accepted each year. “When I said I was going to turn down Harvard Medical School and go to Caltech to be a scientist, [my father] said science is not a profession—it’s a hobby. He meant that [as] criticism. But for me, it was exactly right—it never felt like work,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. Though his decision initially shocked his family, it led Dr. Felsenfeld to a successful and fulfilling career. After earning his Ph.D., Dr. Felsenfeld eventually took a job at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which began investing more money into scientific research as the country woke up to the possibilities of science. “I stayed at the NIH so I could go into the laboratory every day. I was training postdoctoral fellows, but I was always there in the lab, and I had my own lab bench—it was just like play,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. He never wanted anything more: “I was appointed professor at Harvard and I turned it down, and Princeton was offered twice and Columbia twice. But I wanted to be in the lab; it was my hobby. You can’t ask for more than that. That’s my story.”

These days, Dr. Felsenfeld lives with his wife in a retirement community, where he continues to nurture his love of photography. “I’m still busy converting my own slides—so-called Kodachrome and Ektachrome color slides. You can have those digitized with very high resolution.” He also stays in close touch with his family. “Our first great-grandchild lives in Canada with our Canadian grandson and his wife,” Dr. Felsenfeld said. “She’s now six months old, and that’s just marvelous.” 

Dr. Gary Felsenfeld was able to turn his passion for science and research into an incredibly successful career by staying true to himself despite societal pressure. In his time at Stuyvesant, Dr. Felsenfeld was exposed to the endless potential of the scientific world and his own abilities. “It’s a pleasure for me to talk about this on my birthday,” Dr. Felsenfeld said, “It allows me to think about what were very happy days.”