Last Updated on January 19, 2025 by pg@petergamma.org
Around 30 years ago, Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org
visited a course in molecular biology and immunology at the University of Zurich guided by
Charles Weissmann, the most famous Molecular Biologist of Switzerland:
and Rolf Zinkernagel, professor of experimental immunology at the University of Zurich.
But Peter Gamma decided one year before Isidro Ballard killed himself in the labs of the Institute of Molecular Biology I where Charles Weissmann was director to quit this group, altough he was already invited by Prof. Martin Billeter to take part in progess reports of their group in Germany.
And after Peter visited one week of course in immunology guided among others by Rolf Zinkernagel
Peter immediately thought:
«not with this guy».
And then when Peter had read around the year 1990 a paper of Christoph Koch in Nature with the title “How the Brain Works”:
he decided to perform his diploma thesis at Brain Research Institute in Zurich studying the electrophysiological properties of neurons. And in 1993 Peter Gamma had his diploma thesis and was first author of a paper he is still proud of it even today. And in 1996 Rolf Zinkernagel had his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery of how the immune system recognizes virus-infected cells. But Peter never regreted that he did not follow Charles Weissmann or Rolf Zinkernagel, not even for a single day. And he was and is till completely happy with his decision he made 30 years ago.