Synopsis - Chlorophyll Biosynthesis and Technological Applications - page 38

Fig 2.6 Spring 1965.
Carole and Tino dancing
in a Beirut night club
Sciences. To that effect I was awarded an excellent research budget that allowed me
to comfortably initiate these undertakings.
Thus in February, 1965, I started my new Job at the Lebanese National Research
Institute of Tal-El-Amara, located in the biblical central Bekaa valley where my dad
had his fruit farm. As I was working out the soil and leaf analysis routines, I started
thinking about initiating my own research program. I did not want to continue in
lipid metabolism and compete with the laboratories of Paul Castelfranco and Paul
Stumph, who by the way was one of the examiners on my Ph.D. oral exam.
I remember very vividly that day in April 1965 when sitting in my first floor
office at Tal-El-Amara, in the central Lebanese Bekaa valley, and looking out the
picture window, I was struck by the beauty of the Mediterranean spring colors and
particularly by the explosion of green color surrounding me. I thought that if there
was so much green in nature it had to be important. Since I knew very little about
the biochemistry of plant pigments or chlorophyll, I decided to consult the pigment
literature at the Library of the American University of Beirut.
By that time, Carole and I had established a regular weekly routine. We stayed in
a newly built rented house in the medieval town of Zahle, 6 miles away from the
Research Institute, and worked at the Institute Monday through Thursday. After
work on Thursday we drove for about 90 min to our house in Beirut where I spent
Friday and Saturday at the well-stocked AUB Medical Library. In the meanwhile
Carole visited with family and friends. Night life was wonderful and Beirut lived up
to its reputation as the Paris of the Middle East (Fig. 2.6 ).
2.6 Research in Lebanon
At the AUB medical library a search of the Chemical Abstracts, netted the latest
review on the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway authored by Smith and French
( 1963 ). Upon examining the review, I realized that this excellent piece of work was
short on hard facts and long on hypotheses.