It all started on a streetcar in Boston.

We first met on a Boston streetcar in 1940, being introduced by a mutual friend. Celia was returning from research work at the Massachusetts General Hospital as part of her senior thesis at Radcliffe College, and Herb was returning from a concert by the Boston Symphony. We were married in 1946 after Celia had finished her medical training. We started working together in 1952, and we are still actively collaborating in our studies on various aspects of the biosynthesis and function of polyamines. We are honored to have been invited by the editors of the Annual Review of Biochemistry to summarize our activities in biochemical research over the past 60 years. During most of this time we have been at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., and we have witnessed the enormous expansion of biomedical research that has occurred during this period. In addition to summarizing our research, Herb summarizes his association with the Journal of Biological Chemistry and the remarkable developments that have occurred recently in electronic publication and dissemination of scientific literature.