In 1744, Jean and Herman Verbeek of Leiden published a book by the Swiss scholar Abraham Trembley entitled “Mémoires, pour servir à l’Histoire d’un Genre de Polypes d’Eau douce, a bras en forme de Cornes.” In English the title is “Memoirs, for the History of a Genus of Freshwater Polyps, with Arms in the Form of Horns.” The Memoires describe the studies that Trembley carried out on Hydra while he was a tutor in the Bentinck household in the Netherlands. This book is, without a doubt, the most important published work on Hydra. It is not clear how many copies of the Memoires were published. In their English translation of the Memoires, Howard and Sylvia Lenhoff reported that in 1978 only fourteen copies of the Memoires were in the collections of libraries in the United States.

Joe Gall [1], a member of my PhD thesis committee at Yale University and one of the major figures in modern cell biology, turned 85 in 2013. A symposium to celebrate his birthday was held at the Carnegie Institution in Baltimore, where Joe had moved from Yale in 1983. After the Symposium, Joe and his wife Diane Dwyer had a luncheon at their house for the Symposium attendees. Most of the attendees left for home later in the afternoon. Several of us who were not leaving until the next day spent the rest of the afternoon at Joe’s and Diane’s house and went to dinner together that evening. Joe wrote the introduction to the Lenhoff’s translation of the Memoires. Interestingly, he told me the following that afternoon: “As I mentioned when you were here, I began to translate it some time before I learned that Howard Lenhoff had already begun the same project. I was happy to let him finish, since he clearly had more hands-on experience with Hydra and could better understand some of the more difficult passages. It also led to a long friendship and my attendance at a symposium in Geneva where I presented the one study I ever did on Hydra.” [2] Joe was an avid collector of rare books and he owned a copy of the Memoires, which he showed us that afternoon. Below is a photo of me at Joe’s house looking at his copy of the Memoires. Left to right in the photo are Rahul Warrior, Joe, Liz Rogers, and me.

About a week after returning to Irvine from Baltimore, I received a package in the mail from Ray Giordano, a seller of rare scientific books and instruments in Massachusetts. I had never heard of Ray and had no reason to expect a package from him. I opened the package and was shocked to see that it contalned a copy of Trembley’s Memoires! I immediately sent Ray the following email:

In 4/29/2013 9:24 PM, Rob Steele wrote:

Dear Raymond,

 This morning I received a copy of Trembley’s Memoires from you. I was thrilled but quite surprised since I didn’t order it. Can you clarify please.

Thanks,

Rob Steele

I received the following reply from Ray:

April 30.13

Dear Rob:

 I am sure you were surprised and equally sure that you will very much enjoy that fine copy of the original.

You need to inquire of Joe Gall for the explanation.

Best,

Ray

I emailed Joe and received the following response:

It wasn’t difficult to see what pleasure it gave you to see my copy of Trembley, and so I asked Ray Giordano if he could find another copy easily. Fortunately he already had one available, and from his description (“crisp copy in contemporary leather”), I knew it was in good shape. I think I mentioned that my own copy had been badly damaged by water when I first acquired it. So I took the heroic step of unbinding it, discarding the useless cover, washing the sheets and rebinding in full leather. I have never spent that much time on another book!

I very much appreciated your coming to the 85th birthday symposium and presenting some of your work. There was not enough time to talk with everyone individually during the symposium, so I was happy that you could stay later and have dinner with us. The whole weekend was a memorable experience for me and a rare opportunity to see so many former (and present) friends, students, collaborators, and others.

Let me know when you go to the Hague and visit the Bentinck estate. If the ponds and gardens have been kept up continuously, I can well imagine that the same Hydra are still living there that Trembley worked with.

Thanks for the nice photo! I tried to read the bookplate, but found it too blurred. It’s always fun to discover or imagine who owned a book previously.

Best regards, Joe

I need to add to this story that a copy of Trembley’s Memoires sells for $1000-$1500. Needless to say, I was greatly touched by Joe’s thoughtfulness and generosity. The Memoires is one of my most prized possessions. I hope everyone has a colleague like Joe.

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[1] Joe died at the age of 96 on September 12, 2024.

[2] The study Joe is referring to here is the work on the Hydra mitochondrial genome that Rahul Warrior did as a PhD student in Joe’s lab. This was the first demonstration that Hydra has a linear mitochondrial genome. This is in marked contrast to most animals, which have circular mitochondrial genomes. Rahul and I overlapped as graduate students at Yale, and we are now faculty colleagues at UC Irvine.