Jim Manley Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, New York 10027, USA Corresponding author: jlm2columbia.edu

I first met Terri Grodzicker almost 50 years ago. She may not remember it, as I was a new Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory graduate student from Stony Brook; in fact, the first one in a new program. I was about to begin a project in bacterial genetics in the Demerec lab, while Terri was an independent investigator working on the much sexier adenovirus in the James lab up the hill. And while my 4–5 years at CSHL shaped my career and changed my life, Terri's 40–50 years changed CSHL, playing a critical role in making CSHL synonymous not just with world-class research, but also with outstanding scientific publishing.

Terri became the Editor of Genes & Development in 1989. Until then, she ran a lab investigating various aspects of adenovirus biology and made multiple significant discoveries. However, an anecdote I recall from that era, in retrospect, perhaps provides some insight into why Terri has been such a great Editor. These are memories from the mid-1970s, when I was still a grad student, amid the groundbreaking discovery of mRNA splicing. As is now, of course, well known, this happened essentially simultaneously in several labs at CSHL working together and at MIT, in the lab of Phil …