Growing up with Chuck and Dick and Viktor Hamburger

Other articles in this issue speak about the important legacy of Viktor Hamburger’s professional life. We, his daughters, share in that legacy in a special way because during our early years we were frequently included in our father’s professional life. It was a privileged childhood. Growing up with Viktor Hamburger and the Zoology (later Biology) Department gave us a lifetime love of nature and of being outdoors. We grew up as much in the country as in the city and we have wonderful memories of the frequent occasions we and our mother joined departmental field trips to collect salamander eggs for embryology classes (Fig. 1). On many weekends we explored the rolling countryside, which then was just a short distance from the University, checking Viktor’s favorite ponds for eggs and enjoying the spring flowers or fall color. We girls spent many hours in Rebstock Hall, home to the Zoology Department, where we read magazines or drew pictures in the library, wandered into the basement where the animals were kept (Fig. 2), shared parties and picnics with Fig. 2. Examples of ‘Chuck’ and ‘Dick’ embryos at day 10–12 of development. One of Viktor Hamburger’s experiments done with Eleanor Wenger was to exchange hind limb buds between chick and duck embryos at Hamburger–Hamilton stage 17–18. Chuck was a duck embryo with a non-webbed chick foot; Dick was a chick embryo with a webbed duck foot.