"In the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind"so spoke Louis Pasteur in 1854. In the great game of life, chance thankfully may favor unprepared minds. My mind was certainly unprepared for pathology when I entered medical school in 1947. I chose to intern in pathology upon graduation because I was uncertain whether to practice medicine or surgery. However, I found that the combined opportunities to study mechanisms of disease by analyzing their structural manifestations, to make diagnoses in problem cases, and to teach second-year medical students about disease were irresistible. These key attributes of pathology surely constitute the rationale for our discipline and probably are the reasons most of us have spent our professional lives as pathologists.

Also by chance (and good fortune) my first mentors were Doctors Ernest Goodpasture, James Dawson, and John Shapiro. Of the three, only Dr. Goodpasture had chosen pathology by thoughtful analysis; Dr. Dawson fell under Dr. Goodpasture's spell as a medical student, and Dr. Shapiro, owing to a shrapnel wound received in the Italian campaign in WWII, turned to pathology as an alternative to his original choice of surgery. As Dr. Goodpasture's Chief Resident, I saw that he was the ideal academician, altruistic and totally committed to research. It was not surprising in reviewing his papers many years later to learn that he viewed universities as the most important of social institutions. Doctors Dawson and Shapiro were exemplary models as teachers, fervent in their commitment and equally demanding in their expectations.

After ten years on the faculty at Vanderbilt, it became apparent to me that specialization was necessary. Hematopathology was an attractive choice, owing to my previous work on leukocytic pyrogen with Dr. Barry Wood at Hopkins, and owing to my interest in relating structure to function in the widespread hematopoetic system. In those not so long ago times while the microscope was king, the kingdom was awash in ignorance. We did not know, for example, that there were subpopulations of lymphocytes with particular functions, or that lymphocytes could transform. Accomplished hematopathologists were also in short supply, but I felt that Bob Lukes would be an exceptional mentor after he had come to Vanderbilt for a seminar. So Lukes and Collins began a transcontinental collaboration in 1969, starting with a morphologic study of follicular lymphomas at Vanderbilt. This study confirmed our hypothesis that lymphomas should obey the same laws as other cancers, that specific lymphocyte populations should give rise to specific lymphomas, and that some lymphomas could be diagnosed by morphologic features. This collaboration bore its first fruit in 1974 in our paper "Immunologic Characterization of Human Malignant Lymphoma" and culminated in 1992 with the second series Fascicle Tumors of the Hematopoetic System. In all of this work, we were aware of the important studies of Karl Lennert. Professor Lennert and Dr. Lukes were pioneers in hematopathology, and it was a rare privilege to become their colleague.

In 1999, I began a second career with the tripartite goals of writing, research, and organizing a scholarship program for medical students. This career shows some promise. For these opportunities I am most grateful to my wife of 55 years, Elizabeth Cate Collins, who has shared my enthusiasm for academic pathology.