We take it for granted today that all hormones and other intercellular messenger have their own specific receptors. But this was not the case until the groundbreaking work of Jesse Roth and his colleagues. Indeed, Roth (Figure 1), currently at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research of Northwell Health Zucker School of Medicine, is best known for his research on cell surface membrane receptors. His studies on the receptors for insulin, growth hormone, and adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) in the early 1970s became the model for many others. See the JCI website for the full interview (https://jci. org/videos/cgms) to get a sense of whether Dr. Roth could have instead been satisfied as a clinician with a black bag doing house calls. JCI: Can you start by telling us a little bit about your parents and your upbringing? Roth: I have a New York accent notched into my tongue. I was born in 1934 in the depths of the Great Depression. I grew up in a happy middle-class family. My mother was an immigrant from Romania. My father’s parents emigrated from Austria. His father died when he was 12; my father left school to support his family. Despite the truncation of his school years, he was very well read.

At the time I was growing up, science was just the hottest thing. Three or four of us in each class in elementary through middle school were turned on by science from the beginning. We did those silly experiments—adding vinegar to bicarbonate soda and detonating small explosions. The school I went to was such a small school that they had to hire a science teacher to come from the outside for an hour a week. That let them pick from among the best public school teachers. These were enthusiastic and energetic people who in other times might have been active scientists themselves instead of teachers. JCI: How did you end up at Columbia for your undergraduate studies? Roth: It will surprise parents nowadays that tuition back then was $600 per year. In