Richard Macksey was born in 1931. He received his B.A from Johns Hopkins in 1953 and earned his Ph.D. from the University in 1957. Macksey went on to work for the university as a professor teaching critical theory, comparative literature and film studies. He also served as the co-founder and director of the Johns Hopkins University Humanities Center. Macksey is also known for his extensive private library, which is home to more than 70,000 books and manuscripts. In this interview, Macksey recounts Hopkins' early history and those who were instrumental in shaping it. This oral history is a part of the Mame Warren oral histories series.

This 200th show reviews the five years this series has been on television. Dr. Franco Rasetti recreates one experiment from the first show, which was filmed in a Johns Hopkins classroom: the spontaneous break-up of a radioactive element as evidenced by a Geiger counter's response. Dr. Ralph Witt, of the plastics lab, shows how plastics are made and molded by replicating the same plastic resin he made on the program five years ago. He explains how glass fibers can now be woven into fabric and covered with plastic resin to make a strong laminate. Lynn Poole then pages through album photos to recall other programs: John Lehman, the university glassblower; Dr. Donald H. Andrews freezing the atom; medical artists; warnings on sunburn; "Fear," the first program (10/3/50) for the Dumont Network; Dr. Russell Morgan unveiling the x-ray fluoroscope; human engineering; Dr. Arthur Parpart demonstrating the new microscope combined with a television screen; films of the earth taken by a camera 70,000 feet above the earth. P. Stewart McCauley pays tribute to the Johns Hopkins Science Review and its staff, guests, and viewers, especially Lynn Poole. Ken Carter, general manager of television station WAAM in Baltimore presents a gift of a lamp decorated with pictures from the show to Mr. Poole, who read many congratulatory telegrams on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Science Review.

Lynn Poole shows the proceedings of "A Chemical Basis of Heredity," a symposium of biochemists and geneticists. Dr. Kenneth Monty, a biochemist professor at Johns Hopkins University, discusses research on the effect of radiation on chromosomes and Russian A. I. Oparin's theory of the origin of life. A chart shows single-celled organisms, such as amoebae, and Dr. Monty comments on reproduction from a single cell. The 1953 Urey-Miller experiment attempted to recreate the conditions of the primordial atmosphere with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen resulting in the precursors of amino acids, the main components of living cells. Scientist Sidney Fox also discovered that amino acids will organize spontaneously into protein molecules. Animated segments show amino acids, proteins, and nucleotides and how accidents in the original cells resulted in mutation, heredity, and evolution. Nucleic acids are the carriers of heredity and responsible for transformation. Dr. Franco Rasetti, a Johns Hopkins professor of physics who worked with Enrico Fermi in Rome, discusses his 10,000-specimen collection of trilobites or fossilized remains of marine life. He shows specimens and photos of various trilobites as old as 500 million years and notes that there is a gap between one-celled organisms and these diversified forms of life from the Cambrian Period. He shows a map of Cambrian rock exposures in the U. S. and briefly explains how to find and remove fossils.