Several initiatives in the search for funding were made in 1964 after the first formal EMBO Council meeting. The most successful of these approaches in quantitative terms was to the Volkswagen Foundation which agreed a grant of DM.2,748,000 in December 1965 for three years 1966-68. This enabled the EMBO programme for fellowships and courses to prove its value. The negotiations and terms of the grant are well documented. Although the VW grant was crucial, there were other smaller…