As David Kirk pointed out, what we normally call the First through Fourth International Volvox Meetings are really about the fifth through eighth, as they were preceded by several meetings in the ’70s. The very first meeting was hosted by David and Marilyn Kirk at Washington University in St. Louis. Richard Starr, then at Indiana University, reported on the meeting in the first Volvox Newsletter (Dr. Starr would later move to the University of Texas, and his strains would form the beginning of the UTEX Culture Collection, which is still in operation).

Alexey Desnitskiy has a copy of the newsletter, which he has kindly scanned for us and allowed me to share here.

The First Annual Volvox Meeting was held at Washington University, St. Louis, on July 10-13, 1975. The meeting was organized by David and Marilyn Kirk of the Department of Biology in such a complete and satisfying manner that future organizers of meetings will have a hard time living up to their standard.

The meetings were held in the Wohl Center and the participants were housed in adjoining dormitories. On Thursday evening there was an informal get-acquainted session after dinner with beer, etc. as useful lubricants. No formal program was planned for the sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, but the various participants had come armed with short talks about the work in progress in their respective laboratories. Summaries of these talks follow in this NEWSLETTER.

The newsletter includes abstracts from George Viamontes, Howard Barsky, Barbara Griffin, Kenneth V. Chase, David L. and Marilyn M. Kirk, William H. Darden, J. A. Zeikus, John L. Kelland, Richard C. Starr, Robert Huskey, and John Blamire, Henrietta Kazan, and Howard Kaplen, followed by a mailing list that identifies attendees at the meeting. Topics include embryonic inversion, somatic regenerator mutants, sex induction in V. carteri and V. aureus, amino acid uptake, nucleic acid synthesis, phototaxis, strain collection, and linkage mapping of developmental mutants known at the time.

The newsletter is available for download here.