Dr. Charles Bugg, retired UAB biochemistry professor and former director of Center for Macromolecular Crystallography, recalls a 1969 meeting about the formation of a new university called UAB: “All the faculty were there. There really weren’t very many of us...And [President Joe Volker] gave us this vision of where UAB was going to go. I think everybody felt like he was sort of a wild man, sort of crazy...All these big visions... sounded extremely unlikely and ambitious, and we ended up far exceeding [them].”