Howard Gest joined the Manhattan Project in 1943 in the Chemistry Division of the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Between 1943 and 1946, he continued research on uranium fission products at the Clinton Laboratories in Oak Ridge. Following completion of graduate work in microbiology in 1949 at Washington University (St. Louis), Gest was a faculty member at Western Reserve University School of Medicine (1949-1959) and Washington University (1959-1966).

Howard Gest was a faculty member at Indiana University Bloomington from 1966-2012. At his death in 2012, he was Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Microbiology and Adjunct Professor of History and Philosophy of Science. He is widely know for his research on photosynthetic bacteria, and has written extensively on the history of research in biochemistry and microbiology. Gest has held two Guggenheim Fellowships, and has served on committees of the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. He was elected an Honorary Member of the American Society of Microbiology, was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Permission to use these articles for non-commercial use was granted by Gest. Any use for profit publishing is prohibited.

• H. Gest: “The July 1945 Szilard Petition on the Atomic Bomb: Memoir by a signer in Oak Ridge.” For further information on Leo Szilard and the decision to use atomic bombs, visit http://www.dannen.com/decision/index.html and http://www.dannen.com/szilard.html
• H. Gest: “The ‘astrobiology’ fantasy of NASA (The term ‘astrobiology’ is an oxymoron that has become a buzzword in the Age of Space Hype).”
• H. Gest: “The 2006 Astrobiology Follies: Return of the Phantom Martian Microbes,” which presents a retrospective analysis of attempts to find evidence of extraterrestrial microbial life and discusses the significance of the buzzword “astrobiology.”
• H. Gest and J. Favinger: “Identity of Rhodospirillum centenum, a unique photosynthetic bacterium.”