 This prompted participation in a Cold Spring Harbor summer course on biology, and eventually led to his close association with H. Keffer Hartline's Laboratory of Biophysics at the Rockefeller University, and a long collaboration with Bruce W. Knight, the present head of the laboratory.As a maturing scientist, Sirovich's research interests took on an element of serendipity ("chance confers an advantage on the prepared mind", Louis Pasteur).For example, a chance remark on the failure of the standard description of the horseshoe crab's lateral eye neural network at its boundaries led to a complete Weiner-Hopf solution to the problem, with complete experimental agreement.