With very few exceptions, eminent scientists of retirement age have been away from the laboratory for many years. Senior workers who do experiments themselves are rare; those who implement the latest experimental technology with their own hands are virtually non-existent. Those who do are special; Professor Preer is one of those special people.

Preer enrolled in the zoology department at IU to study taxonomy with Kinsey, who worked on gall wasps. However, a course given by the dynamic young geneticist Tracy Sonneborn altered his plans, and he began to work in protozoology. His plans were further altered by Pearl Harbor.

After the war he returned to Bloomington to finish his graduate work. This work continued for the next thirty years. In 1968 Preer returned to IU to take a position in the department of his mentor, Sonneborn. The presence of these two scientists in the same place meant that Indiana was the acknowledged world center for work on the genetics of Protozoa.

In 1976, Preer was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences and shortly thereafter was made Distinguished Professor of Biology.

As molecular biology revolutionized experimental approaches to understanding control of gene expression, Preer learned new techniques and adapted them to his work. In 1985, he developed a new method of introducing genes into Paramecium, a method which promises to accelerate greatly the rate at which molecular questions can be studies in this organism. It is likely that Preer is on the verge of doing some of the most important work of his career.