23rd November, 1972.
Dear Josh,
Yes, indeed Elliott was the source of my remark that "Avery and Griffith never met or corresponded". But I agree it is remarkable if Avery never wrote to Griffith (if not the reverse). And in fairness to Elliott it was hardly an "assertion", rather a fairly definite opinion which obviously could never be proved. He suggested contacting Rebecca Lancefield who would know "for sure", but I never actually had time to do it before writing the paper up.
As time goes on all kinds of extra bits of interesting information reach me - usually in relation to an objection that I had been a little inaccurate or misleading in some of my remarks.
I think I may have over emphasized the "stimulating guidance of Oswald Avery" -- from the little information I received from Colin McLeod shortly before he died, gently pointing out that the younger co-workers involved felt they had personally contributed in a major way to the development of the whole work. It is very unfortunate that he died before he could give his Griffith Memorial Lecture. I wonder if he left any notes. They would have been most interesting to peruse. I rather doubt if Maclyn McCarty would be so interesting to contact (he was quite the dullest lecturer on the most fascinating subject of all time that I have listened to), but if may be worthwhile writing to him.
The person I feel it would not be useful to contact is V.D. Allison though he worked with, and knew, Griffith well. He wrote to me that "Griffith was a frequent visitor to Endell Street." But Elliott assures me that this was quite incorrect and he was confusing Avery with someone else. I have other reasons to distrust Allison's memory which seems to have gone totally astray in many respects.
A final point which I would be interested to have your views on is the famous Hershey and Chase experiment which I admit to have portrayed in a very misleading fashion. Careful consideration of their findings would provide to my mind very poor and unconvincing evidence of the exclusive role of DNA in heritable information transfer. I still do not understand why their work is so widely quoted.
With best wishes,
Yours,
Martin
M. R. Pollock