March 4, 1949
Dear Doctor Avery:
At the direction of the Board of Directors of the Passano Foundation, we have the honor to inform you that you have been chosen as the recipient of the Passano Foundation Award for 1949.
The Award is in the sum of five thousand dollars and is conferred in recognition of your outstanding contributions to the field of bacteriology with particular reference to the clinical applications which have been developed from your fundamental researches.
This Award comes to you not solely as an evaluation of this Board.  Advice has been widely sought and the final result represents a consensus among persons best qualified to judge the merits of such contributions as you have made.
Following established custom we shall want to present the award to you in person.  The occasion will be the annual Passano Foundation dinner which has been scheduled for the evening of Wednesday, June 8th, at the Marlborough-Blenheim hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  This is the middle of the week of the meeting of the American Medical Association there in Atlantic City and some one-hundred or more distinguished guests are invited.
We trust that you will prepare a paper to be read on the occasion describing those phases of your work which you regard as most significant.
Meantime we trust that we may be honored with your formal acceptance of the award.
Yours very sincerely,
E. F. Williams
Secretary