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"Sy AREA CODE 608

AMAY 9 1980 ) —
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LCE OF THe PRES”

McARDLE LABORATORY
FOR CANCER RESEARCH

MEDICAL CENTER ‘ UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MADISON, WISCONSIN 53706

May 7, 1980

Dr. Joshua Lederberg, President
The Rockefeller University
New York, NY 10021

Dear Josh:

Thank you for sending to me the obituary of E. L. Tatum. To
answer your footnote 2., I could supply you with a short anecdotal
comment by J. Winge, with whom I was working at the Carlsberg
Laboratory in 1948/49. When I decided to emigrate to the USA and
asked Winge whose tab he would recommend to me, he unhesitantly
specified the two ''best American laboratories'’ in microbial genetics.
"If you want to work with an old-timer’ - he said - "I will write to
M. Demerec in Cold Spring Harbor. But since biochemistry is now of
utmost importance in genetics, I would rather write a letter of
recommendation to a young but brilliant man, whose name is Tatum".
Winge wrote to Tatum, but he was just moving from Yale to Stanford.
So ultimately I landed in Cold Spring Harbor.

Maybe this assessment of Tatum in 1948/49 by one of the leading
European geneticists will be of interest to you.

With the warmest personal regards,

a

Sincerely yours,

/ “ \ a,
ga ee,

Waclaw Szybalski

Professor of Oncology

WS:ms