October 9, 1972

Dr. L.L. Waters

Director

Jane Coffin Childs Fund

333 Cedar Street

New Haven, Connecticut 06510

Dear Dr. Waters,

As you know the Fund played an instrumental role in supporting
my first research efforts woth Ed Tatum in 1946, which culminated in
the discovery of genetic recombination in bactefia.

I have been glad to respond to several requests from you over the
years to help keep your files up to date about my activities. Now I have
a favor to ask of you that involves the use of such information.

A number of things have provoked me to try to essemble better
documentation of the intellectual status of the fibad of genetics
at the time of this work and to make a reliable historical record
of the context in which it was pursued. Although I have been fairly
careful about keeping correspondence and other records since 1947,
I have been able to find only sketchy material for the interval before
I took my first regular position at a university and could have the
stability and secretarial support to maintain reasonable files.

I am writing you now, therefore, to ask whether you have retained
what might be some useful information dating back to the Fall of 1945.
You should have received some kind of applicatéon from me and some
related material by way of reference from Professor Tatum and probably
from some other referees. I would be most grateful if you could check your
files about the availability of such material and let me have copies of
wnat I might have submitted and what you might have received from my
then teacher, the late Professor Ryan. If there is anything useful from
others now living, I would urge at minimum that it be preserved and
perhaps that you request permission from the writera to send me copies
of those texts or portions that might appropriately be transmitted.
I nave written to most of the other principals, whom I could think of,
aud have been chagrined to find that very few people have kept their
personal correspondence files for this long a period.

My own particular interest is in bacterial recombination rather
than Avery's work, but if you can Suggest other possible historio-
graphical resources dealing with either of those questions, I would
appreciate your suggestions about them.

Sincerely yours,

JL/rr Joshua Lederberg
Enclosure Professor of Genetics