UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

 

 

BERKELEY * DAVIS * IRVINE * LOS ANGELES ¢ RIVERSIDE * SAN DIEGO * SAN FRANCISCO

 

 

/

 

DEPARTMENT OF LESXEMR Biology
RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA 92502

31 January 1977

Dear Josh,

Several weeks ago Bettym and I visited Arthur and Prizcilla
Pollister, who are spending a few months in a rented cottage at
King's Ranch, Apache Junction, just east of Phoenix Arizona. I
should have written you earlier before many of the details became
blurred but the problem w was that he told me so much that would
interest you that the task of writing it all out seemed impossible.
Then I had a lousy case of prostatisis and, now at home getting
well, think I better send some notes along to you.

auf

I told him of the sorts of things that interested You and
that I suggested you write him. He had a vague feeling that you
had done so but could not recall what happened. He did have a
guilty feeling that the questions wouldhave required such a lengthy
relpy that such would not have been practical. But he did say
that he would very much like to see you and discuss in detail the
history of genetical events at Columbia and in the NYC region.
I was amazed at how much he did know and remember-- and it is no
doubt that he is very interested. If you and M could pay the
Pollisters a visit before early March you would not find only many
answers to your questions but see a very interesting region of
Sonoran Desert. It seemed to Betty and th me much richer and
more interesting than the Colorado Desert. Guess Summer Rains vs
Winter Rains do make a vast difference, When Betty comes home from
the lab I will ask if she has a fuller address and telephone number
for the Pollosters and put this at the end of the letter.

I asked Arthus especially about his relation with Alfred.
It is clear that the relation meant much to Arthur. In the
early days the two became very close and Possibly for Arthur's
reserved New England ways too close. He mentioned how the Mirskys
would visit them frequently in NYC and in Maine in the summer,
(The Pollisters were not very social themselves). Arthur was clearly
enbafassed that when walking down the sidewalk of a Maine town,
Alfred would hold on to Arthur's arm}! Arthug seemed to be implying
that ordinary Maine folk might think that a rather strange couple.

But there was always great resistance to some of Arthur's
notions and efforts made to suppress them. I guess this was mainly
a matter of Alfred feeling that protein was the important gene
material and Arthur thinking it more likely nucleic acid. Arthur
Said that he was convinced by the early 1940's that it was DNA
and so reported it at the Dallas meetings of the AAAS in 1941.
I asked it he had publisped and the usual aswer came, "no". But

he said it should have been in an abstract ‘of the American Society
of Zoologists. At that timw the ASZ abstracts were published, if
I remember correctly, in the Anatomical Record . I had hoped to
check this for you but, maybe, later.

I well remember that meeting. As a very young squirt I had
been asked to appear with the immortals in a symposium on Evolution.
This was especially awesome since I had to speak from the pulpit(!)
in one of the churchesg. I kept one eye upwrad for the expected
thunderbolt. On the way down Alfred and I had travelled coach and
Spent the whole night talking. He was much concerned whether or
not his research was'important'. I suggested that it did not make
all that difference if it was carefully done and interesting and
rewarding to him. He did not buy that. I felf then and afterwards

Very weve friendly with Alfred and even closer to Arthun.

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But bak to those two. Alfred m had a way of stalling on things
Arthur wanted to publish and on one occasgion eveW went so far as
to ‘lose' a ms that was in single copy. Knowing Arthur, I cay
imagine that he was wholly unable to cope with this. Mrst of all
a friend was acting this way. Then too Arthur was not a biochemist
and would have assumed that Alfred knew far more that he. Finally
Arthur was, and is in many ways, a very shy and unsure perston.
He mw once told me how very diffucult it was to operate in the
world (ie, in NYC) wien after being raised in the backwoods of
Maine. He often felt social unease. My relations with him were
always easy and close and, quite possibly, he understood that coming
from the backwoods of Virginia did not make things all that easy
either, But as an example of this usease, one day my mother was
coming up to Schermerhorn (on a Sunday no doubt) and, having told
her so much about Arthur,she wanted to mest him. I went down to the
9th floor to ask him and he seemed very, embarrassed and said he had
to leave just then--which he did,

But the break with Alfred was very specific. arthur, I guess
finally and in desperation, wrote up a paper and sent it off to
be published without telling Alfred. It had to do with the amount
of protein in the nucleus--Arthur could show with his methods that
there was a lot whereas the extraction procedures of Mtrrsky removed
it before it was detected, This came out in PNAS--about 19434.
That did it,

Later there was the battke to get, or not to get, Mirsky at
Columbia. Arthur said it was probably far better w for him that
the move failed. Dunn and Dobzhansky were the main "pros". But
the Department was spliW evenly So evenly that when it came my
turn to express an opinion--being the Barnard rep., the vote was

‘exactly even. Tt-was-about my.first meeting too, er-at least

ene, I never did vote saying that with the dept so evenly
violently and violently con thet it would be lunacy--and onfair

to the candidate to ask mim to come. In retrospect gess that really
was a 'no', /
Arthur talked for hours--we were there part of Sat, Sun,
and part of Mon. Most of it was about Columbia and its denizens,
All in all a warm and nostalgic occasion that Betty and I greatly
enjoyed.

Arthur and Pricilla have both aged, of course. She looks
very old he not nearly as old as we had expected, They drove to
Arizona which tells Something of their state of health, He
continues to do lots of work around the houses he owngs. He
seemed not at all interested in the Columbia of today. Was not
even aware that Biolggy was getting a new building. But he is
Still mm very much the same old AWP. His current delight is
a Hewlett-Packard. Said he took and old data sheet that dated
a back to the days of his weULaZrapKrexmenenrenentexsf micro
spetrophotometric determinations of proteins and nucleic acid in
cells, He remembered that in the late 1940's it hadi taken him
several weeks to do all the computations on that page-- with his
"toy' he could do it in half an hour. His eyes really shone when
telling me all this,

Sorry about all the typos but, as I always must tell my
friends, if they use the metghker'nearest neighbor' method they
Can usually get the meaning: Take the letter that makes no sense
in the work and, while gazing at a standard keyboard, see what
letters are nearby. Substitute then one aBter a the othet--
usualky something will make sanse,

Trust that you did get the cCamera--unbroken. Thought I
betéer ask before we discard the enclosed receipt.

BEtty and I still remember with much joy our Chrstmas eve
in the desert with you and M,

If you can possibly get to the base of the Superstition
Mountains, where the Kings Ranch is locatdd, you will find lots
of gold awaiting you. That is also the area of the Lost Dutchman
mine--maybe you can find that also.

My very best

I

Kiwe's Raweh Resonr
Rovre {, Box /7#0
Apache Tuvcriia, Az a S220

Tel Gor YF2 2rY~G