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OCT 35 1978
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Rockefeller

University

 

October 24, 1978

James Murray Luck Selection Committee

Dr. Philip W. Anderson
Dr. Eugene Garfield
Dr. Bentley Glass

Dr. Joshua Lederberg

Gentlemen:

The Home Secretary has yielded gracefully to my
opinion that we couldn't conceivably go through an adequate
selection procedure and have a nominee for the December
Council meeting as originally requested. However it is
deemed desirable to have a selection for the first award
in time for the award to be made at the spring NAS meeting
and this could be managed if we could have our nominee
chosen in time for the February Council meeting, so I
guess that's the tentative target.

If you could give me your initial thoughts on a few
relevant points within the next week or two I'll try to
assemble them and rough out a program we might follow.
Since this will be the first award of this prize we are
in a position to set precedents rather than having to
follow any.

First of all, it is evidently up to us to decide
the overall plan for what is expected to be at least a
five-year series of awards. We could decide to make the
choice from nominees over all scientific fields or to cate-
gorize fields and rotate the award through them over
successive years. Still more important, we'll need to agree
on what aspects of scientific reviewing we feel are most
deserving or in need of this recognition. It would evidently
be within the intended scope of the award to include, for
example, reviewing that constitutes interpretation of
science for the public. On the other hand, critical and
integrative reviews of scientific literature of a deeper
sort and intended for scientists often play an important
part in leading to theoretical contributiom and yet never
seem to come in for recognition by way of prizes and

the like. I guess my own choice would be to try to set
the emphasis in the latter direction by trying to find
that kind of contribution to recognize with the first
prize. An example that comes immediately to my mind,
though I don't intend this as a nomination, would be
Ernest R. Hilgard's Monograph, Theories of Learning ,which
appeared in its first edition in 1948 and though it did
not include any original theoretical contribution virtually
created the specialty of learning theory in psychology
and was extremely influential in shaping this field over
the next twenty years. There must be similarly con-
Spicuous examples in other fields.

 

The principal question of tactics is how to secure
nominations. We need to be reasonably thorough; on the
other hand the Committee doesn't have any staff and
evidently meagre financing. As on other similar enter-
prises I imagine I'll contribute some secretarial time,
but the amount is limited and we need to accomplish as
much as possible with a reasonably limited number of
communications. Here your ideas or suggestions are most
essential.

As you may have noted, our Committee has been neatly
confined to a small geographical area so that if we need
to meet it can be done relatively conveniently and cheaply
in New York City. Would you give me first thoughts as
to whether it would likely be reasonably convenient for
you to come to the City for an afternoon meeting, whether
you think it's likely that we should meet early before
trying to carry out the process of securing nominations or
later after nominations are in or both.

That's surely enough for this communication. I'll
come back to you all when I've had some input in response
to this one.

Sincerely, -
oy,

William K. Estes

Chairman

James Murray Luck
Selection Committee

WKE: 1p