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© THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

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< 1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

ockefeller

e University
S$ April 25, 1979

  

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. Alfred C. Coudert

President

Alfred Jurzykowski Foundation, Inc.
200 Park Avenue

New York, New York 10017

Dear Dr. Coudert:

Dr. Borowska has shared with me her applications
to the Foundation for the continued funding of her re-
search. She has also shown me your letter to her dated
February 14 in which you indicated the natural desire
of the Foundation to have a letter of endorsement from
this office.

In the interval I have had an excellent opportunity
to discuss Dr. Borowska's work directly with her and also
with several of her knowledgeable colleagues on this
campus. I am therefore in an excellent position to re-
spond to this indication, which would not have been the
case during the first few months after my arrival at the
Rockefeller University last fall.

As you know, Dr. Borowska worked for some years in
the laboratory of the late Professor Edward L. Tatum and
there are many records of the very high esteem in which
he held her during that time. The other side of that
relationship, however, was that Dr. Tatum had assumed
personal responsibility for the funding and the support
of Dr. Borowska's work, which gave her a sheltered en-
vironment but which deprived her of the experience of
independent responsibility for the fiscal side of her work.
The time just before Professor Tatum's death, in November
1975, and since then, have been very difficult for Dr.

Borowska on account of the disruption when that source of
stability disappeared.

_ At this time, The Rockefeller University is under-
taking a serious examination of the academic place that
Dr. Borowska should hold on our faculty, taking account of
Dr. Alfred C. Coudert
April 25, 1979

-2-

all of the above circumstances. However, there is no
doubt of the excellent quality of her work on the anti-
biotic edeine, which she has pursued almost single-
handedly from a wide variety of scientific and medical
viewpoints. We are all eager to see that Dr. Borowska
has the opportunity to continue these important investi-
gations and to develop her capabilities as a fully inde-
pendent investigator. The assurance of funding from the
Foundation would be indispensible to helping Dr. Borowska
get back to her feet and enter the normal pattern of quali-
fication for academic advancement for which I would wish
to give her every possible personal encouragement.

Dr. Borowska's personal and academic circumstances
are most unusual and certainly deserve compassionate con-
Sideration. I have to say, however, that the number of
permanently endowed tenured professorships at this Univer-
sity are very severely limited owing to fiscal restrictions,
and will remain so unless and until substantial sources of
permanent endowment support can be found. Dr. Borowska
will find herself in competition with other investigators
of international renown when the time comes for her con-
sideration for a position in that category; and it is
impossible at this time to predict the outcome. Apart
from her academic qualifications there are also questions
of priority choices for fields of research which depend in
part-on scientific judgements, in part on the practical
and material problems of enduring support. With these
cautionary remarks, I do not mean in ‘any way to diminish
the luster of Dr. Borowska's promise as an able and com-
petent investigator but it would be equally inappropriate
for me to leave implications of a commitment on the Univer-

Sity's part of a permanent character that might be beyond
our means to fulfill.

; I welcome support from the Alfred Jurzykowski Founda-
tion as a way to sustain the scientifically valuable ef-~
forts of an able and dedicated investigator.

Yours sincerel

O

Joshua Lederberg

    

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