STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

June 20, 1977

Dr. Russell P. Hager
108 Fort Avenue
Edgewood, R.I. 02905

Dear Dr. Hager:

This is to follow up our conversation about the gestation and birth
of Neurospora. I am dropping you a line, as you suggested might be
helpful, to remind you of my request that you try to dictate some
reminiscences of your experience at Stanford in 1941. In fact, it would
be very helpful just to have a word picture of what the lab was like,
how you did the various operations, what the tubes looked like, what
kind of facilities you had (I know a little bit about the "catacombs"),
almost none of which can be found in any record anywhere. You were so
right in thinking that this was just as important as Mendel, and so
I believe you think that it will be worth a little effort to try to
capture what can be at this date.

Over the telephone, I was pushing you rather hard about dates, and
I am afraid that I did set the timing a bit early. As you can see
from the enclosure, the first paper was sent into the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences in October 1941, so you may very well
have arrived just at the instant that the first mutant was being
captured. Whatever you can recall about those circumstances, whether
there was any celebration about it, what anyone said and thought about
it would be most helpful. I don't know if any photograph exists anywhere
that shows what the lab looked like at that time, I am sorry to say.

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

Enclosure

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DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 © (415) 497-5052