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‘ADUM e STANFORD UNIVERSITY © OFFICE MEMORANDUM e@ STANFORD UNIVERSITY ® OFFICE MEMORANDUM

Date: December 1, 1976

File
Joshua Lederberg
:
Interview with Tane Bell, 12/1/76

Dr. Bell had volunteered to visit me from Watsonville at his convenience
and we had arranged from 4 to 5 PM this afternoon.

He was really not able to add very much new about the scientific milieu.

It is amusing that he also had talked to June Tatum and there must be quite
a trip on her about having so many requests that in the end came from me.
However, I will be seeing her myself tomorrow.

He started out saying something about himself: namely that he was the son of
the eminent mathematician at Cal Tech, thus coming from a background where he
knew something about academic competition. He had met T.H. Morgan, he knew
the Cal Tech environment where brains were the only commodity. His father was
quite sensitive to where the excitement was in biology and Tane wanted to go
into a different field and accepted his father's advice about, working with
Beadle. He was apparently at Stanford between approximately 39 and ‘43.

Even through that time there was not that much communication
between Beadle and Tatum. They were very much spread out in catacombs and
Beadle was at one end. Tane does not actually recall ever seeing the two of
them talking together.

Tane describes Beadle as a highly competitive, aggressive personality who had
to be number one whatever he did (including poker), he was a hard worker,
articulate, concise, got up early, had to get there first; to the students

his attitude was you got to do it on your own. So, Tane found Tatum a much more
congenial personality to work with and evidently expresses some bitterness
about Beadle's competitiveness.

Bell, Regnery and Srb were very close together and he recommended contacting Srb.
Blincks could also give a picture of the department. C.V. Taylor was really not
in the picture. Wittaker was already there and was the dynamic personality who
ran things.

Ed came to feel that there really was not that much room for him at Stanford

and Bell himself encouraged Ed to go to meetings and let it be known that he
would be available and to look for a more effective opportunity elsewhere. There
was not very much money, it was Beadle's world.

When they did get to New Haven, June was not too happy about the city environment
or the cold weather particularly on account of the children. Their relationships
were already somewhat problematical even then.

Bell was quite relieved and gratified when I told him what a warm person was
and he seemed to feel that Ed very much deserved this. He was a family man, did
not often work nights, loved to be with his children.

He was not able to say very much about how Ed was recruited - apparently June had
told him that it was "through a Dutchman" (could that be van Wagtendonk?)

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Memo to File -2- 12/1/76

Ed never talked very much about his past, lived in the present. As to the
atmosphere of the laboratory, he suggested that Carroll, Mrs. Perry Moerdyke,
was Beadle's assistant but one who was able to see the whole operation with
some detachment.

Bell knew nothing about the penicillin work, probably having started medical
school by then, but perhaps Mrs. Moerdyke would be the one to ask.

The only other close friends that Bell recalled was a couple who worked at
Moffett Field. He does not recall their names.

The catacombs were cubicles with thin slat walls, many of them worked
under the sidewalk -(1 recall the glass disk lighting overhead. \But they had
no trouble with contamination. There were not many airmovements.

Bell recalls that his father had an autobiography in some dictionary or
encyclopedia: White's? He will try to check the name and thinks Ed might have
made a contribution, too. What about dictionary of American or of scientific
biography?

Check further on van Wagtendonk and on Marion Beadle.