UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL Department of Biochemistry
AND LIFE SCIENCES 420 Henry Mall
Madison, Wisconsin 53706 USA
Telephone: 608/262-3026/262-3040

December 22, 1976

Prof. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University
School of Medicine
Stanford, CA 94305

Dear Joshua:

Forgive me for delaying so long in answering your inquiry regarding
Ed Tatum's work in Kégl's laboratory. Unfortunately, I have little to
add to what you no doubt already know, namely Kégl had become famous
for his success in isolating several biologically potent natural products
{auxins, biotin,muscarine) in pure form and then being able to carry out
considerable chemical characterization work on quantities of the pure
products which at that time were too small for most investigators to
handle. That was mainly why I went there, and I would guess Ed did too.
I did not have much direct interaction from K$gl himself but did learn
quite a lot along the above lines from several people in his lab, eg.
Hanni Erxleben, Arie Haagen-Smit, Pam vander Laan, and others. Probably
Ed did likewise, but I do not know this definitely as my stay there did
not overlap his, and I had practically no contact with him after he re-
turned to the States.

If you want to take the trouble, I think your best source of infor-
mation would be someone of Kégl's students who was still in the lab while
Ed was there. The only one of these with whom I have kept somewhat in
contact is P. J. vander Laan who the last I knew (ca 10 years ago), I
believd, director of research at the Federal Fermentation Corp. in Den Haag.
This is a pretty long shot and quite possibly not worth the effort.

Another person who might help is Dr. William Berends, Professor of Organic
Chemistry, University of Delft, Holland.

Happy Holidays!
Sincerely yours,
Frank Strong

FS/1jm