STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

STANFORD, CALTFORNIA 91505

 

 

Sraxrorp UNivessrry SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics
(413) 497-5052

April 29, 1977

Mrs. Ruth Sternfeld
The Rockefeller University
New York, N.Y. 10021

Dear Mrs. Sternfeld,

Dr. David Goddard, Home Secretary of the National Academy of Sciences,
has asked me to prepare a biographical memoir on the late Professor Edward L.
Tatum for publication in that Academy's series. I have regarded it as a pri-
vilege to accept that task, in small measure to repay my very large debt to
Professor Tatum as my teacher, colleague and close friend.

During the course of my labors, I have collected a variety of documents
that I will be happy to share with you for the archives if they should be of
interest to you.

Dr. Ray Barratt of Humboldt State University, also a former student of
Professor Tatum, told me that shortly after Professor Tatum's death, he had
deposited a collection of laboratory notebooks and similar documentation,
which I believe has also found its way into your archives. There are still a
number of questions that may be very difficult to resolve about the details of
Tatum and Beadle's central discovery without better archival documentation
than I have so far been able to retrieve. It would be invaluable to be able
to pin down some details with respect to dates and experimental plans if the
notebooks are still available for the period from about 1939 to 1942. The
most critical interval would be approximately January to February 1941. Dr.
Barratt was not sure whether this material was included in the collection that
he had transmitted, and this is what I am now writing about.

From what Professor Tatum had told me personally, before his death, it is
most unlikely that there is any other correspondence or records that would go
back to that time, when he was here at Stanford as a research associate and
assistant professor. My rather diligent efforts at excavation here at Stanford
have also been largely unrewarding. So it is not with any great expectation
of a positive answer that I also raise the question whether there are any other
papers of that vintage in the archives.

I am enclosing one or two pieces of paper from my current activity that
may help to illuminate what I'm looking for.

I expect to be in New York for a week or so early in July, and if the
outlook is at all promising, I hope that it might be possible for me to visit
both the center and the archives.as part of this quest.

el ow

Joshua Lederberg, Pyofessor of Genetics
LT. J. PL KENNEDY, JR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

   

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE