Depiriment of Biology ,

 

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fi UNIVERSITY
Pood IN ST LOUIS

9/6/79

Joshua Lederberg

President

The Rockefeller University
New York, N. Y. 10021

Dear Professor Lederberg:

Your reference to C. C. Lindegren is correct, I believe, as far as it goes.
Actually, the story I have heard from Sturtevant holds that Lindegren's major role,
encouraged by Morgan, was to clean up the Neurospora cultures from contaminants and
from heterogeneous strains. Morgan had received the cultures from Dodge about 1928,
just as he moved to Caltech. The cultures were maintained for some time before
anyone started using them. By that time it was clear that they were not pure, at
least genetically. From all reports, Lindegren did a superb job purifying the

Y“ cultures and getting them genetically quite homogeneous. While this work was
absolutely essential for further work with the moulds in genetic experiments,

vv Lindegren never received much credit for the work. As far as I know Morgan was
quite positive about Lindegren's work, and encouraged him on it a great deal.

If I can be of any further help on this or other Morgan-related questions, do
not hesitate to get in touch with me.

Sincerely,

/ os

Garland E. Allen
Associate Professor

GEA/cdj

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