December 16, 1975

Dr. W.J. Whelan

Department of Biochemistry

University of Miami School of Medicine
P.O. Box 520875

Miami, Florida 33152

Dear Pr. Whelan,

I have your note of November 17th asking me to contribute an obituary
notice on Ed Tatum. I regret that I was not able to answer sooner but I
have been out of the country until just now.

Unfortunately, I already have several other commitments in this
direction and I do not think I quite know how to write anything further
that would be distinctive. I have been in touch with Dr. Beadle and he
ia in the same boat.

I do have one suggestion, however. Ed wrote an excellent account of his
own work up to 1959 as his Nobel Prize Lecture. I believe this was also
printed in Science sometime in early 1959.

You could hardly do better than reprint that address. It is still

fresh and interesting and he speaks better for himself than anyone else
could.

If you want some of the additional official biographical details,
I am sure that the Public Relations Office at the Rockefeller University
wokld be very happy to oblige.

About the IUB report on Viking, I did indeed respond that it would be
impossible to reconcile that task with the actual operations of the Vikadag
mission. I hope they have been in touch with Dr. Richard Young of the Office
of Life Sciences at NASA about how best to deal with that situation.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr