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THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

July 28, 1987

Ms. Sheila W. Wellington
Secretary of the University

Yale University

P. O. Box 1303A Yale Station

New Haven, Connecticut 96528-7419

Dear Ms. Wellington:

Your letter inviting me to the Dwight Terry Lectureship came
at an extraordinarily propitious time. I have been giving much
thought to the proper vehicle of publication of a complex of
memoirs and essays; and it would be a source of great personal
delight as well as objective efficiency if that project could
be convergent with the Terry Lectureship. Nothing could give me
greater sentimental satisfaction than to come home to Yale for
such a purpose.

The invitation to the Lectureship is then most flattering,
and I would like to do it. But the publication may be either
a great opportunity or an insuperable obstacle.

I have been thinking about a series of four volumes. My
plans are outlined in the attachments. The first two of these
would be volumes of reprinted selected works. Volume 1 focusses
on my scientific work, ranging from genetics to computer science.
Volume 2 comprises various papers of social commentary and
public policy, including some number of the weekly columns
"Science and Man" that appeared in the Washington Post some 15
years ago. Extensive annotations would bring the reprinted
articles into conceptual and historical relationship with
current issues.

Volume 3 would be precisely the synthetic “assimilation
and interpretation" that is the core of the Terry Lectureship.

Finally, I had in mind a more peronal memoir, a hybrid of
reflective commentary and record of autobiographic experience.
I have already written, and in part published, two or three of
the 2@ or so chapters planned for that volume. For various
reasons I was not looking forward to the completion and
publication of that work for perhaps another five years.

My. dilemma is that I would very much like to respond to
your invitation on the Terry Lectureship; but I need to integrate
the plans for its publication with the other three volumes I
have just indicated.
+ HERES

 

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My first question to you is really one of procedure: with
whom would it be appropriate that I continue this conversation
further, to see whether there is a mutually desirable outcome?

The republication of the selected works is intended to
offer a detailed referential background for the conceptual
content and the historical background of the ideas to be
elaborated in volumes 3 and 4.

The themes I have in mind for the lectures are 1) Modern
Biology and Human Nature; 2) Technology, Health, the World
Population, and the Environment; 3) World Security Models and
Imminent Threats to Peace; 4) Creativity and Research.

If we can do it, my thought would be to have the lectures
given during the academic years 1988-89. May I call your

‘attention to the outline of volume 4 as this conveys the

breadth of the overall enterprise.

While I would of course be the most gratified to learn
that these proposals are at least negotiable, I could well
understand if you had to reply that they were not what you had
in mind for the Lectureship itself.

ours sincerely,

oshua Lederberg

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