June 25, 1969

Mr. W.A. Koshland
_ President
‘A.A.Knopf, Publishers
501 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10022

Dear Mr. Koshland,

I return from a brief trip to Washington, including some business
(see clipping attached) not totally irrelevant to our correspondence,
to find your kind letter of June 13th.

None of my friends or acquaintances has any doubt whatever about
the identification of the character in "The Andromeda Strain’, and I
find it hard to believe that the parallel is entirely fortuitous.
However, I do not suggeat that it igs malicious and as far as I can
tell no harm has come of it and so long as this remains the case I would
be happy to let the matter rest right here.

It would, however, be prudent to follow your suggestion that
"Stanford" be regarded as a misprint for a fictional location and that
this be corrected accordingly in future editions.

Mr. Wise has also assured me that he will be less careless about
any poesibility of "misidentification’ in the movie version. For all
of which I am grateful.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr