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STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 e (415) 321-1200

April 16, 1973

STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

Department of Genetics

Dr. Robert Ballentine
Department of Biology
Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, Maryland 21218

Dear Bob,

I am trying to track down whatever documentary history might
still be preserved about the perceptions of biologists during the
first few years after the publication of Avery's report on pneumococcus
transformation. I suspect you may have seen Gunther Stent's piece on
this in the Scientific American last December, which does not fairly
present the picture upon my own recollection of it. Columbia, Department
of Zoology may have been one of the main arenas of debate’and while I
can certainly recall very vividly some of the coolness with which
chemical approaches to genetics was received among some quarters there,
I would hardly intepret that as a lack of perception as to the issues
that were being raised. How be it, I just wonder if you happened to have
preserved any papers, lecture notes, letters or other material that can
be dated in the interval between 1943 and 1947 and which would bear on
this question.

In particularly I am very curious to try to save ,what can be,about
Francis Ryan's role in this and also in the initiation of my own work
on bacterial recombination. The "bull-session" that is mentioned in the
enclosed is not a matter of specific recollection on my part, and I am
having difficulties finding any pieces of paper on which is recorded
anything very exact about the intellectual sources of the experiments
that are indeed preserved in notebooks from July 1945 on. I know that
Harriett Taylor showed me the Avery paper in January 1945 and that we
were very excited about it, but I have no actual record of Francis'
reactions,or yours, nor in fact in general what put Harriett on to taking
such a deep interest in that work -- which, of course, led in due course
to her taking a post-doc at Rockefeller later on.

Anything you can throw into the pot would be most welcome ;and
it would be nice to hear from you again.

Sincerely yours,

{

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr

LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESCARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE

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