DEPARTMENT OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING

    

STANFORD UNIVERSITY

STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

poche ELLER ON
EC 2 11979% ?
Vice OF THE eat

 
   

December 12, 1979

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
President

The Rockefeller University
New York, NY 10021

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

We have delayed response to your Memo dated September 5 (regarding our
proposed new method to measure optical activity) while we follow up on
your suggestion to contact ARPA. It appears that it may still be some
time before ARPA makes any response to our "Pre-Proposal Summary" (a
copy to you was enclosed with our letter of August 30), so we take this
opportunity to reply to your other questions.

On the matter of protection, the proposal has not been publicly disclosed
to date. The option of filing an application for patent remains open,

but at the moment it is not intended to do so. Several years ago contacts
were made with a number of persons, both academic and industrial. A few
university people reacted with mild interest, but at the industrial level
there was no interest whatsoever. Therefore the proposal does not now
appear to merit patent protection. You are certainly free to discuss it
with industrial personnel, should the occasion arise.

One of the persons contacted several years ago was Carl Djerassi. He
referred us to his assistant, Ed Bunnenberg, who had been heavily involved
in developing much of Djerassi's instrumentation during the early 60's.
Dr. Bunnenberg in turn referred us to someone at Syntex who was respon-
sible for instrumentation, and whose opinion it was that the device de-
scribed would not be of any particular value in research at Syntex.

The only positive reactions thus far have come from yourself, Prof. Mosher
of the Stanford Chemistry Department, and Prof. Moscowitz of the Chemistry
Department at the University of Minnesota. Others have felt that interest
in measurement of optical activity peaked during the 60's, but is now in
decline.

You have also asked about a possible "flying-spot" spectropolarimeter
version. This would require major modifications to the presently conceived

Scheme. In principle it should be possible, but the engineering problems
Dr. Lederberg -2- December 12, 1979

in developing such a version may be formidable. Thus, it should not be
contemplated for the near term.

We continue to be persuaded of the technical merits of our proposal and
shall pursue the ARPA contact, and perhaps one or two others. We are
very grateful for the encouragement we have received from you.

Sincerely,

Layber ae, [rrTaa, fe.

C. W. Bates, Jr.
Professor

YYewad. Aina bey

H. Greenstein
Research Associate

di