THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK. NY 10021

 

TOSHUA LEDERBERG
PRESIDENT 2 October 1987

Ronald G. Crystal, M.D.
3746 Cumberland Street, NW
Washington, DC 20016

Dear Ron:

As you recall from our telephone conversations last
May, my colleagues and I were stymied in developing an
offer to you that would be consistent both with our prior-
ities and resources as well as with your current support
and your forthrightly stated aims. Despite our (now seem-
ingly forlorn) hopes during our conversations with you be-
tween the fall of 1986 and the spring of 1987 -- and we
greatly appreciated your cooperation in these lengthy dis-
cussions -- we were compelled to conclude that your poten-
tial transition here would be much more difficult than we
had first visualized.

Further inquiries at Cornell clarified that, while
you would be warmly welcomed as a member of the Pulmonary
Division, the Department of Medicine could not offer re-
sources such as space, funds, and paid fellows specifical-
ly assigned to you. These constraints on the development
of your proposed programs thus compounded those imposed by
our own limitations. ‘

I should perhaps have written to you earlier, and
more formally, to Say how much we regretted this conclu-
Sion. Still I trust it is not too late to tell you of our
warm respect for you personally and our very great regard
for your professional achievements.

We wish you well and hope very much that your vigor-
ous research program will continue to be aS productive as
it has been along so many fronts, You engendered the
friendship of all who met you here at the Rockefeller, and
we deeply regret that it was not feasible to conclude our
negotiations at the high level of anticipation with which
they began. I hope we can continue to meet to discuss
scientific matters despite the closure of these discus-
sions about relocating your labs.

bec: Jan Breslow, M.D. Sincerely,
Attallah Kappas, M.D.
Rodney W. Nichols
Lila J. Magie

ua Lederberg