THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

JOSHUA LEDERBERG July 30, 1981

PRESIDENT

Dr. Maria New

Pediatri€ Endocrine Group

The New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center
525 East 68th Street

New York, New York 10021

Dear Maria:

My own experience would not lend much support to your
speculation about correlating prococity in physical, vis-a-
vis intellectual, development; although I recognize that
there were some overtones in that direction from the early
Terman studies. However, my own speculations aside, I was
thinking of where you could find a good cohort for such a
study; it occurred to me that the North Carolina School of
Science and Mathematics might offer you a nearly unique
opportunity to examine a collected cohort as early as the
lith grade. I don't know of anything else quite like that,
so readily assembled in one place, for earlier ages; but
the various societies interested in gifted children might
offer far better advice than I could.

Do you know the Barany brothers who raced through
school and the Rockefeller Ph.D. program? It might be
best to attempt to develop case controls on the basis of
intra-kindred comparisons; but I don't know what fraction
of the youngsters of interest are going to turn out to
be only children.

If you did not wish to go so far afield, it is possi-
ble that some of our special high schools -- like Bronx
High School of Science or Stuyvesant High School -- might
offer a somewhat less stringently selected group, from
which you could still harvest enough instances of what
you are seeking. But I expect you would face a lot of
political problems trying to do this in N.Y.C.
Dr. Maria New
Page Two

The 1932 composition that I sent you I owe to my mother's
saving habits; those genes may have been passed on, but with
later onset: I have very few papers that go back before 1940.
But since 1947 - to the dismay of many people who have to
help me manage those files - I do have 99% of my correspondence
and this is an archive of some interest far beyond my own

autobiographical curiosity.

Yours sincerely,

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