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DEPARTMENT OF STATE
THE SCIENCE ADVISER ee NE

January 2, 1959

Dear Professor Lederberg:

We were very much interested in receiving your letter of
December 29, 1958 and appreciate your suggestion of Professor
Francis J. Ryan for the post of Deputy Science Officer in Tokyo.
He is without doubt an excellent man and I am certain that he
would make an ideal Science Officer in our program abroad,
particularly in Japan. I have known Francis for a number of
years -- since 1947 I have been a menber of the Chemistry Depart-
ment at Columbia and for a time we use to clay handball together
in the gym (which as a former Columbia College student you must
remember well) -- and when I joined the staff here he immediately
came to my mind as a possible candidate for one of our posts
abroad. However, one of the Tokyo posts had already been filled
by a zoologist although we had to wait for the usual clearances
and yaper work before it could be announced which was only a few
weeks ago. Since it is our policy not to have two scientists in
the same general field at the same post, we have recently
selected a physicist (who incidentally speaks Japanese) as the
Deputy Science Officer in Tokyo and hope to make an official
announcement later as soon as all his pacers have gone through the
mill.

When I was in New York City in late October I dropped in to
see francis in his laboratory in Schermerhorn and had a long and
very pleasant talk with him. I pointed out to him that our
program is a continuing one and that we hoped he weuld be a
candidate for one of our overseas posts at some later date. He
seemed to be quite interested and I only hope that we will be able
to utilize his services some time during the next few years. I could
not agree with you more in what you say about him in your letter
and I can assure you that we shall do everything we can to bring
him into our program whenever it may be possible.

Sincerely yours,

Abn atl

L. H. Farinholt

ce: Dr. G. We Beadle Deputy Science Adviser

Frofessor Joshua Lederberg,
Genetics Building,
University of Nisccnsin,
Madison 6, Wisconsin.