January 28, 1958

Mr, Hugh L, Dryden

Home Secretary

National Academy of Solences
2101 Constitution Avenue
Washington 25, D.C.

Dear Mr, Dryden

ZI am writing to you on the basis of your connections both with the Acadeny
and with the NACA,

During the past few weeks, I have been circulating the enclosed memorandum
privately. My proximate objective would be te encourage the Academy to orga-
nize anskdniiéeg comnittee to study the prospects and problems of extra-terres-
trial microbiology. To be sure, I had heen puzzled by the question to whom
such a scientific committee could send its recemmendations,

Monday's New York Times carried an article signed by Richard Witkin which
was quite illuminating to me as concerns the current hassle in Washington. It
was, a6 you must know, mainly about your address to the Institute of Aeronautical
Selences, recommending a key role for the NACA in space researoh. I hardly
sash gnou about the underlying controversies to know what position to take on
such @ matter, but it is plain enough that some overall direction is needed, if
"extremely important nonmilitary aspects of space technology would be submerged”
ae woll as for the military development itself.: I am even more concerned thet
the biological aspects of such research have hardly been touched upon, except
perhaps in relationship to human survival in space travel. As the enclosure
eugesste, there is a particular urgency for a critical area of microblological
study that there be careful advance planing. A somewhat similar problem came
up in connection with Antarctic microblology-= though is is several orders of
magnitude less vital than a moon project would be-= and the discournging outcome
is that there is not much point in pursuing that now, since the traffie approaches
that in Times Square,

I om writing to ask whether you might have a full copy of your address, which
would be, I am sure, very informative to me on the agency policy questions. I have
also been in touch with Professor Goddard, as chairman of the Botany Section of
the Academy, and we will probably discuss the desirability of and plans for pre-
senténe this issue at the spring meeting, Your comment on these tactics, and the
procedure for it, would be useful, as would be an indication from you as to the
exact date of the forthcoming session,

Yours sincerely,
Joshua Lederberg

Chairman, Department of
Medical Genetics