Memo from To: Dennis Flanagan

JOSHUA LEDERBERG Scientific American
ui 2 5 1973

re -- an article on the history of mol. biol.

I have never felt otherwise’ than that a
series of flukes has impeded what should have
been a more intimate history of relationships.

I could even say that some of those past failures
~~ ages ago -- challenged me to 'try harder’ in
my efforts at publication about science in

other media.

Your position is entirely persuasive, and
although I have some regret about a lost oppor-
tunity to correct some of Stent's errors, I

accept your invitation to write a separate
‘article. I cannot avoid intersecting some of
the issues that Stent raised (about ‘premature
discovery! rather than art vs. science) but
will attempt to do this in a non-polemical £awkt
fashion. Still, I trust you will permit me

to mention that my formulation differs some-
what from that in his previous article in SciAm.

The longer compass of my piece will give
the scope I would need for more careful expla-
nation, and also for more attention to the his-
torical antecedents of bacterial genetics as
a twin to molecular biology. I am rather in-
terested in the evident "postmaturity" of my
own work, which by some view of the matter
might have been done in 1905 as plausibly as in,
1945 -- and may speculate on the reasons therefo

I hope to have a ms, in your hands by
Sept. 1 1973.

 

PROFESSOR JOSHUA LEDERBERG
Department of Genetics
School of Medicine

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305