STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER
STANFORD. CALIFORNIA 94305

 

 

January 20, 1976

STaNrorp UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

doe purtinent of Genetics

F030 F97-30

Mr. Gene Bylinsky
32 Chapel Lane
Riverside, Connecticut 06878

Dear Gene,

Yes, I had seen that you had been named for the ACS award and was
delighted to have read of that choice.

You asked me about the reasons why I stopped writing a newspaper
column. It would take a long time to go into all of the factors. Many
people rather asked why I continued to do so for such a long period of
time!

it was certainly a factor that it was hard to find time to do this
on top of my other already rather pressing duties. But I think I can
honestly say that the main reason was a growing mismatch between the
requirements of the role and my own intellectual temperament. In five
years I had produced almost 250 pieces on almost as many different subjects.
A good reporter or columnist would have forgotten all about them and gone
on to new material every week. This in itself was not difficult to do.
But my problem as a scholar was letting go of that backlog of material,
most of which generated more questions than I had answers for. I became
increasingly preoccupied with trying to understand in more and more
profound detail the large range of issues that I had barely scratched the
surface of. This left less and less brain-space or intellectual energy
or whatever you would like to call it for me to do any of my other work
or to continue to open up new subjects.

Although some of the issues that I had written about have become moot
with the passage of time (for example a discussion of the merits of the 18-
year-old vote and the biological basis for the definition of maturity), —~
that example already illustrates how many new facets can be uncovered by
this kind of re-examination and I guess there is enough provocation there
already to keep me busy for life-time.

I wrote a little vignette a while ago on the desideratum of being able
to forget. You may find that it has some bearing on the present discussion,
although I had several other contexts also in mind.

You mentioned that you will be writing about Rockefeller. You certainly
have to keep in mind the historical setting in which it was established.
For many years it was essentially a unique institution in which it was

DL. J.P. RENNFDY. JR. LARORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICINE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MCOLECT LAR BIOLOGY HEREDITY NEUROBIOLOGY DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE
Gene Bylinsky ~2- 1/20/76

possible for research workers to focus almost all of their attention

on biomedical research problems - that was long before NIH made this

a much more pervasive capability around the country's universities and
medical schools. But I guess for the other side of that coin you might also
want to re-read Arrowsmith and Dr. Addams.

Machlin MacCarty is probably the man you ought to talk to who is
there now to give you a critical insight onto the roots of the institution's

present strength.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr
Enclosure