Novenber 25, 1953

Dr, David My Bonner
Department of Microbiolovy
Yale University

New Haven 11, Connecticut

Dear Dave:

Your note of the 13th asked about Stanley Shapiro, I knew
Stan only slightly while he was here at Wisconsin. Just after
he vot his Ph.D. in the Bacteriolocy Department he spent a couple
of weeks in our laboratory picking up techniques for the isolation
of biochemical mutants, This was just before he went to take a
job at Ames where he is now. He has apparently made some use of
the metiois picked up with us Judging from a few of his publications,
Stan did not impress me as quite the most brillicnt of present~day
scientists though considering the very poor environment at his
present post he seems to have produced pretty well, He is a very
amiable sort of chap, works pretty hard, and I think that unless
you would put him on a program that demanded quite umsual cap-
abilities that you could get a good deal of work out of him, It
is not altogether out of the question that he would develop con-
siderably further under the proper influences, but above all I
think someone has to take the very necessary humanitarian step
of rescuing him from his present, almost intolerable situ:tion.
All in all, I think that I would recommend him to you and cer~
tainly for a trial interval of a year or so as you mentioned,

I am glad to hear that you are settled in a nore congenial
and secure atmosphere at Brady than you had before, You know
that you have our best wishcs in this ae in all other matters,

Dave, some time ago I asked you to bring me up-to-date on the
reprints th.t you and your associates had received, Could you
please tend to this soon and let me know how many copies it would
be important for you and the people in more or less immediate con-
tact with you to have, If you could sive me their names I will
see to it that as many copies as can be spared will be sent, I
would like to ask you to act as the distributing agent on this
matter, In turn, among myself and my students and collaborators,
we could use anywhere from two to six copies of various papers,
depending on the immediacy of their genetic pertinence,

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg
/ew