THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

September 28, 1989

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. Eugene Kennedy

Department of Biological Chemistry
Harvard Medical School

240 Longwood Avenue

Boston, Massachusetts 02115

Dear Gene:

I am responding to your letter of September lith requesting
some assessment of the impact of the Pew Scholars Program on
Biomedical Science.

I have been thrilled to hear the presentations of the Fel-_
lows at the annual meeting. They reflect an extraordinary level
of sophistication and insight; and I have no doubt at all that
this is the cr€me de la cr@éme of the research going on today.

It reflects a level of maturity and competence that transcends .
the relative youth of this group. The Scholars as a group are
responsible for a positively disproportionate part of the most
advanced work going on today.

Much more difficult to assess is what difference the
Scholars Program has. made to the Scholars’ performance. We
clearly have done a very good job in. selecting the Scholars;
and I can only go by their own testimony as to the additional
difference that the financial support and the kudos of the Pew
Scholarship have meant to them. They all report how important
the Program has been to them, how it has enhanced their self-
confidence and their willingness to take risks at a time when
so much contemporary science tends to fall into secure and
routine ruts. Their testimony is credible and I cannot think
of any other methodology by which to separate the selective
effects of having picked the very best, from the additional
inductive ones of enhancing a performance that undoubtedly would
have been very high under any circumstances.

All in all, I remain very deeply impressed by the entire
Program and am quite confident that it is worth not only the
financial investment lodged in it by the Pew Trusts but also the
substantial time, energy. and affection that our advisory group
and the Program staff have poored into it.

Yo incerely,

Lederberg