February 23, 1962 From: J. Lederberg To: Quadri-Seience 1. Institute for Scientific Information. T am delichtead at the indications of progress towards an affiliation. I am confident that it will be profitable in its own right, but farf more important that it will be invaluable to us in our own services, and also that we can help a great ieal to improve its con- tribution to scientific communination. 2. Soil stabilizer. Allison's report can't help but make one quizzical. But why don't we get together to research the fundamental issues in a problem like this and come up with a more basic answer, How could a soil stabilizer dmux work, and how would we go about designing one from first principles? Are we a.~ proaching this problem the way we would hope to for one of our ak outsije ciients? Alchemy doesn't appeal to ma at all. As a first guess, I would assume we need to identify a cheap polyelectrolyte, more basic than Separan §polyamide), to cross- link exposed silicate ions on clay particles. (Separan is already usei for facili- tating agglutination of clays and other sols, but probably doesn't bond firmly emough.) It would probably be advantageous to have cationic clusters on a larger polymer. Apart from some obvious, and possibly too expensive organic polymers, I think of somtheing like hydrazine or ethylene diamine plus volysilicate as the "clue", Is this too naive, at least as a starting point? Does anyone of us xaow whether this preblem has already been beaten in to the ground from this stand- wolnte If notg, shouldn't we have a conulsing staff that we could pay to give 418 8 ‘state~of-the-art" report for further consideration? Urey is probably right about wnat the "bugs" would eventually do to an organic stabilizer. I am reminded that they may be some clues on soil@crumb stabilization from Monsanto's (expensive) soil conditioner. 3 Dukent. They are the last people I would have thought to come in on the bait, aniIam so dubious kym they will really bite that I should just stand back. I am not worried at all about their size, but that they are already very much organized, . and what we would have to fight through by why of established interests to cet any- thing new done. This would be only a little more difficult than rationalizing the R&D of the US Department of Defense. But if DuPont were willing to organize an ARPA ax as a separate company under our surveillance, and with the specific mission of identifying and starting new directions, and setting up the long range planning they need, we might find it workable ani interesting. One point though: DuPont has a hell of a bad reputation for fanatical secrecy, far beyond the commonsense require- ments of competitive industry, and I would not want to be associated with them without. sone explicit liberalization on publication. I don't think we could recruit tie kind of people we would need for the ANKE ARPA without being willing to take cakeulated risks in this area, I will be surprised if they buy this, but the approach is almost the only one that would be consistent with (my views of) the charter of Q-S; if they do zo all the way it might alleviate my uneasiness bbout this particular tieup, but it would not be my specific preference in any case. I would much rather take on a previously undevelopel xeasuures organization, not one with a large body of policy- competitive technical staff. What about Bell & Yowell? They have been moving fast: whete do they get their technical direction? 4, I hope to be in NeY, on March 12-12 and will try to call on Kusch then. (privately to Chuck & Ralph) 5+ Back to DuPont. I am sorry to have to bring up a possible embarrassment, but I mstg point out what I had mentioned in our initial discussions, my personal obligation to the Syntex Corporation for consultation in the field of development. This is not necessarily a bar to Quadri-Science participation in chemical industry, but it would be a factor in my ow personal participation in studies that came close enough to drugs (especially steroids and nucleic acids) that, e.g., DuPont might have tause for anxiety about the confidence of its proprietary interests. I am sure this is leaning over backwards, but better to keep this in mind now than ask for trouble later. XMXIXMGNXAIRSEXENABAE I am confident you will have the means to steer clear of these shoals, which must be matched by others. 62