HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL

DEPARTMENT OF SociaL MEDICINE AND HEALTH Po icy

 

 

 

 

 

 

LEON EISENBERG, M.D., Chairman 25 Shattuck Street
Presley Professor of Social Medicine Boston, MA 02115
and ‘Professor of Psychiatry 617-732-1710

23 December 1986

Joshua Lederberg, Ph.D.

President, The Rockefeller University
1230 York Avenue

New York, NY 10021

 

Dear Josh:

Hardly had I opened my copy of the Christmas issue of Nature than I was
greeted by your bar mitzvah picture! With that vividly in view, I was taken
aback to learn that the discoveries made by the young Talmudist are properly
judged to be "post mature." The very foundations of my epistemology turned
to mush: could it be that my favorite scientist suffered from progeria?

What is there left to hold on to when precocity is transmuted into senescence
before one's very eyes?

Glad tidings of the season aside, I did very much enjoy both pieces,
your short history of genetic recombination and the provocative article with
Harriet. I'm particularly glad you chose to make the point about Ryan and
Tatum as exemplars of "nurture, dignity, respect for others, and above a
regard for the advance of knowledge."

As a small Chanukah gift, I enclose a recent reprint which I trust you
will find amusing -- and perhaps even more than that.

 

Yours siycerely,

Leon Eisenberg, M.D.

LE:CF /

/

Encls.

Me J ert elt Re
od