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THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

March 13, 1989

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

PRESIDENT

Dr. Jan Sapp

History and Philosophy of Science
The University of Melbourne
Parkville, Victoria 3052
Australia

Dear Dr.Sapp:

Thank you for your letter of February 24th and the manu-
script on The Nine Lives of Gregor Mendel. Your de- or recon-
struction of the writings of Mendel and his critics is provoca-
tive and interesting; though I still tend to cling to the
traditional myth of neglect and community misunderstanding. Who
else between 1865 and 1900 was writing about particulate Anlagen
and their segregation?

I am also looking forward to your essay on Protozoology and
Development.

Your account of 90 applicants for a position in the History
of Science at UC San Diego is startling and dismaying; though I
hope it is some measure of the emerging popularity of history
of science. And thank you for pointing out the range of work
going on there: I wish you well!

I will eschew the word "flattered"; but I must say that I
was very much moved by your suggestion of writing a biographical
work. I do have some hundred and odd linear feet of correspondence
and other files and it would be a formidable task for anyone to
make proper use of such material! So I have made a kind of com- |
mitment to try to do that myself, and will know during the next
three or four years whether it really is a feasible project. I
think you do have what would be a pivotal chapter of such a
memoir -- it appeared in the Annual Review of Genetics for 1987.
Besides the intellectual history and scientific substance, I be-
lieve I would be fairly sensitive to the issues of sociological
setting, being informed especially by Robert Merton and Harriet
Zuckerman in that dimension. The more personal facets of
biography are more elusive, partly as in my introspection I have
such limited recall of any developmental process. By the time
I was 13, which is roughly as far back as I can remember in any
detail, I was already terminally differentiated; and I just don't
Dr. Jan Sapp
March 13, 1989

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have very much data about prior developmental process. Of
course, I am referring primarily to scientific orientation
and it has been in my extra-scientific activities that I
could argue for some continued unfolding. But for all of
those reasons I refer to my program as a memoir rather than
a biography.

I would certainly welcome your observations on the
theory of scientific biography; and perhaps at some later
stages of my own writing I might hope to call upon you for
some critical discussion.

Yours sincerely

 

P.S. I did not understand the line on your Page 7 that
refers to "only one kind of element in the germ cell
for any one trait".

Encl. P273