April 2, 1963

Mrs. Nergeret Wightman
13 Tring Avenue, Ealing
London, W.5, England

Dear Mrs. Wightman:

Thank you for your letter of March 25. We have been rapidly developing a
program within this department that would ental! very extensive use of
computation facilities, and If this continues to materlalize, your experience
would Indeed be very pertinent. We have fn mind s number of studies, some of
them quite explicitely genetical, others releting to the ancillary Instruaen-
tation Interests of the members of the department Including such matters as

the use of computers for the analysis (contra storage and retrieval) of spectro
and mass-spectro data. | should think that your background would be especially
apt to this kind of program, and { should be eager to heer more of your quall-
fications fron Mr. Michselson.

Meanwhile, our om plans should be forward to the point where we could make a
definite statement as to the availability of @ position. The general role
that | would envisage would be to assist In the preparation and processing of
computer programs - writing saved the simpler sub-routines, supervising the
key punching, handling revisions, and checking the accuracy of the cards; In
short, el] of the detalls necessary to push progrens through the computer.

The Computation Science Division here at Stanford Is quite convenlent to the
Medical School, Is very well organized and equipped, and et present Is based
on en IBM 7090 system, supported by a number of other smaller computers. in
addition, # Burroughs 5000 computer will shortly be Installed and wa have some
prospect of direct data links and perhaps even In time sharing utilization to
allow the direct use of canputation facilities effectively es part of our
laboratory Instrumentation.

The programelng language In general use here Is subalguol, ae dialect of balguol,
_In turn derived fran elguol 60. ta eny event, | would urge you to fanillarize
yourself with the belguol language es a matter of genera! utility In scientific
programming work. The management of programs will be the responsibility of

'. @ther members of the department here, and of the department of Computer Sclences,
with whom we work with in close cooperation.

- ' am, therefore, looking forwerd to hearing fros you and from Mr. Hichaelson.
Slacerely yours,

Professor of Genetics