SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD. CALIFORNIA 94305

JOSHUA LEDERBERG
JOSEPH D. GRANT PROFESSOR February 2, 1978
or GENETICS

Professor T. M. Sonneborn
Department of Zoology
Jordan Hall 220

Indiana University
Bloomington, Indiana 47401

Dear Tracy:
I very much appreciated your warm letter of January 24th.

I wished I could have anticipated, and spared, the anxieties
expressed by Dave Perkins and yourself about the preservation of archives.
This is a point that has upset me a great deal in years past. I wished
that there could have been someway to forfend the disappearance of the
records and correspondence of people like Francis Ryan, David Bonner,
and the great bulk of the material from 0.T. Avery, Ed Tatum and George
Beadle. These are just some of the particular examples that I happen
to know about where the authors were either careless about history, or
their colleagues were, or as in Avery's case where he was bent on
being sure that essentially no papers survived.

Together with Harriet Zuckerman, and in some other contexts, I
already have been deeply into some biographical and historical inquiries
where my own records have been very useful, and I have no intention of
allowing them to decay in any way. I have kept essentially all my
personal papers and correspondence since September 1947, and while it
will be a major headache I plan to move all of that with me to Rockefeller
University. Some of the Departmental documents may be more appro-
priately lodged in the University's archives here. As a general
strategy, where universities are willing and able to undertake the
responsibilities for preserving these kinds of papers I would encourage
that tack. Collections like the one oriented to genetics at the APS
may end up being insufficiently interested in the institutional
history in other respects.

Among the other tragedies that I have to record along that line is
that the Stanford Medical School seems to have destroyed its own insti-
tutional memory from about 1950 on, with the exception of what may
still be preserved in the archives of some of the foundations who were
helpful in planning the new Medical School. Fortunately, I had kept a
a set of the records of the Executive Committee from 1959, although some-
what intermittently, and they will be properly archived.
Professor T. M. Sonneborn -2- February 2, 1978

Another tip that may be helpful to other investigators is that,
at several institutions, the News Bureau keeps the best set of records
on individual professors within the limits of the kinds of things they
collect. One may have to hustle to be sure that these kinds of files
are not discarded a few years after the departure of notable faculty
members from the institution.

Back to my own records: I am still interested in working with them
and therefore will want them close to hand at Rockefeller. The University
has a diligent interest in the Rockefeller Archive Center, and this is
undoubtedly where the overall mass of material will eventually be
deposited.

I am just delighted to know of your own interest in this general
matter; and by all means if there is anything that I can do to be of
further assistance please let me know. I had seriously thought about
writing an editorial for Science on the general subject and may yet do
that in the reasonably near future.

We are looking forward to a very challenging new task and environ-
ment. I certainly hope that when you find yourself in New York, you'll
think of Abbey Aldrich Rockefeller Hall as a nice place to stay ~~
and I mention that _as a real incentive to try and look us up.

 

P.S. On the question of books, I think it would be a very good idea

if the APS were simply to circularize the major university biological and
medical libraries, which I believe are often t=npted to throw away their
older editions of books of the kind you mentioned.

This should be self-evident, but the items that were not on the
explicit list attached to your letter are: laboratory notebooks and class
and lecture notes.

I was very lucky indeed to get a set of the notes that Cariton
Schwerdt had kept on Ed Tatum'’s course in spring 1941. These gave
material corroboration to George Beadle's recollections and I was able
to cross check them against the notebooks that had found their way to
the Rockefeller archives.

JL: ek
ce: David Perkins