SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
STANFORD UNIVERSITY, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305

JOSHUA LEDERBERG
JOSEPH D. GRANT PROFESSOR
OF GENETICS

March 10, 1978

Professor Tracy Sonneborn
Dept. of Zoology

Indiana University
Bloomfield, Indiana 47401

My dear Tracy:

I am sorry that you have had such a thin harvest of replies
about attending to the preservation of scientific papers but I guess
I am not surprised in the light of experiences we have already shared.

You raised some particular questions about the role that the
Rockefeller archive center might play; I just have to say that I know
virtually nothing about it at the present time and am, therefore,
hardly in a position to give you any useful recommendations for your
own purposes. I will, of course, be looking into it and hope by
perhaps a year from now to have more to say about it.

I am also grateful that you caught my rather loose comment about
"a nice place to stay” in New York City, and prompts me to say
something more carefully thought out and concrete. No, unfortunately,
we do not have the resources to begin to match what Ciba House used
to do for the generality of scientific visitors. The Abbey Aldrich
Rockefeller Hall is a financially self-sustaining convenience at the
university. Customarily, visitors who have university related business
will be invited to stay there and will be recorded as guests either
on the budget of specific sponsoring groups or will pay their own
freight.

However, you are hardly a random visitor and what I wanted to
say was: 1) to avail yourself quite freely of the privilege of being
a paying guest at a convenient location,with no further sense of
responsibility of any kind to me or to the university; or 2) to give
us the opportunity of offering the university's hospitality whenever it
turns out to be convenient for you to spend sometime with us or with
other members of the faculty or students. Far from thejr being any
chance of your overstaying your welcome, I fear that the shoe will
certainly be on the other foot and I just wanted to know that 1 would
be glad to hear from you at any time. You have been an extraordinarly
important and positive element for me personally and for the scientific
development of the entire field and my only regret about our personal
encounters has been that they have been so {fnfrequent.

 
page 2 3/10/78
T. Sonneborn

So I do trust that there will be some opportunity to discuss
a whole range of questions including the ones of historical
opportunity when we can again meet in a more topical environment.

Quite apart from the general facilities of the archive center,
I could give you my personal assurance of fond and tender care if
you have reason to prefer to deposit your own papers at Rockefeller
University. But I say this as a matter of personal regard and
quite confidently, rather than being able to anticipate that there
will or will not be a regular program of soliciting papers from other
geneticists. If this is to be at all extensive, it may be necessary
to seek some funding from other sources to take care of the
inevitable costs that would be connected with such an enterprise
of a significant scale.

With our best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

7)

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JL/gel