November 15, 1950.
Dear Max:
Your fears about having omitted "Guide . . . " were unfounded; I have two sets now. I meant to write you immediately, but took long enough to whip up a draft proposal for your suggestions.
I suspect that the draft is a bit too formal, but this can perhaps be polished merely by putting in title heads. I have gotten rather unused to not making out complicated forms for such applications.
Will more detailed budget information be needed? I have no good idea what an r-meter will cost, but suspect that the $500 will cover that as well as some incidental expenses which are a little hard to gauge, but may include contribution to repairs and maintenance of x-ray apparatus, a few additional Petri plates and medium supplies, and possible a laboratory gadget like a water bath. I thought that for such a small budget that a detailed preliminary estimate could be dispensed with. Frankly, I don't want to apply for more money now from the AEO, because I think that most of our program is more germane to the NIH, and we've had a very happy relationship with them to date. However, some of this work does have radiobiological implications and I thought that a preliminary contact with AEO might be mutually desirable. And we can use the small budget -- no mistake about it. For the moment, we are pretty well off on expendable supplies and assistantships, but very tight on capital items like equipment. The legislative budget does not permit transfers between expendable and capital allocations.
I'll be glad to send reprints, but can ask to have certain of them back eventually? Also, is a curriculum vitae desirable? as it happens, my name is not in American Men of Science.
Please don't feel guilty about the mss. It's not hard to understand the pressures on you, but I hope they won't get you down to the point of making you want to quit. I was tremendously pleased at what you said re Muller, etc.; I only wish I could quote it.
If you can't manage to polish the mss right away, I wonder if you would consider letting me have a carbon copy of your description of the pedigree technique. Our expensive deFonbrune has been gathering dust, mostly for trepidation, and your account might help to get us on it. We're just getting underway photographing haploids and diploids, with rather gratifying results. I'll send you some prints in a while.
The main scientific result lately is finding a number of new strains which cross readily with K-12. About 1 strain in 10 isolated from urine cultures (as K-12 was, in 1922!) will cross well; many cross poorly. This is going to allow transfers of genes from diverse stocks, and may help to crack the genetic perplexities of K-12 itself. One more thing: Ss is dominant to Sr, by direct demonstration; something to keep in mind when streptomycin resistance is used as a mutation to detect mutagenic activity.
Sincerely,