November 20, 1958

oir macfarla@ng Burnet

The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of medical Hesearch
Royal melbourne Hospital Post vuffice

Melbourne, Australia

Dear ac:
f
Thank you for your cables and for your very nice note of
November 13. Undoubtedly the best feature of the Nobel affair has
been the pleasure it has given ay friends.

I particularly appreciate the prompt attention you gave to my
suggestion concerning Lois uarkin when you must have been pre~
occupied with preparations for your travel, I can certainly appre-
ciate your reliance on her for the continuity of your laboratory
work and can only hope that the excellent help she will be able to
give to Gus can in some way compensate. My own plans concerning Lois are
predicated on a visit of just one year's duration and she will presumably
be under some explicit limitation in the terms of her visa. “f course, it
would only be realistic to recognize that she is of an age where she must be
quite vulnerable to more domestic attractions, no less in Australia than she
would be in the United States.

I hope my remarks about the astern Division of the Hall Institute
were not so jocular as to conceal my growing appreciation of the full impact
of my brief visit last year. I also hope you will have some occasi.n to
accept the invitation I indicated.

I understand that there is some possibility of seeing you at sume of
the meetings in Burope next spring and look forward to the oceasion if it
materializes. .e have explicit plans in any case to be away in Italy, in
Cavalli's laboratory, from the beginning of april till the end of June.

f had a delightful visit with Taiwge yesterday, who was kind enough
to d.ive up from Chicago primarily for a cusual conversation. «as I see
his theoretical development, he is sisuply being somewhat less foolhardy
by covering the diversification process under the general heading of diff-
erentiation witiout suggesting an explicit genetic mechanism for it. Partly
to complement his own synthesis 1 am writing up a somewhat mor. intelligible
version of my own conception of the problem for a review paper perhaps in
Science, perhaps to be printed in company with his, iy only fear in
giving adequate credit to your own formulation is that you may be less
willing than I am to recognize the paternity of the offspring. I rather
suspect that most of the differences that have crept in are going to be
terminological or else will concern issues that have to be postulated on a
reasonably arbitrary basis at the precent tine. I am looking forward very
eagerly to the public:tion of your Flexner lectures for a more complete
exposition of your ddeas on clonal selection. -~eanwhile, I am r:lying on the
assumption that you would place the main burden of randomization of
cellular potentialities on development in prenatal life whereas my own
feeling &8 that this process can and probably does continue throughout
the life of the animal.

Iwill, of course, take pains to send you copies of any relevant
manuscripts.

It doesn't look as if there will be much opportunity for any more
lab work on my part until we get settled at Stanford. as I have said
many tives before, I'm looking forward very eagerly to Gus's joining us.

AS ever,