Che University of Melbourie
Bacteriology Department.
Carlton, 1.3, 4th October, 19 5%

VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

Professor and Mrs. J. Lederberg,
Department of Genetics,
Stanford University,

Stanford, California, U. S. A.

Dear Esther and Josh,

I've left it too long since writing to you last, but I've been
hearing of your activities through Bob or $yd and more recently in greater
detail from Maggie who is now back in Melbourne in magnificent form.

Things have been going reasonably well here. Barbara Fargie, who I'm
sure Esther will remember, has been awarded an Italian Government sdeolarship
to spend 10 months with Luca Cavalli in Italy, and she leaves in 3 weeks time
by boat. In December Jan Edgar is coming to take Barbara's place. Jan has
been working with Bruce Stocker in London on Staph. transduction, you may
have met her there.

Pseudomonas has been co-operating reasonably well but it has been a
very busy year and not as much has been accomplished as was hoped. Things
are a bit hectic with Frank Gibson away. Also David White, lecturer in
Virology is away at Bethesda. I acquired chicken pox from Peter in May and
spent a month home from the lab,

However, we now have a system of transduction # la Salmonella with at
least three and possibly four unrelated phagescapable of transduction. We
have a number of rather interesting developments. These include different
responses of various phages to UV in relation to their transducing ability
and the transduction of one marker (prolineless) at a very much higher
frequencies than other markers with one phage.

I have been playing around with a host induced modification of some
phages and its relation to the progeny of crosses between the two hosts involved
I get the impression that the ground work of data which has been accumulated
over the last few years is at last paying off. Also we now have recombination
of Pseudomonas phages and Barry Egan is using this in some work on mutations
affecting lysogensisation frequency.

Barbara and I have at last rounded off the linkage and fertility factor

data and this has been written up. I realize that you must be more than
deluged with work, but I would certainly appreciate’ your comments and
26

critisms of this manuscript. I won't send it, however, until I hear
from you that it is alright to do so. It doesn't contain anything sensational
but ties together a lot of data we have collected.

Plans for the future include some radiation work using a Co-60
bomb. A carpet company in Dandenong has just installed one for £600,000
to sterilize its goat hatr and has also built a lab. for research workers.
Syd is chief scientific consultant to the company.

How are you liking California? Stanford is my favorite place
in all the U.S.A. We had a most enjoyable visit from Francis and Betty
Ryan in August. It looks like you'll be keeping your promise to be present
at the opening of our new building in about February, 1962, Plans for our
building are currently being prepared by the architects,

All the best.

Sincerely,