The Lister Institute of

Chairman of the Governing Body :

SIR HENRY H. DALE, O.M., G.B.E., M.D., F-R.C.P., FR.S.

Hon. Treasurer:

THE RT, HON. VISCOUNT WAVERLEY, P.C., G.C.B.,
G.C.S.1., G.C.LE., F.R.S.

Director :

Dr. A. A. MILES, M.D., F.R.C.P.

Professor Jelederberg,
Department of Genetics,
University of Wisconsin,
Madison,

Wis, U§.A.

Dear Josh,

Thanks for your letter of Nov .2£5th.
your father's illness, and

I hope that things are now
I am glad to hear that your lab.

to hear about
Aifficulties,

Preventive Medicine.

CHELSEA BRIDGE ROAD,
LONDON, S.W. 1.

Telegrams: ‘ Bacteriology, Knights. London.”
Telephone: SLOANE 2181,

lst December 1955,

I was sorry
about your other
coming more under control,

is being re-modelled, but I

can imagine the disorganisation the move must have caused you all.

As to paper:.
Your draft.

One difficulty about

5 main differences in

Different style. Your

I thought I had sent
I will go over it again and send you a more
expressing an opinion,
points on which we differ, was the absence of
(I appreciate the difficulty of

getting these
having had much trouble that way

you my immediate reactions;
detailed opinion.
especially as to the
tables and pedigrees
into suitable spape,

myself. In general there are

our drafts.

a

presentation is much more compressed,
mine, in my efforts to be comprehensible even

by the ill-informed,

possibly goes too far the other way.

(44)

You have worked out more or less all possible hypotheses,
whereas I have stated only what I consider to be the

simplest

hypothesis which W111 account for my observations.

‘ Wey

these result, from our use of SW 541 and SW 666 respectively, and

hypotheses, which is
broadly speaking.
-2-
As to question of joint or separate papers,

(4) difference in style etc would, at this stage anyway, cause
considerable ab gftouiey in arriving at a draft acceptable to
us both. \ heen’ /

(144) Your more complete theoretical analysis could of course be
worked into a joint paper; but in a separate paper would complement
my presentation, in a way that would be useful to me for cross-

references 2 Mead, Comesecrsed

(444) This is the real difficulty. I feel pretty confident that
my data adequatily support my conclusions; your data do not do
so. If we do a joint paper now, I should either have to be much
less definite in my conclusions, or you would have to commit
yourself to conclusions which your own results did not, by
themselves, establish. You, I take it,would be reluctant to do
this and I am reluctant to weaken my conclusions, partly because
I think they are 0.K. and partly“thé"considerable difficulty of
stating them in an understandablé and convincing way would be
mch increased if one had to sit on the fence as to their validity.

For these reasons I think it would probably be a mistake
to change again now and try to do a joint paper. I see no
objection to separate ones, except that people may be confused to
find that our conclusions (to some extent) differs; but as they do
differ (at the moment) not much would be gained by, concealigg this
in @ joint paper. bquate,

Ag to separate papers together or apart, I am inclined to
favour apart; for various reasons, particularly audience reached
and availability of space ete. I favour *the J.G.M. But T
agree something aimed at the geneticists would be desirable and
I think there is a lot to be said for me aiming at one audience
and you for another, ve Via eat

I feel sure you won't mind this. One further reason for
separate presentation, which I would not allow to count by itself,
is that I am well on with re-writing my present draft, and would
hate to have to scrap it and start again; the more so as I am
pre-occupied with various time-using pursuits, including helping
to edit next years Soc.gen Microbiol Symposium volume (Bactertal
Anatomy). The one thing I regret is that its not possible for us
to work in the same lab. on it for 2 or 3 weeks, since this would
probably resolve our differences of interp ain etc. (Even an
hour or so or argument might help quite a bit). I assume that
we don't have to worry about which paper comes out first; anyway
ajm

we should both be stating that we had collaborated so far ag
possible.

That seems to be about all there is to say on the paper question.

I remembered after the letter was posted that I had omitted a
figure from the sentence about discriminating E from non-E. “Y-
figure T have in draft is 15 (I had forgotten it).

bune
Another point I forgot last night. I have written a thing

about flagella for this symposium of the S.g.M., and have a short
section on unilinear transmission of m asing Quadling's data
mostly; but I quoted you (L; pers.comms) for your 60 generation
example. Is this 0.K.? Sorry I forgot to ask you before. If
its not 0O.K. it can come out in proof, but as it has got to proof
stage now I would like to mow by return if its not 0.K.

I gave your message to Felix. TI have not discussed the Vi
transfer story, which sounded odds (So did all that stuff about
Beanthracis tn J.Bact. not long back; I hear some of their
'transfermed' strains behave ag Becereus and others ag Besubtilis,
but don't quote this as I have not details). ~~

Yours sincerely, .

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