June 28, 1959

Dr. Katherine S$. Wilson
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda !4, Maryland

‘Dear Kay:

| am full of regret to have to write this letter, but | must ask you
to accept my withdrawal from the Genetics Study Section. In any case | would
not be able to participate fully in the next meeting this September, $0
| would ask you to make this effective now. It has been a pleasant and
rewarding experience to work with you and with al! our friends and colleagues
on the study section, and | really will miss it. But | am beginning to see
how detrimental my distraction with a number of responsibilities of this kind
is to the fulfillment of my first and most personal responsibilities as a scien-
tist, and | have to make a choice which Is dictated by what |! hope are my best
capacities as well as inclinations.

The occasion does move me to say how deeply indebted | should be as a scier
tist to people like yourself and our colleagues on the section. By dint of
your energy and judgment and dedication you are making a system continue to
work re markably well long after it should have collapsed under its own weight,
| am not optimistic enough to expect that this will be Indefinitely postponed,
but perhaps it wilt tong enough for other techniques to evolve. Meanwhile ! am
very much disturbed, and this is no joke, that our scientists are becoming more
and more deeply Involved In sclencemanship instead of sclence-- perhaps science
in practise is becoming too complex for the individual scientist to survive in
it for more than a few years of youthful vigor and novelty of approach. If so
it may be futile to try to avert the obligations of scientific statesmanship,
which can be am alternative service. | hope some of our statesmen, Including your
associates at NIH, are giving some thought to the nreservation of creativity as
well as to the materlal support of science -- these are not altogether disconaected
questions of course, and there Is no doubt the lateer has had to receive first
attention.

My personal thanks to you for all you have done to make this an easy and
pleasant job-- and‘ believe me, | can't write this letter without a sharp twinge
of consctence which your own sympathy would onfy partly relieve. i'm sure t'Tl
‘be seeing you from time to time, till then

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg

CC: Walter Burdette