OCT 5 1966

4f “~*
Wess

THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY
New York, N.Y. 10021

October 2, 1966

Professor David Hamburg
Department of Psychiatry
Medical School

Stanford University
Stanford, California

Dear Dave:

I have spent yesterday four hours with your colleague
Dr. Shockley. It was outwardly very pleasant, but of course he did not
move an inch, perhaps only a micron. He sent me a week ago a package
of his "contributions," including his letter of rebuttal to your gene-
ticists letter, and an abstract of his paper to be read before the Academy
in North Carolina (a good geographical choice, no doubt). I began by
saying that I agree with him in what seems, most important i point, namely
that man must be studied, and disagree in everything else. The rest of the
time was expended on discussion of his abstract, mostly his arguing that
one can calculate the values f, and f,, and myself saying that these
values are meaningless. Only at the very end he perhaps got the idea
that individuals with equal f, and f, may have an almost infinite variety
of genotypes, and so these values will in no way describe them in any
meaningful fashion. He does not understand that a "pure race" need not
be homozygous but only genotypically uniform, sand has apparently never
heard about clones of apogamic plants. He. aise. does, not understand, _
that environments need not be identical for “individuals with his different
f,' s and fp "s, and, of course, he feels it is ‘insulting to suggest that
an engineer, no matter how eminent, may be unqualified to talk as he
does about human genetics. On the ‘whole, I found him a tough customer,
but I think he found me as tough (he started trying to get from me ~
quotable statements which he himself was formulating) . But we parted
on a friendly note. Anyway, my line is that it is a good thing to have
"necessary research" done, but he is not the fellow to do the necessary
research.

od

Ax5 WH 29

Hoping to see you soon,

Theodosius Dobzhansky |

TD/ph