THE ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

1230 YORK AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10021

 

August 31, 1987

JOSHUA LEDERBERG

!

Dr. I. B. Cohen
22 Gray Gardens East
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

PRESIDENT

Dear Bernard:

I very much enjoyed your letter of ‘August 11th and I am
sure Harriet did.too. It was forwarded to me while I was in
Palo Alto, and I hasten to acknowledge it now that I have just
returned.

Really, I am very much looking forward to your book!

Your remarks about penicillin resonate very closely with
my Own perspective. Had Fleming been more of an organic
chemist he might have tried to pursue the extraction and iso-
lation of the very unstable material himself; but as it was
he needed to engage the skills and attention of outsiders and
that's a much bigger problem! The expectations of magic
bullets from Paul Ehrlich's earlier work were dashed by the
unhappy experience with germicides through the 1910s and 1920s
and any treatment of the history of antibiotics shows the dis-
dain with which the concept of selective ahtibacterial therapy
was greeted after the early flushes of excessive enthusiasm.

But what I have to say echoes so closely your own remarks,
that I wonder if I didn't first learn about it from you! Can
you give me the reference to your "older publication...1940s"?

Your remarks about Gibbs were also very interesting: I am
not in such close touch with that field; so most of what you
had to tell me was quite new.

I am sure that Harriet would join me in welcoming the con-
tinued discussion you speak of in your letter. Let's certainly
be on the lookout for opportunities that we can get together
again either in Cambridge or in New York.

   
  

Sincerely,

4 Jéshua Lederberg
cc: Dr. Harriet Zuckerman

Encl. p69