STANFORD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

December 28, 1977

Professor Mark B. Adams

Department of History and
Sociology of Science

Edgar Fahs Smith Hall D6

215 South 34th Street

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104

Dear Professor Adams:

I had such warm recollections of zm thet I really enjoyed going back
to my old correspondence to see what T could find. Here are at least some
fragments that corroborate what Crow told you. I certainly recall very
distinctly my very firm impression that he regarded the whole Lysenko business

as absolute nonsense, and that he was in company with a great many other physical
and chemical scientists in that view, at least as of December 1958. I would

be surprised if you did not by then find quite a substantial number of publi-
cations on the physical chemistry of DNA from the Soviet Union, regardless

of what they may have been obliged to say even at that time about "Mendlism."

Tamm certainly did have a lively interest in biological matters. He
asked me what I thought about the "abominable snowman," since he had the
responsibility as a member of some committee of the science academy to decide
on the funding of an expedition in the Caucasus to try to reach a. conclusive
finding on that question. -

* ~

I also recall that while conversing at a reception at the Nobel Foundation,
we used the term "nuclear" in a strictly biological context. An aggressive,
Swedish newspaperperson was eavesdropping and, whether through a valid
deficit in language or not, wanted to quote us as having been energetically
discussing issues connected with thermonuclear weapons.

I had a faltering correspondence with Tamm at sporadic intervals over the
years and was sorry to learn of his death not very long ago.

I certainly look forward to the appearance of your book.

urs since

 
 
 
  

 

 
  

oshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetic

JL: ek-£f
Enclosure

Attachment (P.S.)

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 94305 * (415) 497-5052
Professor Mark B. Adams —2- December 28, 1977

P.S.

Tamm's enlightened views were not generally shared by Timakov, Iemsolimskii,
and Kossikov whom I met in 1957-58. But I felt they were less ideologically
rigid than they were uninformed of new developments in microbiology. See, e.g.
the Ciba Foundation Symposium on Drug Resistance in Micro-Organisms: Mechanisms
of Development (London, J.& A. Churchill, Ltd., 1957); these Russians’ views
were not too different from Sevag's in the U.S. and Hinshelwood in the U.K.