ladies and gentlemen welcome to the
celebration of Joshua Lederberg as with
most of our distinguished speakers if I
tell you all the good things about Alexa
McCray it will take away from her talk
significantly but in summary in some
Alexa did a wonderful job as director a
list of Hill she left many friends and
we are very very glad that she's come
back at present I think she really it's
fair to say left retired from government
in order to look forward to enjoying
Boston and Lexington and up there wise
people at Boston Medical Harvard Medical
School on the county library prevailed
upon her to get back to work it's
probably good for the field and so she's
a lecturer in medicine at the Medical
School and she's a deputy director of
the count way Library which is of course
one of the country's most distinguished
and beautiful so we're very pleased that
you've filling in those slots in Boston
area about this particular project Alexa
did a number of swell things when she
was here personally in leadership roles
for the law library unified medical
language was a major project for her and
for me as well and of course she ended
up initially that the creator of
clinical trials that go but both of
those things we won't talk about today
and the third thing namely profiles in
science we will talk about now initially
she and I wanted to make a new idea for
the way you do history of Medicine
something that was alive and interactive
and could grow and you have constant
access to the papers of documents or
whatever and no one had really done it
and so our test case actually was
regional medical programs
collection.we shows that because it had
already had a 25th anniversary
celebration here at the library there
were many contributors to it certainly
it wasn't in any emergency state that we
had a real deadline so it allowed her
Alexa and the research group that in
that case as with this profile involved
both the list the hill researchers and
history Madison folk and the only
problem was that basically Alexa had to
invent all 100% of the software to
actually do this regional medical
program piece of history
it just was nothing you could go out and
buy so it took a little longer than we
had initially expected but on the other
hand by time the opportunity to receive
the contributions of Josh Lederberg came
along she was really loaded for bear and
really knew how to do it so it right the
first time
by then there was a little bit more
commercial software that you could lay
hands on so I won't say more about that
she's here to tell you Joshua Lederberg
himself of course is one of the great
icons of American biomedicine and a
perfectly wonderful person so you should
understand that when we say giving his
papers it sounds a little passive and
later Berg is not a passive type so
giving doing any project with dr. lader
Berg means email two or three times a
day that's his style and in the
particular case of the later Berg papers
he participated down to the most detail
possible level of annotation and
critiquing our terminology and taxonomy
and approach and testing it and I mean
it was it was wonderful
the price that we paid I guess is worth
it but I always regretted it somewhat
too because the price that we paid is
that he could tell himself that I'm off
the hook for doing an autobiography the
heck with it but somebody else do it
and so he really very consciously
invested that amount of time in helping
to make the contributions than LMB very
very accessible and very very well
described I guess would be a simplest
way to put it so Alexa what about her
well she got a doctoral degree
Georgetown she was on the faculty for a
while she was but I actually first met
her she was on the Thomas J Watson IBM
Research Center at the New York town and
no doubt she is doing a great job and
we're delighted that she decided to come
to National Library of Medicine
but delighted you've come back for this
nice occasion welcome Alexa well I'm
delighted to be back here so thank you
very much done for that nice
introduction so today what I'd like to
do is I'd like to talk to you about
Joshua Lederberg and I'd like to talk to
you about letter Berg as a man of
science sort of I would say the
prototypical man of science so how did
he come to be that way he had a running
start he was born in 1925 he was the son
of V letter Berg and Esther goldenbaum
letter Berg who came from a family of
scholars herself at age seven he had to
write a little essay in school and he
decided that what he was interested in
doing in other words the question is
probably was something like what would
you like to do in the future in your
life well he wanted to discover a few
theories of science like Einstein this
is at the age of seven at age 16 in 1941
he began undergraduate studies at
Columbia and he was also in the Naval
Reserve think about what the time was
this was during World War two so he was
in the Naval Reserve at age 19 he began
medical school at Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons
at age 21 he was a research fellow with
Professor Edward Tatum which was going
to have an incredible effect on his
career at Yale getting the PhD in 1947
and at age 22 he began as an assistant
professor at the University of Wisconsin
now when you do that and you have this
kind of a running start this is what you
can expect at age 33 which is the
telegram that comes in that says the
Carolina Institute has decided to award
this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or
medicine with 1/2 - well Beadle and
Tatum and so forth and so on and the
other half to you for your discoveries
concerning genetic recombination in the
organization of the genetic material of
bacteria so this is at the age of 33 in
1958 so let's back up a little bit so he
his parents letter Berg's parents
emigrated to New York from Israel in the
early 1920s I already mentioned that his
father was a rabbi and his mother came
from a distinguished series of
rabbinical scholars he was the oldest of
three sons so he was number one he lived
in the Washington Heights area of
Manhattan where as he said later the
whole family became a part of an
efficient and calculated system of
Americanization so they quickly became
Americanized as they came to the United
States he read he was reading everything
in sight at a very early age and was
reading well beyond the reading level of
most of the children of his of his age
group so here's the essay that I have
already mentioned and I've teased him
about this because he got a B+ he got a
B+ okay well you can probably see why
you got a B+ look at that penmanship
just look at that penmanship you
probably should have gotten a b-minus
alone for the penmanship so here it is
what I would like to be I would like to
be a scientist
slightly misspelled of mathematics like
Einstein I would study science and
discover a few theories in science
and it's dated as you can see June 20th
1932 which is when you would have been
seven and you see this his name at the
top of the page
well it's Joshua Solomon first of all
it's slightly misspelled letter Berg and
I found out that Solomon was actually
just an expectation this kid at 7 years
old had an affectation this was not his
middle name
he doesn't happen he doesn't have a
middle name so Joshua Solomon letter
bird at the age of 7 but as we see I
mean he got a B+ so you know he also of
course had a very early interest in
science he was and I this is delightful
and this is a thread throughout his
career he's been a regular patron of
public libraries throughout his life so
he went to the local branch of the New
York Public Library as an adolescent at
13 at his Bar Mitzvah
he received the brand-new book was only
a year old introduction to physiological
chemistry of a minor but it competence
key and it was already at that young age
that he was deciding not to go the
rabbinical route of his ancestors of his
father and of his mother's family and so
on
and of course he had to yet to negotiate
this with his with his father who was
expecting him especially as the oldest
to follow more or less in his footsteps
footsteps so he says here it was my
covenant with my father that a career in
science would be a redeeming surrogate
for the study of the Torah an
alternative approach to enlightenment
and truth and I think that that he
speaks he means that he's it's a it's a
deep statement for him to say that that
this is the approach to enlightenment
and truth and I think he lived his life
that way so now at the age of 16 he had
the opportunity because he was just as
he was just graduating from high school
he had the opportunity to become a young
scholar at the
and Institute Science Laboratory which
drew on a lot of the young people from
the Stuyvesant High School which of
course was a high school in New York a
science high school and was for the
brightest of the bright really here and
the application form asked a number of
questions including what kinds of
courses have you taken since the eighth
grade in in the sciences basically and
here's the answer introductory biology
elementary an analytic chemistry
elementary physics and zoology and I
can't see you all very well but I'd like
to you know wonder if I asked for a show
of hands how many of you had taken all
those courses since the eighth grade or
certainly by by the age of sixteen I was
before myself I certainly didn't take
those that number of courses and that
depth of courses so there he is he's at
the American Institute of Science
Laboratory in 1941 at the age of sixteen
working on the microtome and he's being
you can see he's quite engaged in what
he's doing there so of course there's
certain personal characteristics that go
with this kind of interest and
precocious meanness if you like so
here's a letter from Joshua Lederberg to
a professor frank Stodola who was a
Columbia University into the Department
of in the department of organic
chemistry and basically what he's trying
to do is get out of taking a
prerequisite course I mean that's what
it comes down to so he says I find
myself attracted to the possibilities of
your section 42 c chem course i should
not trouble to write to you except that
i anticipate some technical difficulties
in the manner of satisfaction of
prerequisites last January I was able to
pass the final exam in chem 41 as an
achievement exam on the basis of
personal self instruction well when you
remember you read the physiology of
chemistry at age 13 when my urbanovsky
so I guess he felt that he had the right
to write this kind of a letter but you
can see it takes a certain kind of
attitude about yourself to be able to
write a letter of this sort to an
esteemed professor at the University so
you can see that he made a good
impression on Frank
at all and in spite of this somewhat
impertinent letter
he's now stood Allah is writing him a
letter of reference essentially for the
Naval Reserve and he goes on to say that
he's probably the most brilliant student
that he's ever had and so forth and so
on in his particular interest is biology
and what is more he should be used as an
instructor and not be forced to waste
his time as a student again this is at
the age of eighteen and there he is in
his nice uniform so he was in the Naval
Reserve for several years during this
time period even while he was in school
so the undergraduate years then from 41
to 44 this is his yearbook picture that
you see in the upper upper right hand
corner there
he entered Columbia under the tutelage
of Francis J Bryan so he was he he was
well mentored by Ryan and that will come
up again as we look throughout his life
this is a quote from one of the his
biographers Gilson at Columbia magazine
17 year old Joshua Lederberg crashed
into Ryan's life in 1942 crashed is not
a hyperbole according to Elizabeth
Ryan's Widow you could tell that Joshua
was in the lab because you could hear
the tinkle of breaking glass he
frequently broke whatever he was working
with so there is an intensity of course
in an energy but also a clumsiness that
goes along with being the young person
that he really still was and yet he was
pushing constantly to learn and you can
see that Ryan was very important in
letter Berg's life as an undergraduate
and mentor he says in reflecting on
Francis Ryan in his eulogy in fact above
all it gave me the opportunity to
sharpen my adolescent thinking against
one of the most versatile most generous
minds I would ever encounter and you
know this what he goes on to say next is
in fact the sign of a very good mentor
he rarely instructed me about anything
but would often lead me into an
intellectual trap then challenged me to
find my
way out of it so I had to dig his own
way out of the intellectual trap that he
had been talked into by his very fine
mentor Francis Ryan I wanted to mention
this paper the Avery McCleod McCarty
paper of 1944 this is during the time
that that Joshua Lederberg was still at
Columbia and it was a groundbreaking
paper on identifying DNA as what was
then called the transforming factor in
bacteria and the this this paper was one
might say was the beginning of the
genetic and genomic revolution you might
argue that and in fact we well I'll come
back actually come back to Avery a
little bit later but as he says this
work aroused great interest as a strong
indication that the gene was composed of
DNA it was still controversial whether
bacteria could even be thought of as
having a genetics this was a
controversial issue at the time so in a
bull session Ryan I soon agreed that
would be exciting to try experiments on
the possibility of a similar
transforming effect of DNA in Neurospora
which was the organism that they were
working on a fungus mold that they were
working on at the time so this really
spiked his interest in what was going to
be a lifelong interest in genetics in
particular in bacteria he entered the as
I said medical graduate school he was at
the Columbia University College of
Physicians and Surgeons but at the time
he had the opportunity because Francis
Ryan knew the Tatum was coming back from
California to take a position at Yale
and Ryan thought that it would be
wonderful for Joshua young Joshua to be
able to have the opportunity to study
with Tatum in his lab at Yale so he
requested in this letter to the
associate dean severing house at
Columbia University College of
Physicians and surgery that he be
allowed to take it elec
in the first quarter of his third year
and he wanted to do this research at
Yale with Professor Tatum so he was
granted that that elective and the time
to go to Yale and this is really the
origin of his groundbreaking work and
really the origin of the work for which
he was then later awarded the Nobel
Prize so what happened at that point
then he was there 46 and 47 he was only
supposed to be there for an elective
six-week or eight-week elective and the
collaboration was so good that they kept
asking for extensions and then letter
Berg and Tatum published two important
letters in this area so the first one is
here in nature in 1946 gene
recombination in e.coli analysis of mix
cultures of nutritional mutants has
revealed the presence of new types which
strongly suggests the occurrence of a
sexual process in the bacterium Ecola
these experiments will be reported in
more detail elsewhere and the second
paper was also co-authored by Tatum and
letter Berg this is the gene
recombination in in e.coli in the
Journal of bacteriology in 47 the
conception that bacteria have no sexual
mode of reproduction is widely
entertained this paper will be devoted
to the presentation of evidence from the
occurrence in a bacterium of a process
of gene recombination from which the
existence of a sexual stage may be
inferred so this was very very important
work and in fact Tatum already had a
spot at the conference at Cold Spring
Harbor in that year to report on some
other work or similar work I suppose
what he was doing here but because these
results were so exciting to them and to
the folks at Cold Spring Harbor they
actually gave letter Berg and tied him
another slot on the program to report
this work is what was considered them to
be still also then to be groundbreaking
work so so what the heck I mean here he
did this work he
in medical school he was doing a
research fellowship and they said well
we might as well just give you a PhD for
the work that you've done how many
people here who have PhDs that had come
quite that easy to them but the one
personal obstacle as he points out in
one of his reminiscences is that he had
to pay tuition to Yale they weren't
going to let him off quite that easy
they said that he'd still had to fork
over the dollars for the two years that
he had been there but he didn't have to
write a real dissertation because he had
already published these papers and yeah
because as you know those of you who
have PhDs you need to do defend your
work in front of a committee and so on
well the argument was made that he had
defended this this work in front of an
international internationally renowned
group of people at Cold Spring Harbor
and so he was granted he was granted the
PhD and I mentioned earlier that
libraries have been a quite a theme
throughout Josh letter birds life and
here he says that he went to Woods Hole
in the summer of 1947 because he had to
put a little bit you know I had to wrap
up the dissertation a little bit put
some ribbons around it and so on
but he went to Woods Hole and he spent a
good deal of time at what he called the
magnificent library at the MBL in order
to finish his dissertation there so then
he was recruited to Wisconsin and
remember this is a 22 year old young
person who is just you know it's two
years of medical school has now just the
fresh PhD and it's not that everybody
they are welcomed him with open arms
Alexander brink was very interested in
having him join and faculty because
there was an opening someone had left
and there was an opening and of course
there were some people who wanted well
many people wanted a much more seasoned
investigator to come to the to the
University the part of the problem was
if you like or part of the issue was
that the Department of Genetics is and
was in the call of the College of
Agriculture so one of the comments that
was made and one of why there was some
resistance was this is a city boy he's a
city slicker what
he doing in a college of agriculture
basically was the idea and they just
didn't see that he could make himself at
home in a college of agriculture having
grown up in the streets of Manhattan and
the fact that he was Jewish too probably
was a factor in the thinking of some of
our members and this was an interview
with Alexander brink whom I mentioned
and there were also reports that Letta
Berg was aggressive to an unpleasant
degree well those of you know Josh
Lederberg I can't imagine referring to
him as being aggressive to an unpleasant
degree I can imagine referring to him as
being intense but certainly as I say he
was a much younger man at the time so
brink and another reminiscence says we
were warned that we had better look out
if we had no experience in the
department in lion-taming happily those
fears proved groundless and he brink
also said in one of the other documents
that he was married in 46 when he was at
Yale 2's resume arrestor zimaletto Berg
to whom he was married for 20 years and
he was married to her and she did a fair
amount of that team so he had extremely
productive time at Wisconsin and on the
right you see some samples of his
laboratory notebooks and on the left you
see a couple of examples of his
publications there and he did quite a
lot of work in collaboration with his
wife during those years so he also was
that has been very fond throughout his
career of coining terms and plasmid was
one of those he's coined a number of
others so he says in one of these
articles these discussions have left a
plethora of terms adrift at the risk of
adding to this list I promote I propose
plasmid as a generic term for any extra
chromosomal hereditary determinant and
this was some of the what he had
discovered in doing his work and I
suppose that when you are
you are discovering something new and
there is no name you do you are in the
business of according some of this
terminology but Joshua Lederberg has
always been very interested in language
and so I can see that it gave him great
pleasure to do this kind of thing is to
come up with just the right word for a
particular concept so then we've already
mentioned that he received the Nobel
Prize in 1958 sharing it with Tatum with
whom he worked closely and also a beetle
and Tatum and B Beale each got one
quarter of the Nobel Prize for their
work about gene regulation and then of
course letter Berg got the other half
for his his groundbreaking work in the
genetics of bacteria in particular in
particular their mating behavior oh and
as you know they were they were thought
bacteria were thought to be asexual up
until that point and because Josh
Lederberg received the Nobel Prize at
such an early age he's had many many
opportunities to reminisce about his
career and and various decisions that
he's made and so on and of course he's
been highly sought after as a as a
speaker and to be interviewed and and so
forth and it's interesting what he says
and it's something that you might
imagine he says it's not so appropriate
for people quite so young to receive the
Nobel Prize he says it might be just as
well if you had to be a little bit older
45 or 50 and he says he thinks he might
have spent a few more years in a more
focused way in the laboratory and I
think he's being too hard on himself
here because he's been he continued to
be extremely productive even in spite of
receiving the Nobel Prize at such an
early age so this was in 1958 and here
he is at the Nobel award ceremony you
can see really how young he does look
you can particularly see it when you see
him with the other 1958 Nobel Prize
recipients so to the far right is Larry
Berg himself and to the far left is
beetle and then to his immediate left is
Edward Tatum and then you see the others
in the middle so what happened at that
point was that he had already been in
negotiation with Stanford Stanford was
very interested in having him join their
program they were just starting up a
department of genetics and in fact the
last two years at Wisconsin he was
Joshua Lederberg was the the chair of
the department of genetics at Wisconsin
but he saw the opportunity at Stanford
to come back to his medical roots if you
like recall that he started out wanting
to be a doctor and he didn't finish that
he's like does not have an MD but he has
always been motivated by health concerns
medical concerns and so on so that you
might say science in service of that to
some extent to some extent and so when
you saw the opportunity of joining a and
chairing the Department of Genetics at
Stanford within the Medical School he
saw that as as a great possibility for
him so he was not only a professor of
genetics when you was at Stanford during
the years he almost 20 years 19 years
that he was at Stanford but he was also
a professor of biology and a professor
of computer science and have more to say
about that in a minute to see the
genetics department in the early 1960s
better bird in the back in the middle
row in the in the middle of the back row
and then to the right you see a picture
of the of letter Berg in front of a
chart for the Mariner Mars mission which
it was the study of life beyond Earth
and this became a very important part of
his work at Stan
third is the he had in fact read about
and was very interested in the Sputnik
Sputnik work in the in the late 1950s
and the discussion about sending a man
to to the moon and also exploration of
Mars and so on and was was intrigued by
all of that but actually recognized the
issue that perhaps first of all that if
we send humans into outer space that
humans themselves might contaminate
whatever planet they might be landing on
and his feeling was that Mars you know
the question was an open question is
there life on Mars but he thought if
there was life on Mars it surely was in
the form of microorganisms because only
microorganisms could could succeed and
live and breed in such a hostile
environment hostile environment to life
so to speak so he was concerned on both
sides because he was concerned that
humans might contaminate the planets in
their roughshod way maybe of appearing
there and likewise that brings oil
samples back and so on that we might
bring microorganisms back to earth that
could have a deleterious effect on our
population on the earth itself so he
took that very seriously and as he says
he took he took this seriously and he
thought it was a matter of some urgency
so he with NASA support created and ran
the Stanford instrumentation Research
Laboratory which was goal was originally
to study in a very careful
scientifically based way the samples
that were coming back from Mars and
looking to to analyze those samples
carefully so there he is in his
instrumentation laboratory this actually
led him in a very interesting way to
become immersed in artificial
intelligence in medicine
so you might ask how that happened well
what he recognized very quickly and has
really always throughout his life
recognized is the just the sheer volume
of information that one needs to deal
with in the scientific enterprise and in
particular now when you were looking at
soil samples and trying to understand
what life and life that you might not
even be able to recognize as such and so
forth that you really needed some
computational assistance so he did he it
was quite extraordinary the group that
they put together at Stanford at
Feigenbaum is a chair of the computer
science at Stanford called jurasky a
chemist and Letta Burke himself and then
later on John McCarthy and some of you
some of you know it's very famous in the
computer science world joined the team
or at least was a collaborator and Bruce
Buchanan who some of you know has been
on our Board of Regents and our Board of
scientific counselors all of these folks
were working in some way over those over
that time period
on what came to be known the Dendera
system which was an artificial
intelligence system that was and it says
here for the system for computer
construction enumeration and notation of
organic molecules as tree structures so
the idea was that so much part of the
artificial intelligence problem is that
if you have a lot of data and you know
that you're trying to analyze you have a
lot of in this case trees being built
that is to say a lot of possible answers
to your question and when there is such
a large amount of data you need to find
a way to filter those data and that's
the kind of thing that Dan Gras was
drawing trying to do through its
heuristic rules artificial intelligence
based AI based kinds of rules so that
was an entirely something you might not
have expected for a chairman of a
department of genetics to become
involved in and Josh Lederberg being as
he is and Donna's already alluded to
this very much a hands-on person he
enrolled in an algal class you know he's
there learn
you know computer programming and trying
to understand it from from from that
level so he is credited among others of
course with being among the first to
look at artificial intelligence and
medicine possibilities now what do you
do during his during his time at
Stanford he was busy in lots of
different directions he was still doing
basic research of course in the lab he
was doing AI again as it applied to
microorganisms but he also did this
wonderful thing and that's why I
consider him in many ways for lots of
reasons to be really a public minded
scientist someone who took his
responsibilities as a of course famous
scientist very seriously in getting the
message out to the rest of the world and
not just fellow scientists so he agreed
and was invited to and agreed to write a
regular column it was weekly for a while
I don't believe it was we believed
throughout the whole period a regular
column for The Washington Post called
science and men and here are just some
of the titles that of the the editorials
or articles that he wrote and you can
see didn't she didn't shy away from any
issues germ warfare
chromosomes and crime viruses
engineering viruses for health that were
warfare you know are you doing this
engineering for good purposes or for bad
purposes the legal start of life worlds
and postpone I'll come to that in a
minute is everybody brought into the
core genetic Interfaith intervention as
a way of improving our species are there
bugs on Mars we've already talked about
that inform guinea pigs radiation
debates pollution psychology of
differences between the sexes and what
about those doctors out there so I'll
just give you a flavor of some of them I
thought you might want to know the
answer is - is everybody brought into
the core I think that you'll find that
he doesn't think so
he says that one of the principal themes
of this column has been the rapid
progress of research in molecular
biology remember this is the 60s there
is an off
happening during this time period and
the opportunity this begins to offer for
the diagnosis and cure of inborn
diseases of human development if I
believed if I Josh Lederberg believed
that modern science supports the innate
depravity of man the global warfare is
an inevitable disease of human nature I
would advocate changing that nature by
the most powerful tools at our disposal
I would advocate genetic activism as the
only route to human survival so but
basically it was a way of making making
accessible to the public
the important and sometimes scary about
scientific issues of the day and I'm
going to go through a few of these this
one I found interesting World's End
postponed because this is basically the
issue here is irresponsible journalism
as he puts it so he says a Sydney
University physicist said that said
today that the United States Britain and
Russia are studying the possibility of
using a nuclear rocket to prevent an
asteroid from smashing into Earth so the
asteroid is coming at however many
million miles an hour down to the earth
and we're going to send off a nuclear
rocket to smash it into smithereens I
guess so that it won't destroy earth so
he says I find it hard to believe that
any responsible journalist would have
credited the story unfortunately such
sensationalism goes on all too often in
science news recording and erodes the
confidence of serious-minded scientists
he's speaking to the press so he went
back to the original professor who was
quoted here at Sydney and apparently
this was this was not a comment that he
had made this one is about informed
consent and he had an interesting point
of view here I'm not sure that this ever
went here but as he talks about the
issue of of course clinical trials as we
know them and and also any informed
consent for any kinds of procedures and
research studies that might involve
significant risks and he says the very
expression risk brings to mind insurance
and there's an
instead of and there is an important
step that we could take to rationalize
the participation of human subjects so
he was proposing some kind of insurance
for the risk that you might undergo in a
clinical trial and and believe that ever
went anywhere but an interesting point
of view now he talks about doctors and
he says that much disease now is yatra
genic actually a backwash of excessive
an imperceptible use of drugs many of my
colleagues wonder then whether we do not
have too many physicians too busy and
preoccupied to evaluate the churning
battery of drugs thrust with their
attention via the glossy trade journals
so he goes after the pharmaceutical
company there and then this somewhat
controversial topic genetic intervention
he says some of the more panicky
reactions to genetic engineering and
their characterization as tampering are
no doubt very closely akin to the
anxiety and derision that greeted
Darwin's formulation of man's evolution
from a plight forerunners how would an
ape profits relatives have greeted his
predictions about the upsets their
species would soon experience great so
and this one is engineering viruses for
health or warfare he says that he really
need this is really he was one of the
first people to recognize the danger of
biological warfare and actually became
quite involved in the subsequent years
at the national level in addressing
addressing these issues and he says
himself who he's invited in nineteen
seventy and for several years he served
on a disarm in the arms control arena
but he was invited to this conference in
nineteen seventy on questions of
biological warfare and he says in his
own the beginnings of an autobiography
that he started in nineteen eighty eight
I believe that he had various notes
throughout the years about his life but
he says that that this work consumed as
much time as any of the other many many
other things
that he did in the public arena because
he saw it was so important to address
this carefully so then he said goodbye
to Stanford and this is Edie Feigenbaum
email is not already mentioned while
Josh was a prolific email writer also a
correspondent in actually paper but once
he had access to email that's what he
was doing so this is a goodbye tribute
from Edie Feigenbaum to letter Berg when
he was leaving Stanford Josh is not only
one of the world's great scientists but
also one of its great science statesmen
those of us who shared project
management responsibilities with him
were in awe of the unerring accuracy
with which he was able to affect clean
cuts to thickets of political financial
and institutional complexities to lead
us through to desired goals so not only
was he a scientist in the laboratory but
he was also someone who was able to
navigate the political waters of
academia and the government and so on
and all the various government
committees that he served on so he was
president of rockefeller from 1978 so as
I say almost almost 20 years 19 years at
Stanford and 12 years as president of
Rockefeller University in New York and
in 1990 he retired from there and it's
now a professor emeritus at Rockefeller
University so there he is I believe in
his office I'm not sure rockefeller so I
wanted to give you a flavour this is a
CV for his CV from 1998 I want to just
give you a flavor for the public
committees the National Committee's on
which Joshua Lederberg served throughout
his career so you know as early as the
1919 50s when he was really still very
very young he was serving on the
president's science advisory in 1958 for
20 years he served on the National
Academy of Sciences Committee on space
biology on a NASA for many years on a
NASA moon planetary missions board the
Charles Babbage Institute the u.s.
defense Science Board trustee of the
Medical School in Tel Aviv president's
cancer panel toxicology Board of
Directors chemical industry and the
chair of the DNA advisory board at the
FBI from 95 to 98 and this was looking
this was really forensic DNA and he was
looking at that and making some we're
together with colleagues making some
very good progress on the accuracy of
DNA and identifying or better said and
ruling out that someone was a criminal
he was a prolific correspondent I've
already mentioned that this is just a
sample it's just over more than 20 years
of correspondence between letter Berg
and and Tatum with whom he worked in his
very early career as a youngster really
at Yale and these are just you know
letters back and forth over that long
period just some titles and here I just
thought I'd let you to take a look for a
minute at the folks with whom he
corresponded so you'll see there are
other Nobel laureates anfinsen
Axelrod Beetle Crick Don Frederickson he
actually was was quite vocal in
discussions with Don Frederickson when
Don Fredersen with director of NIH and
was working on the Ratana DNA DNA issues
and there's some letters there he was
active politically in the sense that he
correspondent with quite a few senators
Congress people and so on he he was I
think a consultant to Ann Landers in the
sense that she would ask for his opinion
and also to Ann Landers sister at the
end of the second column abigail Dear
Abby development then van Buren Salvador
Luria another laureate Ernst Mayr
actually was at Harvard and tried very
hard to recruit Josh Lederberg to her
but didn't happen didn't happen so mayor
was was was disappointed in that Mac
McCarty I've already mentioned he was
one of the three author's
Avery McCleod and McCarty on that early
paper on on DNA and Barbara McClintock
as you know Nobel laureate for work in
in corn corn genetics Victor McKusick
the father of Mendelian inheritance and
man the book and the online Mendelian
inheritance and then and you could see
others like the princess Paola Belgium
who then became queen linus pauling carl
sagan he actually did some work with
carl sagan on the whole question of
space exploration and what then became
coined as the term that they coined was
that the jaw flutter Burgoyne was
exobiology so this whole realm study
about being called exobiology frets and
was done shillelagh you all know Fred
Soper who was the one of the first was
the first head of the Pan American
Health Organization wasn't called that
at the time but we did a lot of work
with organisms and so on in South
America and other places Luther Terry
who of course was in Surgeon General who
wrote the first documents surgeon
general's report on smoking and Jim
Watson that's just a sample that's
really just a sample I just pulled out
names that I thought many of you would
recognize also I thought it would be
interesting for you to know that he
corresponded with Eugene Garfield so
those of you who are information
scientists know well and maybe others of
you new to the web of science which
actually was is now the web version of
the ISI Citation Index and Eugene
Garfield had a lot of trouble selling
the idea so to speak so he got a
handwritten note which you can see on
the right there under the web of science
logo there since since you've heard this
is from letter Berg to Garfield since
you first published your scheme for a
Citation Index in science about four
years ago I've been thinking very
seriously about it and must
I am completely sold so Eugene Garfield
writes back and says I hope you wouldn't
be embarrassed by a show of emotion but
your memo almost brought tears to my
eyes it then seemed that over six years
of trying to sell the idea of citation
indexes had not been completely in vain
and of course again it's revealed Josh
Lederberg interest in the primary
literature in literature itself and he
has made many statements throughout the
years about the how great it would be
and what advances we would have if we
could mine that what we take today call
mine the literature to do knowledge
discovery if you like in the literature
so he's been quite committed to this
throughout his life being being the
scientist that he is and it goes back to
his his love of libraries and he was in
fact on the board of the the Library of
Congress he was on our Board of Regents
at the National Library of Medicine
he's chaired or at least has been on the
board of the PubMed Central Committee so
he's been quite supportive of this
notion of making scientific information
readily easily available so I thought
that I might talk a little bit about
science at science why be a scientist
and there is a volume called reflections
on scientific biography published and
edited by letter bird in 1990 and what
he did is he asked all the various
scientists who are reflecting on this
the basic question why do science well
and here were some of the answers this
was a summary of some of the answers
curiosity the exercise of intellect and
aesthetic taste virtuosity the prestige
and so he's honest about that the
prestige and self-satisfaction that a
scientist derives from the practice of
extraordinary skill power influence and
vanity the fruits of success
illumination compulsion approaching the
religious associated with peak discovery
and I think that's right I think that if
you're fully immersed in what you are
doing you become somewhat fanatical
about it and service in reaching others
minds
generating useful knowledge so I thought
we might take a minute to just listen if
I can make it work to letter burg
himself scientists have to be schizoid
in some way they have to be able to
sustain some contradictions in their
personality and the way they view things
I've already mentioned one of them in
order to get you have to give away I
have a very clear sense you you want to
be competitive and generous at the same
time which is self as an individual not
only satisfy your own ego but in order
to have the resources and capability of
doing for the scientific work and yet
you recognize you're part of the
community and an even deeper level and a
little closer to the cognitive realm the
effective scientist the really creative
one is the person who one minute can be
fantasizing with no restraints imagining
all kinds of things blue sky and the
next can be his/her own harshest self
critic in say look this is what reality
is really like a B C D and G are not
going to work well maybe have survived
and that's worth considering but to be
able to have a lot of fluency in
scanning a wide range of fantastic
notions things that never been done
before which probably aren't going to
work and give them a little bit of
attention and then have a critical
regarding how to discard them if there's
any essential ingredient to scientific
Timothy I think that's where so I
thought I might then end with profiles
and science and there's only one slide
here but I did want to let you know that
all of the documents and all of the
comments that I've made to you with the
exception of a few plots personal
comments and having known and knowing
Joshua Lederberg have all come from the
profiles and science site and the the
finding aid this is a quote from the
finding aid which is a prize-winning
finding aid I should add says the Joshua
Lederberg collection comprises 180 2.75
linear feet of Correspondence reports
research material published writings
photographs and so forth chronicling the
research and public service of Joshua
Lederberg those of you who are not
archivist don't know what this means 180
2.75 linear feet of Correspondence and
other documents those of you who are
might be gasping this is a lot of
documents and Josh Lederberg saved
everything you can see that a lot of the
correspondence that I was talking about
and so on we have carbon copies of that
correspondence he kept everything he
kept all of the documents and so on and
he was himself I would say not just a
packrat he didn't just put things in
boxes and shove them in a corner he
actually was a little bit of a librarian
himself a little bit of an archivist
himself so he organized things in
certain ways and made them made the job
even though it was a very big job for
our archivists and librarians and
computer scientists here at NLM it was a
big job for them but he did make it
somewhat easier and we thank him for
that and I am delighted to have had the
opportunity to talk to you about Joshua
Lederberg thank you very much
[Applause]
it's no lecture we'll take a question or
two I guess we could also take some
additions if any of you want to add your
own observation
Josh would be very proud of you Alexa he
was a a Mazda individual real genius but
medical students and normal students
found him not as attractive nor as
highly talented as a lecturer I think
one of the amazing things about Josh
Lederberg was that after he dropped out
a dropout medical student from the
Columbia and he went back and went to
Tatum and did his Nobel Prize work and
then he he went to Wisconsin which was a
powerhouse in genetics it's a land-grant
school and Hans Rees and James Crowe and
to leave the West that was alright but
even more interesting was that he left
Wisconsin to go to Stanford which was a
nothing medical school at that time and
how they attracted Arthur Kornberg and
Henry Kaplan and Josh Lederberg in their
basic science department and then later
course went into heart transplant with
Norman Shumway but Stanford was with the
San Francisco wasn't a great medical
school that only when it moved back to
Stanford and he took on that new
challenge and then of course after they
had a physicist as president of the
National Academy sites they went back to
a biologist and it became president
about that I think the only other thing
that I think is interesting he just
didn't do the work bacterial conjugation
as a young student that gave him a Nobel
Prize but he was productive in many
fields transduction with Norton Synder
was one of the basic mechanisms of
biology and he went all the way to
Australia and worked with Gus nozzle and
that paper shows that one cell produces
one antibody so he was in immunology he
was in genetics he was in the beginning
of molecular biology although his stuff
pretty much too phage and bacteria but
he's an extraordinary individual and
you did a wonderful job okay any further
did any of you hear of pop contact oh I
know in history of Medicine you surely
must have a contact with Joshua cause he
visited here frequently any remarks I
wanted ladies please I only want to
thank Alexa for doing such a beautiful
job of explaining the man
as well as the work and I think she gave
us a lovely overview of the profiles and
science site and I hope that those are
interested will make their own
explorations of the site as they have
the time Thank You Alexis
probably an infinite number of
reminiscences but I would I'm thinking
I'm remembering right now the very first
time I met dr. lader Berg was that a
Markel meeting at the Yosemite Lodge
outside of San Francisco a lovely
beautiful sunny day and he was of course
one of the distinguished faculty but as
often happens the most distinguished
people get kind of forgotten and
everybody goes about pouring coffee and
chattering so I saw him sitting alone at
a table and the son and I thought yes I
think I apologized but said I thought he
needed to be disturbed anyway and I
asked what what were you actually
thinking about before I came along and
interrupted your your Sonny coffee and
he said well I have in mind a chemical
molecule and I'm trying to figure out
what would be the next logical chemical
molecule and that was the beginning of
dendrimer I was by what logic will you
find your way through this infinitely
bushy decision tree so I found him I
mean he's always the smartest guy in the
room no doubt about that
but he was self-propelled and he
followed these curious but important
questions one little parting of
reminiscence I actually wasn't present
for this one but I've heard
from people at Stanford when he finally
kind of became a familiar faculty person
and so therefore got drafted under the
inevitable curriculum committee so any
of you who've you know live life on a
curriculum committee know that it's
almost endless and in medical schools
one of the crime topics is called the
core curriculum and apparently this one
dragged on for really a very very long
time and finally I guess somebody asked
Josh's opinion and he wrote up he walked
up the blackboard and he wrote left
core equals zero and that's the way the
vote went okay any parting comments
please I just we just like to mention I
had the pleasure of having interviewed
dr. letter work and I was struck by his
understanding of the responsibilities
that went with winning the Nobel Prize
especially winning it at such a young
age in that as one of the things that he
commented on he said once he had won the
Nobel he had from that point on be very
careful about what he said in public
because people take what you say very
seriously he said then you can't just be
flip about anything now that was hit
that understanding at such a young age
and carrying through his life and having
been a celebrity as it was were for such
a long time yeah he was very responsible
for certain sir as a history and I have
been a big fan of pop profiles in
science so because you put together
features documents and introductions
it's wonderful our source of further
research
I'm just interesting now you know having
spent so much time and energy on years
on the Joshua our website and and that
gathering lots of information about him
and are you not interested in writing a
biography of him
and then if are you just mind for thee
for all the various collections that are
there in fact these are the primary
materials and you can it's just as I did
historian denoting these materials and
be able to get the kind of identical
information you might like and one of
the things that in the profile the
science project that we've always been
interested in doing but having that
really done is to create a variety of
educational materials from the profile
site as well because an underlying
motive that I actually haven't talked
about motivation for profiles and
science is to get across to young people
of all ages the the sheer excitement of
doing science and to let people know
that scientists are people too they have
their lives they have their frustrations
they have their political waters that
they have to navigate and so on and yet
it is extremely rewarding when to spend
the life and so we believe in that
like the research students in many many
ways and clearly the perhaps people
writing an additional by noting
biographical material and John mentioned
early on that once and didn't actually
say one other thing which is the Josh
Lederberg when he separately would be
glad to donate his famous to a since we
were going to be digitizing them
he said well as soon as you digitize
them I'll give you twelve boxes you
digitized I was like in the next role
and so on
just throwing the papers away for the
papers away but but he was so confident
in that and that what we then did reason
he was confident was that he in fact
used the collection himself and we gave
him the capability of annotating the
materials there so the original
materials in there but in many cases
there are some annotations there aren't
as many as we would like because we like
him to continue to work on it but so
we'll see but that is that that we made
it entirely interact with kind of
assists and said sir I just wanted to
thank you for a wonderful feeling that I
had learning more about Joshua Lederberg
I went to Stanford Medical School in its
first years at Palo Alto and learning
more about the story I learned more
about how my scientific mind was shaped
and it was frankly overwhelming to be
almost bashed by people like Joshua
Lederberg and other people that he
courted the kornberg's Linus Pauling's
and all of that and something else that
I just would like to contribute it was
that ultimately it came out to be in
this no curriculum business it was a
pass/fail Medical School for which I was
very grateful but because it was so
overwhelming and I am struck now
reflecting on this on the incredible
decency and I would even go as far as to
says the wisdom of the the people who
were there realizing that something
fabulous could happen and that their
responsibility was to create
Foreman where where that excitement
could take hold that I just want to
thank you for helping me to relive that
a little bit
thanks for saying it okay I have a
little comment I'm sorry to push the red
button yeah I did okay and I was when
little bird came to Stanford I was a
pediatric resident and at the same time
the pediatrician also famousy chairman
and as kids they had been in the same
kindergarten and they said that all
through their lives they have been
competing one against the other except
that Lederberg was always ahead but one
of the entrance a few years later in
Pediatrics who married bled over
afterwards and murdery told me that she
asked him once how can you be so patient
sometimes when you are in a group of
people that know that everybody is
discussing things so slowly and he said
well I learn from very young age that my
mind was going too fast so I could go to
a certain point I knew how long it would
take them to reach me there so I could
turn off sleep of something else and go
a little bit further and so on and keep
on so in a way it matches what you said
about his thinking when he was sitting
by himself
so anyway right so that was an
interesting part of living thank you
okay it's wrap up thanks for being here
[Applause]
you