October 20, 1948
Dear Professor,
If only I had finished a letter to you one of the innumerable times I have thought of you, I should be more content with myself.  I have only one reason for not having done so - -and that is not a reason, really, just a feeling.  So long as our legal situation continues to be irregular over here, I am troubled and haunted when I try to write to friends in America.  From here America seems sometimes a haven, where one can still lead an orderly life.  I am here over a year now, and our case is still buried in a file somewhere at the tribunal.  There is nothing we can do with the legal system, which worked well enough for Napoleon, but which, in an apathetic 20th century state, is now growing slowly to its regime[?].  It really makes very little difference to us over here, where people are so used to having things proceed in an irregular fashion, because our every day life and relations with friends is just what it would be if the legal difficulties didn't exist.  But, as I have already told you, I find it difficult to explain to people in the States.
Rollin's visit here -- and in England -- was in every way a success.  Reports have come from the English laboratories that indicate he captivated the British Isles.  Here in Paris his usual difficulties with languages were augmented by the fact that he had a French audience.  Nonetheless, the beautiful work which he reported came through the strain triumphant.  In personal contact he won many friends.  Indeed, there is afoot, a plan to bring Rollin over here for a year (after our new genetics Institute will be finished) with the aid of the Centre Nationale.
Only very recently my appointment has been made officially.  Through your generous help I was made a charge de Recherche, which is equivalent to an assistant professorship.  I am very content with
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this, for it is a good beginning.  There are yearly appointments, but are renewed if there is even moderate reason to do so.  Also, it is an appointment which pursuits me to retain my American citizenship, and that means a great deal to me.  A number of the people on the committee making appointments, since have inquired about you, and told me effectively, how great an honor it is to have been supported by you in my application.  I really know this already, very well, and shall try very hard to justify it.
From the transformation point of view, the year has started very well.  It makes a big difference to start up work after vacation, with a year's efforts behind one.  I have outlined very concretely a program for this year, and have begun a vigorous execution.  I am interested first of all in analyzing the apparent interaction between a T.P. in the cell, and one in the environment.  This program will go slowly because there is a large amount of preparative work involved which I shall do entirely myself.  I now have a technician for 1/2 a day to work on non-routine things (media glassware etc. are all taken care of.)  She is going to carry on the work on improving and developing a defined medium for the transformations.  This is also a slow, long range project.  There are a number of small, less ambitious experiments I hope to work in, during the year, more or less to fill out the experiments I did in New York.  I rather expect Rollin will revolutionize the techniques of sensitizing, as soon as he can, and so I shall have it all him.  For the present, I use our old techniques, with albumin and anti-R where needed.  Last year I found I could separate T.P. from Type III polysaccharide, in my new technique of preparation -- which resembles MacLeod's  very much.  I hope, this, to accumulate during this year, polysaccharide from the mutant Type III forms, so that by direct study of the polysaccharide it can be seen how these forms differ -- if they do differ in a qualitative sense.
I am invited to England in April, to the Society of Microbiology meeting, at which there is to be a panel discussion of the nature of the bacterial surface.  Our pneumococcus story touches at so many points upon the question that I hardly know where to begin.  Already I am sorting things out in my mind, because I want to do justice to the material.  I am thrilled with the idea of visiting England, which I have always longed to do.  And it will be fun to meet the English scientists.
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at the same time Boris is invited to give a series lectures in England and Scotland -- at London, Edinborough and Glasgow, where the main genetics laboratories are.  It should be a grand tour, with Boris doing most of the talking.  He will have one or two lectures to prepare, and he lectures so well, I shall enjoy even the repeats!
Perhaps you have seen Medawar's longish paper in the new British journal, Heredity.  We both read it with great interest, feel his data are suggestive, but not quite adequate yet to prove his "transformative" theory.  It is an extremely difficult thing to prove, because one cannot work with "pure cultures" of melanoblasts.
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Equally discouraging are the failures of Communist-scientists in England and France to defend what they know to be scientific fact against destruction by party doctrine.  I have never felt so strongly before the importance of socialist and liberal organizations, and the kind of thinking they do.  It seems to offer the only hope for a saner economic management of material resource, which at the same time permits free thought.  Bit it is David against a Goliath -- Goliath being a clever, dogmatic and absolute propaganda, spreading throughout the world.
These things are very much with us here in Paris. The love of our work, the enthusiasm of our students, and the joy of being together are the bright sides.  And to the bright side one can add the feeling that our friends in the U.S. are prospering, and free to write and think in spite of contention of the communists and the contrary! What an important, if fallible, country the U.S.A. is, and will be in the years to come.
By now you are in Tennessee.  New York will never be the same again for me -- nor the Institute.  In a way I am glad I wasn't there when you decided to leave, because I would have been "dead agin" it, and very unhappy about it.  As it is, I don't quite believe it yet
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and wont until I see it with my own eyes.
I saw Dr. Heidelberger briefly, here in Paris the other day.  We had lunch together, with Dr. Wurmser, a physical chemist who is interested in antigen--anti body reactions.  He (Heidelberger) certainly swims  around well in French.   We scarcely used any English for the two hours of the luncheon -- He looked very well, and had many interesting adventures on behalf of the U.N.
Boris' work is going very well.  Effectively, it is the study of a mutation in yeast, induced by acriflavine. The acriflavine acts upon yeast cells in some fashion which causes the cell to lose a group of enzymes.  Cytochrome oxidase, succinic dehydrogenase are two which are lost. This change is hereditary -- but not Mendelian.  That is, thus far, the chromosomes do not appear to directly control the presence or absence of these enzymes.  This is a rather surprising thing in view of the numerous cases in which a single gene appears to cause the formation of a given enzyme.  At present, he suspects that the acriflavine acts by inhibiting the reproduction of certain cytoplasmic particles, the particles containing the enzymes, and also being autoreproducting.  He has accumulated a tremendous amount of genetics and biochemical information which is most easily interpreted by such an hypothesis, but, of course, at present it is only a working hypothesis.  He and his group of workers are in the process of writing it all up, to appear before so very long in the Ann. of the Pasteur Institute.  It makes a very nice story, and I have to admit that as experimental material it is just as pretty as the pneumococcus.
I am going to go back now to today's experiment -- and put some T.P. -- that mythical genetic "protein" -- with some tubes for containing sensitized R cells.
With great affection as always,
Harriett
P.S. My congratulations to you, on your birthday, which is tomorrow, I believe.