November 11, 1976

Dr. Arie J. Haagen-Smit _
416 S Berkeley Avenue
Pasadena, California 91107

Dear Dr. Haagen~-Smit,

This is a small follow-up on a note I sent you a couple of days ago
on my search for biographical material on Ed Tatum.

I wonder if I might now focus on a couple of specific questions for which
you might be a unique source of information.

I notice, according to the biographical dictionaries, that you left Utrecht
at approximately the same time that Ed came there on his postdoctoral fellowship
to work with K§gl. Did you meet Ed at that time or did you cross on your
respective journeys? Regardless, do you happen to know how Ed came to choose
Utrecht as the place to do his research; and in particular what he worked on
while he was there? I have not been able to identify, so far, any publication
reflecting that year's work.

Ed also commented that he met Nils Fries at that time ~ but this is just
a very brief remark in his Nobel Prize Lecture, and I wonder if you have any
more insight into that. te

Then I am trying to understand the informational network by which Ed would
have come to Beadle's attention and so to be recruited to come to Stanford.
8

My final question may be answered by some of the contingencies of the previous
ones. However, I wonder if I could ask you how you came to join wibh Ed on the
work on the bacterial v* factor. I understand from between the lines of the 1941
paper and from numerous other comments that Butenandt's scoop was quite startling
to Ed and undoubtedly did a great deal to highlight the way in which pathway
analysis could leap-frog over very laborious work of isolation and identification.
Do you have any recollections of the details of that impact - or most to be hoped
for of all any correspondence covering that interval?

If you would prefer to discuss these matters face to face (although I would
be most grateful for a written record), I would be happy to try to arrange a
visit with you in Pasadena, which may be quite convenient as I come down to JPL
from time to time on Viking business.

Perhaps enough time has now elapsed that it is not indiscrete for me to
mention that I tried, some years ago, quite vigorously to interest the Nobel
Committees in recognizing your pioneering work on the composition of smog.
However, I guess that was both too important and too startling an intellectual

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Ur. AYIe J. naagenrom.c 27 baj eas eu

breakthrough to be recognized atkifst the important but rather routine advances
that are the main stuff of scientific advance. And I suppose - like environmental
problems generally - this issue suffered from falling between the stools of
medicine on the one hand and pure chemistry on the other. Knowing, however, the
depths of respect and appreciation that your. ewrk has inspired at so many levels
negates my own disappointment (and I trust yours at all if you have ever given it
any thought) that it has not yet achieved this particular form of recognition.

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg
Professor of Genetics

JL/rr