April 25, 1980

Dear Dr. Lederberg:

This will certainly get to you after the two letters to
California have gone on their way, but it may be useful in
providing some new information for the other letters. I'm
very encouraged by the fact that both of the callers from
Pitzer and Claremont have said that I'm in the top 5 being
considered for the positions. The biology job is a good
deal better than the one in psychology, because it's sure of
being a longer contract, and because I think that there are
probably better possibilities of dialogue and collaboration
with the biology faculty, but at this point I want so much
not to be a postdoctoral fellow any longer that I wouldn't
turn up my nose at either of them, It's not that I'm
tired of research, but I am tired of being dependent on someone
else. I'm also tired of engaging in hand-to-hand combat in
order to get the use of the centrifuge/slice chamber/spectro-
photometer/Corex test tubes... Of course, Claremont may not
have any of these things, but at least that will be more peaceful,
and as long as I have animal facilities and a test room, I
can still do research,

The decrease in research money and the increase in competition
are certainly important factors in my increasing inclination to
leave academia. As I said, I'm thinking about pharmaceutical houses;
I've also been looking into scientific publishing.

I'm enclosing my current curriculum vitae and copies of some of
the teaching eyaluations from my animal behavior course. They are
representative of the whole population, even though they are a limited
sample; they do show what students seem to like about my teaching.

I'm still plowing ahead on my biochemistry and have started a
replication of my histological study; the data from the first one
say that corticosterone implants shut down the adrenal cortex (no
surprise) but they don't produce as much astroglial hypertrophy as
we expected. I'm really getting very curious, because the two reports
of hypertrophy induced by corticosterone both used a daily injection
procedure. If these animals also don't respond to the corticosterone
per se, it will be very interesting indeed.

Thank you again for your help and advice.