STANFORD UNIVERSITY
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA

SCHOOL OF MEDICINE July 1, 1958

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Genetics Building
University of Wisconsin
418 North Randall Avenue
Madison 6, Wisconsin

Dear Doctor Lederberg:

As a result of many considerations, which may
have seemed to you unduly protracted, I am delighted to
invite you to join the faculty of the School of Medicine of
this University as Professor and Executive of the to be
established Department of Genetics. I am not unappreciative
of your state of suspense apropos Stanford et al since
December of 1956. Likewise, I am sure that you realize along
with me the enthusiasm of Kornberg, Kaplan, and Goldstein,
in addition to Provost Terman, Dean Rhinelander, and Victor
Twitty et al in Biology -- all of us cooperating in and enthu-
siastic for the prospect of your association with us in the
growing Stanford Medical environment. Also, you should be
aware that your future associates, the Executive Committee of
the Medical School, voted unanimous approval of this entire
project.

Questions of space, staff, salaries, supply and
equipment, and fellowship funds all must be considered. Most
important, however, is the question of the interrelationship
of genetics to the overall teaching intent (not just the
curriculum) of the School of Medicine and of the University.
Inclusion of genetics in the curriculum of the School of
Medicine has not been made, as I know you appreciate from your
talks with Lyman Stowe, but obviously not only in itself but
through its effective interweaving with the pre-clinical and
clinical departments a most effective opportunity should be
provided by our no longer static, but I hope truly dynamic
new curriculum, I agree with you that the effect of you and
your colleagues on the pre-clinical and clinical departments
in counseling them rather than providing direct counseling
service is a preferable goal. I think you and Stowe and I
might pursue the curriculum question further when you are out
here in September.

Provost Terman agrees with me that designating
this the Department of Genetics rather than modifying it with
the words medical, human, experimental mammalian, or micro-
biologic genetics is quite satisfactory.
Dr. Lederberg

July 1, 1958

All considerations of space are understood to

be on a temporary pasis, merely assuring

you and your assoc~

jates adequate functioning facilities until you all can draw
up plans specifically designed for and puLlt for the Depart-

included in the
Goldstein's

ment of Genetics,
of Dr. Kornberg and Dr.

coming to join us it has not been too
with your strongly stated wish to be in
Accordingly,
pharmacology rooms 33-351 and J3-331,

to Kornberg and his crew.
plans which you have,
along with biochemistry rooms 3-571
and Goldstein, and this morning you
available for your own activities.

puilt facilities for the Department
Anatomy-Microbiology Building, with
as Dr. Arthur Furst may continue
to your department in she sense

Neommon use" facilities in
and I understand from Avram that he
you such common use facilities
your most effective operations.

"Biank" building.

of his as may

Because
intense interest in your
aifficult to go along
immediate juxtaposition
on the Medical Center

and 3-551, as you, Kornberg;
and I discussed, will be
Likewise, the recently

of Pharmacology in the

the exception of such space
occupy will be available

that you and your associates
will have the first claim on this area.
advised in a copy of 4 letter written
his department are available to you

IT have been
Dr. Kornberg that all
too would be happy to assure
be necessary to

As to staff: a professor and executive (Joshua

Lederberg, Ph.D.); a professor,
advised (I sincerely hope) of your

for whom after I have been
willingness to join us, you

should begin negotiating, pearing in mind the non-Hollywood
nature of the facilities immediately available to this man; an

assistant professor
pending 4 National

other source of support;
ship to fellows you suggested three
tuition waiver and
will, insofar as

to a certain extent.
are sufficiently
you,
down and earmark postgraduate and

Funds clearly

for fellowships 80 that we all three would be

to just what we can do.

I trust you understand
Department of Genetics you would be
of the School of Medicine and,
to the Dean. In

almost everyone has direct access to
strongly enough about any current or

$2,000 per annum per man.
he has any funds available,

William Rowland, my financial assistant, and
cancer research funds available

on soft money underwritten by the University

grant or some
In relation-

Phil Rhinelander
support us in this
available for fellowships

limited at the present time so that I believe

I should sit

entirely clear as

that as Executive of the
on the Executive Committee

accordingly, have direct access
matter of actual practice it would seem that

the Dean anyway if he feels
future pressing problem.
Dr. Lederberg -3- July 1, 1958

Stanford salaries, as you may have learned on
your earlier visit out here in connection with Biology, have
not been munificent. The University, the Provost, the Dean
of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and I all seem to
be aimed in the same direction, however -- namely, upwards in
the reasonably near future. For instance, the Medical School
is aiming toward median salaries for the ranks of instructor
through professor of six, nine, twelve, and sixteen thousand
dollars per year. Departmental executives are to be paid an
additional sum. Our intent, and in fact our reasonable expec-
tation, I trust by 60-61,1is not an immediate fact, however.
Accordingly, I would like to offer you a salary of $15,000 per
annum and suggest to you that you negotiate for your fellow
professor on the basis of $13,000 to $14,000 per annum.

I am assured that Dean Rhinelander will facilitate,
along with Professor Twitty, your joint appointment in the
School of Humanities and Sciences, thus facilitating the grant-
ing of a Ph.D. in Genetics. I think there should be no question
about the congenial relationships with Biology in general and
not just with Professors Twitty, Yanofsky, and Perkins. I am
yet too much a babe in the woods in financial matters but Kaplan,
Kornberg, et al express no concern about the finding of funds
for equipment, anticipating the likelihood of at least three year
National Institute of Health grants for equipment, technical
assistance and lab supplies with the additional possibilities of
the Atomic Energy Commission, Commonwealth, Rockefeller, Ford,
ete. to be considered. Incidentally, Lyle Cook spent the last
two weeks in the east surveying all of the possibilities of
large foundation and government support for Stanford and its
Medical School and has come back most reassured. In fact so
much so that I am even more sanguine than my usual self.

I believe that in your consideration of the oppor-
tunities here, particularly in talking with any whom you would
wish to have join you at Stanford, that you should aim no lower
than the establishment of Stanford University as a center for
genetic research, realizing that undergraduate, graduate, and
postgraduate or pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training is a
by product of such a program. Insofar as our candidates for the
degree of Doctor of Medicine are concerned, I believe that not
only you and your associates, but also all of us who profit from
working with you can aim toward assuring correct factual know-
ledge and reasonably sophisticated thinking by our medical students.
Within not too long a period of time I hope that the Department
of Medicine, Obstetrics, or Pediatrics will have a clinician who
ean properly and enthusiastically take on such genetic counseling
and investigation of elinical aspects of genetic disorders as
may be a desirable complement to the Department of Genetics.
Dr. Lederberg -4- July 1, 1958

Since our free lodger, the medical student, will
not be with us in September Sophie and I would be delighted
should you and Mrs. Lederberg wish to avail yourselves of our
modest but quite snug guest house. Should you wish us to make
other arrangements for your stay in September please let me
know. It would seem most desirable for you to have anyone whom
you propose to bring out as an associate come along at the time
you are here in September.

I shall be gone from July 6 through 14. The
telephone will find me before that time and any letters received
meanwhile will get immediate attention on my return. Looking
forward to you and your confreres joining us in this stimulating
environment -- climatologically and otherwise -- I remain,

Yours sincerely,

Naa

Robert H. Alway, M.D.
Dean

RHA:re

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