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INDIANA UNIVERSITY
Department of Zoology

JORDAN HALL 220
BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA 47401

January 24, 1978 TEL, NO. 812—337-7522

Dr. Joshua Lederberg
Department of Genetics
Stanford University

School of Medicine
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Josh,

Congratulations and best wishes on your new appointment! Of all
American universities, Rockefeller is certainly the best for you to
preside over. Presumably you can concentrate on intellectual leadership
without too much distraction by problems of finding financial support for
the institution per se. We'll all be watching and rooting for your success.

Now that you will be moving, you will doubtless be faced with the
problem of disposing of papers, letters, books, etc. I'm interested in
this because Perkins gave me the job of chairing a committee of the Genetics
Society on the preservation of historical documents. One of my first
actions was to try to find out whether you had arranged to preserve your
many invaluable materials. I learned that you had given some information
to Edsali's Survey of Sources on the History of Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology and that you had promised to give your documents to the Library of
the American Philosophical Society. That's just what I hoped, so I did not
write to jog your memory.

But this move of yours is not only important for you, but critical for
the preservation of your materials. Let me urge you therefore to send now
what you would otherwise throw away. I know that Whit Bell, Librarian of the
Philosophical Society would gladly pay for the packing and sending of material.
I enclose a list of the kinds of items particularly wanted. I may add that he
is also anxious to get copies of all editions of all genetic books that were
used widely in classes or that were important surveys of the state of genetic
knowledge at the time. I sent him a list of my old books that I was about to
throw away and found that he wanted most of them.

I know you will be very busy (and probably irritated) with the task of
moving and disposing of some things, but I beg you not to let your annoyance
result in the irretrievable loss of documentation of your tremendous career
and its importance in the history of genetics.

I assume that all materials you accumulate at Rockefeller will almost
automatically get eventually into the recently created Rockefeller Archives.
For historical purposes, it is most important to attend now to the preservation
of your pre-Rockefeller material. So drop me a line reassuring me that you
will be careful about this and send your materials to the Philosophical
Society which already has a fine start with its collection of genetic materials
and means to concentrate on genetics still further.

With best regards to you and Marguerite from Ruth and me,

As ever,

T. M. Sonneborn
EMS :nla
ne.