Corals a COMITATO NAZIONALE ROMA, oo cccccecceecceeeeeeeeeeeee PER LE RICERCHE NUCLEARI relegate, NUCLEARE ROMA Telefoni: 478.551-2-3-4-5 / 460.900 Dear Joshua, Den-19,1959 This letter of mine is long overdue. But the last weeks I have been burdened with sm many evdaBsk&xk“k% and duties, and I have awaited a better time for writing you ,also in view of beins thus able to give yoy a more objective account of the events.I am now between two cmontitee eetings and heve had the first relaxed day since months,and s>: feel the time has come to write you. By far the worst event of the lest months has been the outcone of the Parma competition. As I may have told you,we had technically lost the elections,which had taken place in June,because the comrittee members whon we hoped would be elected by the body of professors of the Faculty of Scicnce for the Genetics competition were not all elected;in particular Berigozzi had not enough votes,while i-cntalenti and Schreiber managad 9 Shhugh the trio of committeee members which compéted with our champions : Jucci,Chiarugi(botenist at Florence) and Stefanelli(embryologist,Rome) were elected.It was not clear at the beginning,nor indeed,to the very end whet their real intentions WOLEC, except that Jucci would champion his own pupils: Friz2i,Milani,lanunta,and H6hiarugi would bring forth his own,namely Battagliavive “fosition of Stefanel- li was somewhat uncertain,although he declared repeatedly that he had no dies rect interests(nor indeed had he any pupils among the candidates)and thet he was only interested in supporting the "naturalists" among the candidates,na- mely Frizzi and Battagliea,but he would heve recognized to me the place of ho- nour(what honour!). Things being as they were,the only hope for obtaining the neces- sary majority in the committee was to sacrifice one of the eldest geneticists who among the candidefes secmed fittest for the trio of "winners"(that LS, Ruggero,Gjovanni and myself). The competition having been asked by Parme Uni- versity it seemed clear that the one to be sacrificed would not be me,and there was some disagreement between Schreiber and Montalenti whether it whould be Giovanni or Rugsero to be sacrificed.However it was clear that one of the three winning pleees should have been offered either to Jycci for,say,Prizzi, or to Chiarugi for Battaglio . Prizzi being a more satisfact ry candidate than Battaglia,the choice was made for him,and Schreiber had apparently succeeded in getting Jucci to our side,and got promise from him that we would be savi- sfied with the seccnd plage for Prizgzi,and would consider voting for Giovanni as third.Stefanelli had/to" some extent been convinced that this would have been a fair outcome. / The committee worked for about seven days ewanining the/thir- teen candidates,and everything went almost smoothly ,;but the real verdict Mar given by the vote at the end. Oply i ontalenti and Schreiber woted for me at the first place,while the other three voted for Fri-zi,who was therefore elec- ted.Montalenti voted Cepnellini as second, Schreiber ingisted again on ny na- me,but Battaglia got the second place.Eventually all agreed on my name es the @ COMITATO NAZIONALE ROMA. PER LE RICERCHE NUCLEARI relegaie, NUCLEARE ROMA on Telefoni: 478.551-2-3-4-5 / 460.900 a third. Thus,Ruggero and Giovanni will have to wait for another competition(but where or when?).There may be one of Medical Genetics for Rugg:ro,but it is not clear whether W#it will »lease Gedda or not to heve Rugero along whth him in the trio of winners.For Giovantl the situatbon is gloomiey,except that at least in the nex€ covpetition of Genetics Buzzati can get into the cor ite tee,if he is electedywhile he could not get into this one for nepotism rules. As far as IT am concerned, I have been meanwhile n°minated by Parma vUniver- sity but the nomination is not valid until the flirst and second have been nominated elsewhere.This must heppen within two years, otherwise the first or second,if still not nominated, may be imposed to Parna,and those who have faund meanwhile no chairs mayxkayvextexwatr: will have to wait until the next competition,or go to hell. Needless to say,we heve ell been depressed and irritated by the cutcome. I am sure the feudal outlook of all this will seem ‘neomprenehnsible to you, or at least ridiculous. But the major rule of University co:-petitions here is that examiners consider it theit duty and right to struggle for their own vupils,(which are,clearly,an extension of their ego) .There is however one tbher tradition,which in the present case was violated:namely,that the person responsible for having the coipetition called by a University gets the prize of the first place ,even if ke it does not belong to him and in fact,usually rover disregard of his own merits and demerite.It is not clear wheth r in the present case I was degrated to the third place merely for the pleasure of displeasing me or us,or for sincere belief that the others were better than me, or merely as a maneouvre to please Jucci and thus to get rid of any serious competitor for Battaglia. Also,the position of Ssefa- nelli is not clear in all this,but the reason why he accepted to electi-neer aS @ prospective comuittee member,and change his former opinions on myself mugkxke are likely to be the prespects of promotionm,or a prize (5 to 20 million liras) by the Academ; of the Lineei,ware Chisrugi is powerful. The damage is that,epart from seriously hampering my own position,and even more so that of 2ussero and Giovanni, at least one of the winners, Battaglia (not to be confused with another Battaglia,Bruno, a dobzhans ite) is but a mediocre botanist with a very popr reputation from the hu.an point of view.Frizzi is not too bed,except that his knoledge of Genetics is ravher limited and outfashioned,and that if he hes learned from his master the hypno-= crisy and trickery which he hes shown in the present case,the field of genetics in Italy will have to deal with another sonofabitch. I hepe I am not shocking you too much with all this,but it is a much more moderate sample of what I would have written cne or two weeks ago.The competition was ended on Dec.1 . Fortunately,this was the only really disgreceful event in the last months. I have partisliy consoled tiyself with selling s-me shares wxtk which went uD considerably meanwhile,and buying myself the pretticst gar(to my tastes and COMITATO NAZIONALE ROMA PER LE RICERCHE NUCLEARI AREER Telegrafo; NUCLEARE ROMA $ Telefoni: 478.551-2-3-4-5 { 460,900 needs)car on the Italian market: a Fyat 2100 station wagon.It is the only car which is still within the (relatively) cheep range and can take all the fambly.It is an absolute beauty,and even if sort of inaéeguate for the average scientist,xaxgi hee given me immeasurable pleasure during the 70 kilometers which I have sofar travelled with it. Needless to say: I was very pleased that,on the Italian side,no @Bf- xinusx ficulty at all has been made for your addition to cur group.Ag to the American side I think everything will be as smooth,although there may be some delay in getting their final ,end written word because of their ore- gent troubles with the “merican Senate .As Giovanni wrote you at length about it, I will not insist on it,but trust sn seeing you here in January + We might come to Nice ,but we expect exactly on those days an important visit ( American fund ak inistrator) and the time necessary to us to travel by car to Nice may make it dangerous because it may foree us to :iss this visit.One the other hand,lice has good air connections with lilan and you may get your return fore from here as well,or better than from Nice.Or you may first land here from the States,except of course if you fly jet ,in whi ch case a stopover will be necessary,as I do..'t believe jets can land in Milan(but I may be wrong). I think I would like to spend the summer in Stanford,as planned,and hope you are still of the same idea. We might diseuss details ig Nice. am not yet aware of the dates of the UNO and WHO symposium on epidemiolo- gical genetics which IT want to attend,but am writing now to get information on this point,whtth shculd have been settled by now.They had a change of dates in their mind.If it happendd to break my visit,rather than delay its beginning(as was lixely at Siest)I will see what I can do with raising funds for the extra journey. I am looking forward to seeing you soon. And would like to ask you 8 favour. You may remamber that one of the last experiments I made when in Madison was on a "double mode of entry".I do not have here any notes,and