May 3, 1958

Dr. John R, Platt
Dept. Physics
University of Chicago
Chicago 37, Illinoie

Dear John!

Thank you for your note and reprints. The point about lumer albedo had
occurred to me, but I was not familiar with your argument about grain seizes.
The whole business is, I am afraid, rather amateurish, but I hope less than
sore of the biological speculations of my physical friends, and someone has
to melt the icea,

or near

Is everything on,the lunar surface in xm equilibrium with the average solar
radiation? I had seme hopes for material lodged in deep crevices to furnish
more historical information,

Did you have any strong reaction to the proposal for autocatalytic increase
in the number of grains (ef, p, 4 enelosed)? We didn't want to elaborate
much further on such a whacky scheme, but the speculative basis for an evolu-
tionary development of the grains which might be formulated in rather Darwinian
terms was one of the most exciting things we ran into,

I'm off on a trip just preceding the conference the parer is intended for;
4f you might have any further coment before May 15 could you write me
c/o Cowie? (Terr, Magn., Carnegis, ¥..sh,)

I am enclosing a slightly fore fanished version, but Covle hasn't been
over it yet, It ineludes the bibliography you asked about,

Yours sincerely,

Joshua Lederberg

PS, Like a great many other people, I'm not a little disturbed about the
direction the space program is taking, The Killian report made it rather

clear that the military and scientific requirements notwithstéddin:, khek

the national objective was to be manned space flight, whether or not this
happened to coincide with a balanced appreciation of this particular branch

of science in our economy, and rerardiess of whether this was the most effective
approach te the collection of selentifie data, etc, Certainly almost all of

the biology, e.¢, at the forthcoming conference, has to do with'putting a man
into space! and practically nothing on what useful function he will serve when
there, or what he's likbby to find, Cowle and I were a little concemmed about
writing an article that might seem to lend more weight to a helter-skelter
program of space research; we hored this might be balanced by the conservational
thome,.