@D.. TE

Prof. I.Bernard Cohen
5 Stella Road
Belmont MA 02178
E~mail IBCohen@fas.Harvard.edu
1995 April 23
Dear Dr. Lederberg:

When we met briefly at Columbia during the Bush-"Science the
Endless Frontier" celebrations, I mentioned that I had just come
across a letter which I had written to you some time ago in
response to a request of yours. For some unaccountable reason, as
I then explained, it had been put aside with some research papers
and had just come to light.

When I got home from the Columbia meetings, I put the response to
your letter in my outgoing box (so I thought) to be put into an
envelope and mailed to you prontissimo. I regret to say that by
error it (and some other documents) were filed rather than mailed
and I have just come upon it in going though my files.

I hope the information may still be of some use to you. The letter
is itself now obsolete because, as I have learned from Roy Porter,
he has already made contact with you and you have been of great
help in that enterprise.

I do apologize for this double delay. Our friend Benjamin Franklin
once wrote, under somewhat similar circumstances, that "it is never
too late to mend" and I trust sincerely that in this case it is not
"too late" and that you will not think of me as negligent in my
correspondence or not caring. I must confess that it seems beyond
all reason that this should have happened twice--but ........

I do hope to make contact with you later in the year when I
undertake to write up some research and thinking about scientific
discovery. In particular I should like to follow up on some ideas
I read in a reprint you sent me, written (as I recall) in
collaboration with Harriet Zuckerman. Toward that end, do you have
handy a list of your publications analyzing either your own
research or the research of others? That would be very helpful to
me to prepare myself for an eventual discussion with you.

Once again, my Sincere regrets at this double delay.
Sincerely yours, B
I.Bern Cohen

Victor S. Thomas Professor (emeritus) of the
History of Science, Harvard University