November 8, 1974

Dr. William F. Raub

ah

Chief

Biotechnology Resources Branch
Division of Research Resources
National Institutes of Health
Bethesda, Maryland 20014

Dear Bill,

LI very much appreciate your letter of October 25th and I have
to correct your letter in only one respect. Your contributions in the
Biotechnology Resources Branch have operated not on a small way but on
a very large onel

My main purpose is, of course, to wish you the very best in your
new position which I am sure will have enormous challenges, given the
ripeness of all sorts of new approaches to compensating for partial and
complete loss of vision. In fact, we have a new research fellow in our
department who spends much of his time doing statistical work that is
computer oriented and I have been wondering whether we might not try to set
up some kind of demonstration program to prove out devices that might facilitate
his own interaction with the SUMEX system. Any thoughts that vou might develop
along these lines would be of great interest to us.

I cannot refrain from adding just one other note: namely that as might
be illustrated by Sorsby's well known work clinical genetics had one of its
firmest starts in ophthalmology but this has been somewhat left behind with
all of the recent push in other directions that has tended to emphasize
pediatrics, chromosome disease, etc. There are still lots of problems in
this general area that quickly span the most basic and the most practical
research interests: I need hardly mention more than the word retinoblastoma
to illustrate what I mean. I hope you will have an opportunity to sustain
lively attention to these points of view in your new role.

Again, with all our very best wishes to you,

Sincerely yours,

Joshua Lederberg

~ Principal Investigator
co Af iar
4
JL/rr