ladies and gentlemen welcome to the

celebration of Joshua Lederberg as with

most of our distinguished speakers if I

tell you all the good things about Alexa

McCray it will take away from her talk

significantly but in summary in some

Alexa did a wonderful job as director a

list of Hill she left many friends and

we are very very glad that she's come

back at present I think she really it's

fair to say left retired from government

in order to look forward to enjoying

Boston and Lexington and up there wise

people at Boston Medical Harvard Medical

School on the county library prevailed

upon her to get back to work it's

probably good for the field and so she's

a lecturer in medicine at the Medical

School and she's a deputy director of

the count way Library which is of course

one of the country's most distinguished

and beautiful so we're very pleased that

you've filling in those slots in Boston

area about this particular project Alexa

did a number of swell things when she

was here personally in leadership roles

for the law library unified medical

language was a major project for her and

for me as well and of course she ended

up initially that the creator of

clinical trials that go but both of

those things we won't talk about today

and the third thing namely profiles in

science we will talk about now initially

she and I wanted to make a new idea for

the way you do history of Medicine

something that was alive and interactive

and could grow and you have constant

access to the papers of documents or

whatever and no one had really done it

and so our test case actually was

regional medical programs

collection.we shows that because it had

already had a 25th anniversary

celebration here at the library there

were many contributors to it certainly

it wasn't in any emergency state that we

had a real deadline so it allowed her

Alexa and the research group that in

that case as with this profile involved

both the list the hill researchers and

history Madison folk and the only

problem was that basically Alexa had to

invent all 100% of the software to

actually do this regional medical

program piece of history

it just was nothing you could go out and

buy so it took a little longer than we

had initially expected but on the other

hand by time the opportunity to receive

the contributions of Josh Lederberg came

along she was really loaded for bear and

really knew how to do it so it right the

first time

by then there was a little bit more

commercial software that you could lay

hands on so I won't say more about that

she's here to tell you Joshua Lederberg

himself of course is one of the great

icons of American biomedicine and a

perfectly wonderful person so you should

understand that when we say giving his

papers it sounds a little passive and

later Berg is not a passive type so

giving doing any project with dr. lader

Berg means email two or three times a

day that's his style and in the

particular case of the later Berg papers

he participated down to the most detail

possible level of annotation and

critiquing our terminology and taxonomy

and approach and testing it and I mean

it was it was wonderful

the price that we paid I guess is worth

it but I always regretted it somewhat

too because the price that we paid is

that he could tell himself that I'm off

the hook for doing an autobiography the

heck with it but somebody else do it

and so he really very consciously

invested that amount of time in helping

to make the contributions than LMB very

very accessible and very very well

described I guess would be a simplest

way to put it so Alexa what about her

well she got a doctoral degree

Georgetown she was on the faculty for a

while she was but I actually first met

her she was on the Thomas J Watson IBM

Research Center at the New York town and

no doubt she is doing a great job and

we're delighted that she decided to come

to National Library of Medicine

but delighted you've come back for this

nice occasion welcome Alexa well I'm

delighted to be back here so thank you

very much done for that nice

introduction so today what I'd like to

do is I'd like to talk to you about

Joshua Lederberg and I'd like to talk to

you about letter Berg as a man of

science sort of I would say the

prototypical man of science so how did

he come to be that way he had a running

start he was born in 1925 he was the son

of V letter Berg and Esther goldenbaum

letter Berg who came from a family of

scholars herself at age seven he had to

write a little essay in school and he

decided that what he was interested in

doing in other words the question is

probably was something like what would

you like to do in the future in your

life well he wanted to discover a few

theories of science like Einstein this

is at the age of seven at age 16 in 1941

he began undergraduate studies at

Columbia and he was also in the Naval

Reserve think about what the time was

this was during World War two so he was

in the Naval Reserve at age 19 he began

medical school at Columbia University

College of Physicians and Surgeons

at age 21 he was a research fellow with

Professor Edward Tatum which was going

to have an incredible effect on his

career at Yale getting the PhD in 1947

and at age 22 he began as an assistant

professor at the University of Wisconsin

now when you do that and you have this

kind of a running start this is what you

can expect at age 33 which is the

telegram that comes in that says the

Carolina Institute has decided to award

this year's Nobel Prize in Physiology or

medicine with 1/2 - well Beadle and

Tatum and so forth and so on and the

other half to you for your discoveries

concerning genetic recombination in the

organization of the genetic material of

bacteria so this is at the age of 33 in

1958 so let's back up a little bit so he

his parents letter Berg's parents

emigrated to New York from Israel in the

early 1920s I already mentioned that his

father was a rabbi and his mother came

from a distinguished series of

rabbinical scholars he was the oldest of

three sons so he was number one he lived

in the Washington Heights area of

Manhattan where as he said later the

whole family became a part of an

efficient and calculated system of

Americanization so they quickly became

Americanized as they came to the United

States he read he was reading everything

in sight at a very early age and was

reading well beyond the reading level of

most of the children of his of his age

group so here's the essay that I have

already mentioned and I've teased him

about this because he got a B+ he got a

B+ okay well you can probably see why

you got a B+ look at that penmanship

just look at that penmanship you

probably should have gotten a b-minus

alone for the penmanship so here it is

what I would like to be I would like to

be a scientist

slightly misspelled of mathematics like

Einstein I would study science and

discover a few theories in science

and it's dated as you can see June 20th

1932 which is when you would have been

seven and you see this his name at the

top of the page

well it's Joshua Solomon first of all

it's slightly misspelled letter Berg and

I found out that Solomon was actually

just an expectation this kid at 7 years

old had an affectation this was not his

middle name

he doesn't happen he doesn't have a

middle name so Joshua Solomon letter

bird at the age of 7 but as we see I

mean he got a B+ so you know he also of

course had a very early interest in

science he was and I this is delightful

and this is a thread throughout his

career he's been a regular patron of

public libraries throughout his life so

he went to the local branch of the New

York Public Library as an adolescent at

13 at his Bar Mitzvah

he received the brand-new book was only

a year old introduction to physiological

chemistry of a minor but it competence

key and it was already at that young age

that he was deciding not to go the

rabbinical route of his ancestors of his

father and of his mother's family and so

on

and of course he had to yet to negotiate

this with his with his father who was

expecting him especially as the oldest

to follow more or less in his footsteps

footsteps so he says here it was my

covenant with my father that a career in

science would be a redeeming surrogate

for the study of the Torah an

alternative approach to enlightenment

and truth and I think that that he

speaks he means that he's it's a it's a

deep statement for him to say that that

this is the approach to enlightenment

and truth and I think he lived his life

that way so now at the age of 16 he had

the opportunity because he was just as

he was just graduating from high school

he had the opportunity to become a young

scholar at the

and Institute Science Laboratory which

drew on a lot of the young people from

the Stuyvesant High School which of

course was a high school in New York a

science high school and was for the

brightest of the bright really here and

the application form asked a number of

questions including what kinds of

courses have you taken since the eighth

grade in in the sciences basically and

here's the answer introductory biology

elementary an analytic chemistry

elementary physics and zoology and I

can't see you all very well but I'd like

to you know wonder if I asked for a show

of hands how many of you had taken all

those courses since the eighth grade or

certainly by by the age of sixteen I was

before myself I certainly didn't take

those that number of courses and that

depth of courses so there he is he's at

the American Institute of Science

Laboratory in 1941 at the age of sixteen

working on the microtome and he's being

you can see he's quite engaged in what

he's doing there so of course there's

certain personal characteristics that go

with this kind of interest and

precocious meanness if you like so

here's a letter from Joshua Lederberg to

a professor frank Stodola who was a

Columbia University into the Department

of in the department of organic

chemistry and basically what he's trying

to do is get out of taking a

prerequisite course I mean that's what

it comes down to so he says I find

myself attracted to the possibilities of

your section 42 c chem course i should

not trouble to write to you except that

i anticipate some technical difficulties

in the manner of satisfaction of

prerequisites last January I was able to

pass the final exam in chem 41 as an

achievement exam on the basis of

personal self instruction well when you

remember you read the physiology of

chemistry at age 13 when my urbanovsky

so I guess he felt that he had the right

to write this kind of a letter but you

can see it takes a certain kind of

attitude about yourself to be able to

write a letter of this sort to an

esteemed professor at the University so

you can see that he made a good

impression on Frank

at all and in spite of this somewhat

impertinent letter

he's now stood Allah is writing him a

letter of reference essentially for the

Naval Reserve and he goes on to say that

he's probably the most brilliant student

that he's ever had and so forth and so

on in his particular interest is biology

and what is more he should be used as an

instructor and not be forced to waste

his time as a student again this is at

the age of eighteen and there he is in

his nice uniform so he was in the Naval

Reserve for several years during this

time period even while he was in school

so the undergraduate years then from 41

to 44 this is his yearbook picture that

you see in the upper upper right hand

corner there

he entered Columbia under the tutelage

of Francis J Bryan so he was he he was

well mentored by Ryan and that will come

up again as we look throughout his life

this is a quote from one of the his

biographers Gilson at Columbia magazine

17 year old Joshua Lederberg crashed

into Ryan's life in 1942 crashed is not

a hyperbole according to Elizabeth

Ryan's Widow you could tell that Joshua

was in the lab because you could hear

the tinkle of breaking glass he

frequently broke whatever he was working

with so there is an intensity of course

in an energy but also a clumsiness that

goes along with being the young person

that he really still was and yet he was

pushing constantly to learn and you can

see that Ryan was very important in

letter Berg's life as an undergraduate

and mentor he says in reflecting on

Francis Ryan in his eulogy in fact above

all it gave me the opportunity to

sharpen my adolescent thinking against

one of the most versatile most generous

minds I would ever encounter and you

know this what he goes on to say next is

in fact the sign of a very good mentor

he rarely instructed me about anything

but would often lead me into an

intellectual trap then challenged me to

find my

way out of it so I had to dig his own

way out of the intellectual trap that he

had been talked into by his very fine

mentor Francis Ryan I wanted to mention

this paper the Avery McCleod McCarty

paper of 1944 this is during the time

that that Joshua Lederberg was still at

Columbia and it was a groundbreaking

paper on identifying DNA as what was

then called the transforming factor in

bacteria and the this this paper was one

might say was the beginning of the

genetic and genomic revolution you might

argue that and in fact we well I'll come

back actually come back to Avery a

little bit later but as he says this

work aroused great interest as a strong

indication that the gene was composed of

DNA it was still controversial whether

bacteria could even be thought of as

having a genetics this was a

controversial issue at the time so in a

bull session Ryan I soon agreed that

would be exciting to try experiments on

the possibility of a similar

transforming effect of DNA in Neurospora

which was the organism that they were

working on a fungus mold that they were

working on at the time so this really

spiked his interest in what was going to

be a lifelong interest in genetics in

particular in bacteria he entered the as

I said medical graduate school he was at

the Columbia University College of

Physicians and Surgeons but at the time

he had the opportunity because Francis

Ryan knew the Tatum was coming back from

California to take a position at Yale

and Ryan thought that it would be

wonderful for Joshua young Joshua to be

able to have the opportunity to study

with Tatum in his lab at Yale so he

requested in this letter to the

associate dean severing house at

Columbia University College of

Physicians and surgery that he be

allowed to take it elec

in the first quarter of his third year

and he wanted to do this research at

Yale with Professor Tatum so he was

granted that that elective and the time

to go to Yale and this is really the

origin of his groundbreaking work and

really the origin of the work for which

he was then later awarded the Nobel

Prize so what happened at that point

then he was there 46 and 47 he was only

supposed to be there for an elective

six-week or eight-week elective and the

collaboration was so good that they kept

asking for extensions and then letter

Berg and Tatum published two important

letters in this area so the first one is

here in nature in 1946 gene

recombination in e.coli analysis of mix

cultures of nutritional mutants has

revealed the presence of new types which

strongly suggests the occurrence of a

sexual process in the bacterium Ecola

these experiments will be reported in

more detail elsewhere and the second

paper was also co-authored by Tatum and

letter Berg this is the gene

recombination in in e.coli in the

Journal of bacteriology in 47 the

conception that bacteria have no sexual

mode of reproduction is widely

entertained this paper will be devoted

to the presentation of evidence from the

occurrence in a bacterium of a process

of gene recombination from which the

existence of a sexual stage may be

inferred so this was very very important

work and in fact Tatum already had a

spot at the conference at Cold Spring

Harbor in that year to report on some

other work or similar work I suppose

what he was doing here but because these

results were so exciting to them and to

the folks at Cold Spring Harbor they

actually gave letter Berg and tied him

another slot on the program to report

this work is what was considered them to

be still also then to be groundbreaking

work so so what the heck I mean here he

did this work he

in medical school he was doing a

research fellowship and they said well

we might as well just give you a PhD for

the work that you've done how many

people here who have PhDs that had come

quite that easy to them but the one

personal obstacle as he points out in

one of his reminiscences is that he had

to pay tuition to Yale they weren't

going to let him off quite that easy

they said that he'd still had to fork

over the dollars for the two years that

he had been there but he didn't have to

write a real dissertation because he had

already published these papers and yeah

because as you know those of you who

have PhDs you need to do defend your

work in front of a committee and so on

well the argument was made that he had

defended this this work in front of an

international internationally renowned

group of people at Cold Spring Harbor

and so he was granted he was granted the

PhD and I mentioned earlier that

libraries have been a quite a theme

throughout Josh letter birds life and

here he says that he went to Woods Hole

in the summer of 1947 because he had to

put a little bit you know I had to wrap

up the dissertation a little bit put

some ribbons around it and so on

but he went to Woods Hole and he spent a

good deal of time at what he called the

magnificent library at the MBL in order

to finish his dissertation there so then

he was recruited to Wisconsin and

remember this is a 22 year old young

person who is just you know it's two

years of medical school has now just the

fresh PhD and it's not that everybody

they are welcomed him with open arms

Alexander brink was very interested in

having him join and faculty because

there was an opening someone had left

and there was an opening and of course

there were some people who wanted well

many people wanted a much more seasoned

investigator to come to the to the

University the part of the problem was

if you like or part of the issue was

that the Department of Genetics is and

was in the call of the College of

Agriculture so one of the comments that

was made and one of why there was some

resistance was this is a city boy he's a

city slicker what

he doing in a college of agriculture

basically was the idea and they just

didn't see that he could make himself at

home in a college of agriculture having

grown up in the streets of Manhattan and

the fact that he was Jewish too probably

was a factor in the thinking of some of

our members and this was an interview

with Alexander brink whom I mentioned

and there were also reports that Letta

Berg was aggressive to an unpleasant

degree well those of you know Josh

Lederberg I can't imagine referring to

him as being aggressive to an unpleasant

degree I can imagine referring to him as

being intense but certainly as I say he

was a much younger man at the time so

brink and another reminiscence says we

were warned that we had better look out

if we had no experience in the

department in lion-taming happily those

fears proved groundless and he brink

also said in one of the other documents

that he was married in 46 when he was at

Yale 2's resume arrestor zimaletto Berg

to whom he was married for 20 years and

he was married to her and she did a fair

amount of that team so he had extremely

productive time at Wisconsin and on the

right you see some samples of his

laboratory notebooks and on the left you

see a couple of examples of his

publications there and he did quite a

lot of work in collaboration with his

wife during those years so he also was

that has been very fond throughout his

career of coining terms and plasmid was

one of those he's coined a number of

others so he says in one of these

articles these discussions have left a

plethora of terms adrift at the risk of

adding to this list I promote I propose

plasmid as a generic term for any extra

chromosomal hereditary determinant and

this was some of the what he had

discovered in doing his work and I

suppose that when you are

you are discovering something new and

there is no name you do you are in the

business of according some of this

terminology but Joshua Lederberg has

always been very interested in language

and so I can see that it gave him great

pleasure to do this kind of thing is to

come up with just the right word for a

particular concept so then we've already

mentioned that he received the Nobel

Prize in 1958 sharing it with Tatum with

whom he worked closely and also a beetle

and Tatum and B Beale each got one

quarter of the Nobel Prize for their

work about gene regulation and then of

course letter Berg got the other half

for his his groundbreaking work in the

genetics of bacteria in particular in

particular their mating behavior oh and

as you know they were they were thought

bacteria were thought to be asexual up

until that point and because Josh

Lederberg received the Nobel Prize at

such an early age he's had many many

opportunities to reminisce about his

career and and various decisions that

he's made and so on and of course he's

been highly sought after as a as a

speaker and to be interviewed and and so

forth and it's interesting what he says

and it's something that you might

imagine he says it's not so appropriate

for people quite so young to receive the

Nobel Prize he says it might be just as

well if you had to be a little bit older

45 or 50 and he says he thinks he might

have spent a few more years in a more

focused way in the laboratory and I

think he's being too hard on himself

here because he's been he continued to

be extremely productive even in spite of

receiving the Nobel Prize at such an

early age so this was in 1958 and here

he is at the Nobel award ceremony you

can see really how young he does look

you can particularly see it when you see

him with the other 1958 Nobel Prize

recipients so to the far right is Larry

Berg himself and to the far left is

beetle and then to his immediate left is

Edward Tatum and then you see the others

in the middle so what happened at that

point was that he had already been in

negotiation with Stanford Stanford was

very interested in having him join their

program they were just starting up a

department of genetics and in fact the

last two years at Wisconsin he was

Joshua Lederberg was the the chair of

the department of genetics at Wisconsin

but he saw the opportunity at Stanford

to come back to his medical roots if you

like recall that he started out wanting

to be a doctor and he didn't finish that

he's like does not have an MD but he has

always been motivated by health concerns

medical concerns and so on so that you

might say science in service of that to

some extent to some extent and so when

you saw the opportunity of joining a and

chairing the Department of Genetics at

Stanford within the Medical School he

saw that as as a great possibility for

him so he was not only a professor of

genetics when you was at Stanford during

the years he almost 20 years 19 years

that he was at Stanford but he was also

a professor of biology and a professor

of computer science and have more to say

about that in a minute to see the

genetics department in the early 1960s

better bird in the back in the middle

row in the in the middle of the back row

and then to the right you see a picture

of the of letter Berg in front of a

chart for the Mariner Mars mission which

it was the study of life beyond Earth

and this became a very important part of

his work at Stan

third is the he had in fact read about

and was very interested in the Sputnik

Sputnik work in the in the late 1950s

and the discussion about sending a man

to to the moon and also exploration of

Mars and so on and was was intrigued by

all of that but actually recognized the

issue that perhaps first of all that if

we send humans into outer space that

humans themselves might contaminate

whatever planet they might be landing on

and his feeling was that Mars you know

the question was an open question is

there life on Mars but he thought if

there was life on Mars it surely was in

the form of microorganisms because only

microorganisms could could succeed and

live and breed in such a hostile

environment hostile environment to life

so to speak so he was concerned on both

sides because he was concerned that

humans might contaminate the planets in

their roughshod way maybe of appearing

there and likewise that brings oil

samples back and so on that we might

bring microorganisms back to earth that

could have a deleterious effect on our

population on the earth itself so he

took that very seriously and as he says

he took he took this seriously and he

thought it was a matter of some urgency

so he with NASA support created and ran

the Stanford instrumentation Research

Laboratory which was goal was originally

to study in a very careful

scientifically based way the samples

that were coming back from Mars and

looking to to analyze those samples

carefully so there he is in his

instrumentation laboratory this actually

led him in a very interesting way to

become immersed in artificial

intelligence in medicine

so you might ask how that happened well

what he recognized very quickly and has

really always throughout his life

recognized is the just the sheer volume

of information that one needs to deal

with in the scientific enterprise and in

particular now when you were looking at

soil samples and trying to understand

what life and life that you might not

even be able to recognize as such and so

forth that you really needed some

computational assistance so he did he it

was quite extraordinary the group that

they put together at Stanford at

Feigenbaum is a chair of the computer

science at Stanford called jurasky a

chemist and Letta Burke himself and then

later on John McCarthy and some of you

some of you know it's very famous in the

computer science world joined the team

or at least was a collaborator and Bruce

Buchanan who some of you know has been

on our Board of Regents and our Board of

scientific counselors all of these folks

were working in some way over those over

that time period

on what came to be known the Dendera

system which was an artificial

intelligence system that was and it says

here for the system for computer

construction enumeration and notation of

organic molecules as tree structures so

the idea was that so much part of the

artificial intelligence problem is that

if you have a lot of data and you know

that you're trying to analyze you have a

lot of in this case trees being built

that is to say a lot of possible answers

to your question and when there is such

a large amount of data you need to find

a way to filter those data and that's

the kind of thing that Dan Gras was

drawing trying to do through its

heuristic rules artificial intelligence

based AI based kinds of rules so that

was an entirely something you might not

have expected for a chairman of a

department of genetics to become

involved in and Josh Lederberg being as

he is and Donna's already alluded to

this very much a hands-on person he

enrolled in an algal class you know he's

there learn

you know computer programming and trying

to understand it from from from that

level so he is credited among others of

course with being among the first to

look at artificial intelligence and

medicine possibilities now what do you

do during his during his time at

Stanford he was busy in lots of

different directions he was still doing

basic research of course in the lab he

was doing AI again as it applied to

microorganisms but he also did this

wonderful thing and that's why I

consider him in many ways for lots of

reasons to be really a public minded

scientist someone who took his

responsibilities as a of course famous

scientist very seriously in getting the

message out to the rest of the world and

not just fellow scientists so he agreed

and was invited to and agreed to write a

regular column it was weekly for a while

I don't believe it was we believed

throughout the whole period a regular

column for The Washington Post called

science and men and here are just some

of the titles that of the the editorials

or articles that he wrote and you can

see didn't she didn't shy away from any

issues germ warfare

chromosomes and crime viruses

engineering viruses for health that were

warfare you know are you doing this

engineering for good purposes or for bad

purposes the legal start of life worlds

and postpone I'll come to that in a

minute is everybody brought into the

core genetic Interfaith intervention as

a way of improving our species are there

bugs on Mars we've already talked about

that inform guinea pigs radiation

debates pollution psychology of

differences between the sexes and what

about those doctors out there so I'll

just give you a flavor of some of them I

thought you might want to know the

answer is - is everybody brought into

the core I think that you'll find that

he doesn't think so

he says that one of the principal themes

of this column has been the rapid

progress of research in molecular

biology remember this is the 60s there

is an off

happening during this time period and

the opportunity this begins to offer for

the diagnosis and cure of inborn

diseases of human development if I

believed if I Josh Lederberg believed

that modern science supports the innate

depravity of man the global warfare is

an inevitable disease of human nature I

would advocate changing that nature by

the most powerful tools at our disposal

I would advocate genetic activism as the

only route to human survival so but

basically it was a way of making making

accessible to the public

the important and sometimes scary about

scientific issues of the day and I'm

going to go through a few of these this

one I found interesting World's End

postponed because this is basically the

issue here is irresponsible journalism

as he puts it so he says a Sydney

University physicist said that said

today that the United States Britain and

Russia are studying the possibility of

using a nuclear rocket to prevent an

asteroid from smashing into Earth so the

asteroid is coming at however many

million miles an hour down to the earth

and we're going to send off a nuclear

rocket to smash it into smithereens I

guess so that it won't destroy earth so

he says I find it hard to believe that

any responsible journalist would have

credited the story unfortunately such

sensationalism goes on all too often in

science news recording and erodes the

confidence of serious-minded scientists

he's speaking to the press so he went

back to the original professor who was

quoted here at Sydney and apparently

this was this was not a comment that he

had made this one is about informed

consent and he had an interesting point

of view here I'm not sure that this ever

went here but as he talks about the

issue of of course clinical trials as we

know them and and also any informed

consent for any kinds of procedures and

research studies that might involve

significant risks and he says the very

expression risk brings to mind insurance

and there's an

instead of and there is an important

step that we could take to rationalize

the participation of human subjects so

he was proposing some kind of insurance

for the risk that you might undergo in a

clinical trial and and believe that ever

went anywhere but an interesting point

of view now he talks about doctors and

he says that much disease now is yatra

genic actually a backwash of excessive

an imperceptible use of drugs many of my

colleagues wonder then whether we do not

have too many physicians too busy and

preoccupied to evaluate the churning

battery of drugs thrust with their

attention via the glossy trade journals

so he goes after the pharmaceutical

company there and then this somewhat

controversial topic genetic intervention

he says some of the more panicky

reactions to genetic engineering and

their characterization as tampering are

no doubt very closely akin to the

anxiety and derision that greeted

Darwin's formulation of man's evolution

from a plight forerunners how would an

ape profits relatives have greeted his

predictions about the upsets their

species would soon experience great so

and this one is engineering viruses for

health or warfare he says that he really

need this is really he was one of the

first people to recognize the danger of

biological warfare and actually became

quite involved in the subsequent years

at the national level in addressing

addressing these issues and he says

himself who he's invited in nineteen

seventy and for several years he served

on a disarm in the arms control arena

but he was invited to this conference in

nineteen seventy on questions of

biological warfare and he says in his

own the beginnings of an autobiography

that he started in nineteen eighty eight

I believe that he had various notes

throughout the years about his life but

he says that that this work consumed as

much time as any of the other many many

other things

that he did in the public arena because

he saw it was so important to address

this carefully so then he said goodbye

to Stanford and this is Edie Feigenbaum

email is not already mentioned while

Josh was a prolific email writer also a

correspondent in actually paper but once

he had access to email that's what he

was doing so this is a goodbye tribute

from Edie Feigenbaum to letter Berg when

he was leaving Stanford Josh is not only

one of the world's great scientists but

also one of its great science statesmen

those of us who shared project

management responsibilities with him

were in awe of the unerring accuracy

with which he was able to affect clean

cuts to thickets of political financial

and institutional complexities to lead

us through to desired goals so not only

was he a scientist in the laboratory but

he was also someone who was able to

navigate the political waters of

academia and the government and so on

and all the various government

committees that he served on so he was

president of rockefeller from 1978 so as

I say almost almost 20 years 19 years at

Stanford and 12 years as president of

Rockefeller University in New York and

in 1990 he retired from there and it's

now a professor emeritus at Rockefeller

University so there he is I believe in

his office I'm not sure rockefeller so I

wanted to give you a flavour this is a

CV for his CV from 1998 I want to just

give you a flavor for the public

committees the National Committee's on

which Joshua Lederberg served throughout

his career so you know as early as the

1919 50s when he was really still very

very young he was serving on the

president's science advisory in 1958 for

20 years he served on the National

Academy of Sciences Committee on space

biology on a NASA for many years on a

NASA moon planetary missions board the

Charles Babbage Institute the u.s.

defense Science Board trustee of the

Medical School in Tel Aviv president's

cancer panel toxicology Board of

Directors chemical industry and the

chair of the DNA advisory board at the

FBI from 95 to 98 and this was looking

this was really forensic DNA and he was

looking at that and making some we're

together with colleagues making some

very good progress on the accuracy of

DNA and identifying or better said and

ruling out that someone was a criminal

he was a prolific correspondent I've

already mentioned that this is just a

sample it's just over more than 20 years

of correspondence between letter Berg

and and Tatum with whom he worked in his

very early career as a youngster really

at Yale and these are just you know

letters back and forth over that long

period just some titles and here I just

thought I'd let you to take a look for a

minute at the folks with whom he

corresponded so you'll see there are

other Nobel laureates anfinsen

Axelrod Beetle Crick Don Frederickson he

actually was was quite vocal in

discussions with Don Frederickson when

Don Fredersen with director of NIH and

was working on the Ratana DNA DNA issues

and there's some letters there he was

active politically in the sense that he

correspondent with quite a few senators

Congress people and so on he he was I

think a consultant to Ann Landers in the

sense that she would ask for his opinion

and also to Ann Landers sister at the

end of the second column abigail Dear

Abby development then van Buren Salvador

Luria another laureate Ernst Mayr

actually was at Harvard and tried very

hard to recruit Josh Lederberg to her

but didn't happen didn't happen so mayor

was was was disappointed in that Mac

McCarty I've already mentioned he was

one of the three author's

Avery McCleod and McCarty on that early

paper on on DNA and Barbara McClintock

as you know Nobel laureate for work in

in corn corn genetics Victor McKusick

the father of Mendelian inheritance and

man the book and the online Mendelian

inheritance and then and you could see

others like the princess Paola Belgium

who then became queen linus pauling carl

sagan he actually did some work with

carl sagan on the whole question of

space exploration and what then became

coined as the term that they coined was

that the jaw flutter Burgoyne was

exobiology so this whole realm study

about being called exobiology frets and

was done shillelagh you all know Fred

Soper who was the one of the first was

the first head of the Pan American

Health Organization wasn't called that

at the time but we did a lot of work

with organisms and so on in South

America and other places Luther Terry

who of course was in Surgeon General who

wrote the first documents surgeon

general's report on smoking and Jim

Watson that's just a sample that's

really just a sample I just pulled out

names that I thought many of you would

recognize also I thought it would be

interesting for you to know that he

corresponded with Eugene Garfield so

those of you who are information

scientists know well and maybe others of

you new to the web of science which

actually was is now the web version of

the ISI Citation Index and Eugene

Garfield had a lot of trouble selling

the idea so to speak so he got a

handwritten note which you can see on

the right there under the web of science

logo there since since you've heard this

is from letter Berg to Garfield since

you first published your scheme for a

Citation Index in science about four

years ago I've been thinking very

seriously about it and must

I am completely sold so Eugene Garfield

writes back and says I hope you wouldn't

be embarrassed by a show of emotion but

your memo almost brought tears to my

eyes it then seemed that over six years

of trying to sell the idea of citation

indexes had not been completely in vain

and of course again it's revealed Josh

Lederberg interest in the primary

literature in literature itself and he

has made many statements throughout the

years about the how great it would be

and what advances we would have if we

could mine that what we take today call

mine the literature to do knowledge

discovery if you like in the literature

so he's been quite committed to this

throughout his life being being the

scientist that he is and it goes back to

his his love of libraries and he was in

fact on the board of the the Library of

Congress he was on our Board of Regents

at the National Library of Medicine

he's chaired or at least has been on the

board of the PubMed Central Committee so

he's been quite supportive of this

notion of making scientific information

readily easily available so I thought

that I might talk a little bit about

science at science why be a scientist

and there is a volume called reflections

on scientific biography published and

edited by letter bird in 1990 and what

he did is he asked all the various

scientists who are reflecting on this

the basic question why do science well

and here were some of the answers this

was a summary of some of the answers

curiosity the exercise of intellect and

aesthetic taste virtuosity the prestige

and so he's honest about that the

prestige and self-satisfaction that a

scientist derives from the practice of

extraordinary skill power influence and

vanity the fruits of success

illumination compulsion approaching the

religious associated with peak discovery

and I think that's right I think that if

you're fully immersed in what you are

doing you become somewhat fanatical

about it and service in reaching others

minds

generating useful knowledge so I thought

we might take a minute to just listen if

I can make it work to letter burg

himself scientists have to be schizoid

in some way they have to be able to

sustain some contradictions in their

personality and the way they view things

I've already mentioned one of them in

order to get you have to give away I

have a very clear sense you you want to

be competitive and generous at the same

time which is self as an individual not

only satisfy your own ego but in order

to have the resources and capability of

doing for the scientific work and yet

you recognize you're part of the

community and an even deeper level and a

little closer to the cognitive realm the

effective scientist the really creative

one is the person who one minute can be

fantasizing with no restraints imagining

all kinds of things blue sky and the

next can be his/her own harshest self

critic in say look this is what reality

is really like a B C D and G are not

going to work well maybe have survived

and that's worth considering but to be

able to have a lot of fluency in

scanning a wide range of fantastic

notions things that never been done

before which probably aren't going to

work and give them a little bit of

attention and then have a critical

regarding how to discard them if there's

any essential ingredient to scientific

Timothy I think that's where so I

thought I might then end with profiles

and science and there's only one slide

here but I did want to let you know that

all of the documents and all of the

comments that I've made to you with the

exception of a few plots personal

comments and having known and knowing

Joshua Lederberg have all come from the

profiles and science site and the the

finding aid this is a quote from the

finding aid which is a prize-winning

finding aid I should add says the Joshua

Lederberg collection comprises 180 2.75

linear feet of Correspondence reports

research material published writings

photographs and so forth chronicling the

research and public service of Joshua

Lederberg those of you who are not

archivist don't know what this means 180

2.75 linear feet of Correspondence and

other documents those of you who are

might be gasping this is a lot of

documents and Josh Lederberg saved

everything you can see that a lot of the

correspondence that I was talking about

and so on we have carbon copies of that

correspondence he kept everything he

kept all of the documents and so on and

he was himself I would say not just a

packrat he didn't just put things in

boxes and shove them in a corner he

actually was a little bit of a librarian

himself a little bit of an archivist

himself so he organized things in

certain ways and made them made the job

even though it was a very big job for

our archivists and librarians and

computer scientists here at NLM it was a

big job for them but he did make it

somewhat easier and we thank him for

that and I am delighted to have had the

opportunity to talk to you about Joshua

Lederberg thank you very much

[Applause]

it's no lecture we'll take a question or

two I guess we could also take some

additions if any of you want to add your

own observation

Josh would be very proud of you Alexa he

was a a Mazda individual real genius but

medical students and normal students

found him not as attractive nor as

highly talented as a lecturer I think

one of the amazing things about Josh

Lederberg was that after he dropped out

a dropout medical student from the

Columbia and he went back and went to

Tatum and did his Nobel Prize work and

then he he went to Wisconsin which was a

powerhouse in genetics it's a land-grant

school and Hans Rees and James Crowe and

to leave the West that was alright but

even more interesting was that he left

Wisconsin to go to Stanford which was a

nothing medical school at that time and

how they attracted Arthur Kornberg and

Henry Kaplan and Josh Lederberg in their

basic science department and then later

course went into heart transplant with

Norman Shumway but Stanford was with the

San Francisco wasn't a great medical

school that only when it moved back to

Stanford and he took on that new

challenge and then of course after they

had a physicist as president of the

National Academy sites they went back to

a biologist and it became president

about that I think the only other thing

that I think is interesting he just

didn't do the work bacterial conjugation

as a young student that gave him a Nobel

Prize but he was productive in many

fields transduction with Norton Synder

was one of the basic mechanisms of

biology and he went all the way to

Australia and worked with Gus nozzle and

that paper shows that one cell produces

one antibody so he was in immunology he

was in genetics he was in the beginning

of molecular biology although his stuff

pretty much too phage and bacteria but

he's an extraordinary individual and

you did a wonderful job okay any further

did any of you hear of pop contact oh I

know in history of Medicine you surely

must have a contact with Joshua cause he

visited here frequently any remarks I

wanted ladies please I only want to

thank Alexa for doing such a beautiful

job of explaining the man

as well as the work and I think she gave

us a lovely overview of the profiles and

science site and I hope that those are

interested will make their own

explorations of the site as they have

the time Thank You Alexis

probably an infinite number of

reminiscences but I would I'm thinking

I'm remembering right now the very first

time I met dr. lader Berg was that a

Markel meeting at the Yosemite Lodge

outside of San Francisco a lovely

beautiful sunny day and he was of course

one of the distinguished faculty but as

often happens the most distinguished

people get kind of forgotten and

everybody goes about pouring coffee and

chattering so I saw him sitting alone at

a table and the son and I thought yes I

think I apologized but said I thought he

needed to be disturbed anyway and I

asked what what were you actually

thinking about before I came along and

interrupted your your Sonny coffee and

he said well I have in mind a chemical

molecule and I'm trying to figure out

what would be the next logical chemical

molecule and that was the beginning of

dendrimer I was by what logic will you

find your way through this infinitely

bushy decision tree so I found him I

mean he's always the smartest guy in the

room no doubt about that

but he was self-propelled and he

followed these curious but important

questions one little parting of

reminiscence I actually wasn't present

for this one but I've heard

from people at Stanford when he finally

kind of became a familiar faculty person

and so therefore got drafted under the

inevitable curriculum committee so any

of you who've you know live life on a

curriculum committee know that it's

almost endless and in medical schools

one of the crime topics is called the

core curriculum and apparently this one

dragged on for really a very very long

time and finally I guess somebody asked

Josh's opinion and he wrote up he walked

up the blackboard and he wrote left

core equals zero and that's the way the

vote went okay any parting comments

please I just we just like to mention I

had the pleasure of having interviewed

dr. letter work and I was struck by his

understanding of the responsibilities

that went with winning the Nobel Prize

especially winning it at such a young

age in that as one of the things that he

commented on he said once he had won the

Nobel he had from that point on be very

careful about what he said in public

because people take what you say very

seriously he said then you can't just be

flip about anything now that was hit

that understanding at such a young age

and carrying through his life and having

been a celebrity as it was were for such

a long time yeah he was very responsible

for certain sir as a history and I have

been a big fan of pop profiles in

science so because you put together

features documents and introductions

it's wonderful our source of further

research

I'm just interesting now you know having

spent so much time and energy on years

on the Joshua our website and and that

gathering lots of information about him

and are you not interested in writing a

biography of him

and then if are you just mind for thee

for all the various collections that are

there in fact these are the primary

materials and you can it's just as I did

historian denoting these materials and

be able to get the kind of identical

information you might like and one of

the things that in the profile the

science project that we've always been

interested in doing but having that

really done is to create a variety of

educational materials from the profile

site as well because an underlying

motive that I actually haven't talked

about motivation for profiles and

science is to get across to young people

of all ages the the sheer excitement of

doing science and to let people know

that scientists are people too they have

their lives they have their frustrations

they have their political waters that

they have to navigate and so on and yet

it is extremely rewarding when to spend

the life and so we believe in that

like the research students in many many

ways and clearly the perhaps people

writing an additional by noting

biographical material and John mentioned

early on that once and didn't actually

say one other thing which is the Josh

Lederberg when he separately would be

glad to donate his famous to a since we

were going to be digitizing them

he said well as soon as you digitize

them I'll give you twelve boxes you

digitized I was like in the next role

and so on

just throwing the papers away for the

papers away but but he was so confident

in that and that what we then did reason

he was confident was that he in fact

used the collection himself and we gave

him the capability of annotating the

materials there so the original

materials in there but in many cases

there are some annotations there aren't

as many as we would like because we like

him to continue to work on it but so

we'll see but that is that that we made

it entirely interact with kind of

assists and said sir I just wanted to

thank you for a wonderful feeling that I

had learning more about Joshua Lederberg

I went to Stanford Medical School in its

first years at Palo Alto and learning

more about the story I learned more

about how my scientific mind was shaped

and it was frankly overwhelming to be

almost bashed by people like Joshua

Lederberg and other people that he

courted the kornberg's Linus Pauling's

and all of that and something else that

I just would like to contribute it was

that ultimately it came out to be in

this no curriculum business it was a

pass/fail Medical School for which I was

very grateful but because it was so

overwhelming and I am struck now

reflecting on this on the incredible

decency and I would even go as far as to

says the wisdom of the the people who

were there realizing that something

fabulous could happen and that their

responsibility was to create

Foreman where where that excitement

could take hold that I just want to

thank you for helping me to relive that

a little bit

thanks for saying it okay I have a

little comment I'm sorry to push the red

button yeah I did okay and I was when

little bird came to Stanford I was a

pediatric resident and at the same time

the pediatrician also famousy chairman

and as kids they had been in the same

kindergarten and they said that all

through their lives they have been

competing one against the other except

that Lederberg was always ahead but one

of the entrance a few years later in

Pediatrics who married bled over

afterwards and murdery told me that she

asked him once how can you be so patient

sometimes when you are in a group of

people that know that everybody is

discussing things so slowly and he said

well I learn from very young age that my

mind was going too fast so I could go to

a certain point I knew how long it would

take them to reach me there so I could

turn off sleep of something else and go

a little bit further and so on and keep

on so in a way it matches what you said

about his thinking when he was sitting

by himself

so anyway right so that was an

interesting part of living thank you

okay it's wrap up thanks for being here

[Applause]

you