STANFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE
             STANFORD MEDICAL CENTER
           PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA 94304

DEPARTMENT OF GENETICS

Dear Cy

Area Code 415
321-1200

Sept. 13 1972

I don't know whether there is much hope that relevant papers can still be
found -- if that much was saved the job of selection might be hopeless; but
may I nevertheless ask your help in surveying the files of your department
for material that might bear on the history of genetic-recombination in bac-
teria.

This was provoked by the piece by Wyatt in Nature, which has already started
to consolidate some myths; and I am chagrinned by having only a few fragments
to tdck up my sometimes hazy recollections.  I have the lab noteboobs, but
they convey very little of the intellectual atmosphere that motivated various
experiments.

  Some of the general issues are outlined on the attached.  In particular,
department files may have some details like

dates of seminars concerning Avery, DNA etc esp. in 1945
correspondence or file data on me as a student or an employe 1943-45

I think that Franz Schrader was then chairman; other figures would have been
Ryan (of course), Pollitzer, Dobzhansky, Barth.  Harriett Taylor (Ephrussi)
must have played a central role in communicating between Rockefeller and Co-
lumbia, but I think she did not finish her Ph,D. (on the kinetics of yeast
growth) until May or June 1945; nevertheless I think she may have been already
deeply interested in transformation even by then.  My experiments with Francis
(on "transforming" Neurospora)began in June, and in July I had outlined some
protocols for bacterial sex.

For your own interest I will enclose copies of a few archival items. Anything
you can lead me to would be received with gratitude and interest.

Yours

   P.S.  Wyatt does have a point-- the skepticism with which "premature" mole-
cular biologists were greeted in a Zoology Dept.  Francis used to joke that
Neurospoaa could grow (4 mm/hr) faster than some animals could run, and that
only this maintained his reputation in the dept.  But I recall anything but
lack of awareness about Avery. I felt the issue was more, what do bacteria
and their God-knows-what genetic systems have to do with red organisms?,  I in-
tend to be writing in some more detail about this.

  LT. J. P. KENNEDY, JR. LABORATORIES FOR MOLECULAR MEDICIXE, DEDICATED TO RESEARCH IN MENTAL RETARDATION

MOLECULAR BIOLOGY              HEREDITY              NEUROBIOLOGY            DEVELOPMENTAL MEDICINE