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Joshua Lederberg (b. 1925) is exceptional even among the select
and illustrious group of Nobel prize recipients. More than most of his
peers, he has combined pioneering research--in genetics, molecular
biology, and computer science--with concern for public issues, especially
health care policy, environmental protection, science education, and arms
control. This Exhibit highlights how one outstanding scientist has
bridged the divide between science, society, and politics during the second
half of the twentieth century
Unless noted otherwise, items in this exhibit are drawn from the Joshua
Lederberg papers,donated by Dr. Lederberg to the National Library of Medicine
in 1998. The Library is publishing a comprehensive selection of the Lederberg
papers on its Profiles in Science.
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Joshua Lederberg using a microtome
at the American Institute, 1941.
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While a high school student in Manhattan, Lederberg participated in the
American Institute, a research facility for gifted youths in the sciences
that had grown out of the 1939 New York World Fair. The Institute
provided Lederberg with laboratory space and equipment such as
a microtome, a device used for cutting thin slices of tissue for
microscopical examination.
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Photograph of the outside of the Jaffa Gate,
Jerusalem, 1910. Published in Eli Schiller, ed., The Heritage of
the Holy Land: Illustrated Periodical of the Landscapes of the
Holy Land, vol. 1 (December 1982), p. 4.
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The photography store to the right of the Jaffa gate, with the name
Lederberg on the store sign (see vignette below),
belonged to Chaim L. Lederberg, Joshua Lederberg's grandfather. Lederberg's
parents emigrated from the British protectorate of Palestine to
the United States in 1924.
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Joshua Lederberg, "What I would like to Be"
essay, 1932. Original in the possession of
Joshua Lederberg.
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Solomon, the middle name Lederberg gave himself as author
of this essay, is not his true middle name, but a youthful affectation.
Note the grade he received for the essay, a B+.
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Brass tube, monocular light microscope, ca. 1930.
In the possession of Joshua Lederberg.
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Lederberg used this microscope while a student
at Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan between 1938 and 1941.
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Joshua Lederberg in a U.S. Naval Reserve Uniform,
October 1943.
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While an undergraduate at Columbia University during World War II,
Lederberg enrolled in the Naval Reserve's V-12 program, an expedited
curriculum for training naval physicians. Lederberg never completed
his M.D., instead changing after the war to a Ph.D. and a career in
biomedical research.
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Lederberg to John Henry Edman August 3, 1945.
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Unlike Edman, a fellow graduate of Stuyvesant High School and
close friend, Lederberg served stateside during World War II, at
St. Albans Naval Hospital on Long Island.
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The second paragraph of the letter reads in part:
"We're well into the second year of Med School now, and it's no cinch
to sit, awake, in those hot, unaired, dark rooms while some old geezer
talks on and on and on about measles or Tuberculosis. Medicine is spoon
fed; [. . .] it isn't much of a science, not so much that it doesn't use
scientific techniques as that it has a very narrow approach. Cure the
patient, and as a result, probably less patients are cured in the long
run. I don't like it, and probably will not practice very long after
I get out. Instead, I've finally gotten myself deeply involved in some
fundamental research, and ambitions, and people are melting out of my
world, which is the way I have always pretended that I wanted it to be.
I haven't made any new friends, since you guys, and I know damn well
that even that can never be the same again . . . That's my price for
having sat out the war. [. . .] the laboratory is more than just a dull
place where you wash test tubes. There, and not on the dance floor, drill
field, or battleground, I'm at my best [. . .]" |
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