The Joshua Lederberg Papers

Title:

Letter from Francis J. Ryan to Joshua Lederberg

Description:

Item is handwritten.

Number of Image Pages:

4 (304,472 Bytes)

Date:

1945-08-17 (August 17, 1945)

Creator:

Ryan, Francis J.

Recipient:

Lederberg, Joshua

Rights:

Reproduced with permission of Elizabeth Ryan.

Exhibit Category:

The Development of Bacterial Genetics

Relation:

Lederberg Grouping: Correspondence A

Box Number: 6

Folder Number: 53

Unique Identifier:

BBGAAB

Accession Number:

Document Type:

Letters (correspondence)

Language:

English

Format:

application/pdf

image/tif

Series: Correspondence, 1935-2002

SubSeries: 1925-1947

Folder: Ryan, Francis J.

Transcript:

8/17/45

Dear Josh,

The extreme delay in my reply to your courtesy is due to the hectic and enjoyable circumstances under which our vacation is being taken. When we arrived I had a bad cold and naturally needed lots of sunshine and walking. I had been entered in the MBL tennis tourament [sic] before my arrival and thus far have played into the mens [sic] singles semi-finals, the mens [sic] double's [sic] finals and been eliminated from the mixed doubles after a lot of fun. Then there were striped bass to be caught, canoes to

[END PAGE ONE]

[BEGIN PAGE TWO]

be patched and used, deer to be observed on the islands, people to see, walks to be taken, liquor to be drunk and lots of good eating, poker to be played and a tiny bit of reading to be done. My cold has not completely gone.

The larger events of the past two weeks have left us with just a slight awe at the prospect of coming back to live in a great city

With regard to your questions:

1. I don't think our salt effect would interfere with any identification of 5531. Go ahead.

2. Your percent germination should be close to 100 to make for clear cut

[END PAGE TWO]

[BEGIN PAGE THREE]

interpretations. Time and temp will probably have to be varied. It may be important to make your crosses against protoperithecia in order to examine the possibility of a cytoplasmic inheritance which may account for the poor recovery of mutant types in your adapted crosses.

Another rank idea is to make crosses of 1633 x 5531 on corn meal agar and pant and PABA. Maybe the spore maturation requires more of these than corn meal agar supplies.

Bernie and Ruth Amster just stopped in. They arrived last night and leave this morning.

[END PAGE THREE]

[BEGIN PAGE FOUR]

Many people have visited that way -- Al Bliss for example from Albany.

Lillian hasn't time to think about the lab. She is learning to canoe, play tennis and make water colors.

Thanks Josh for the densitometer readings. They duplicate our previous findings.

Sincerely,

Francis

Metadata Last Modified Date:

2007-01-11

Annotation by Joshua Lederberg:

KW:  From MBL, Woods Hole; enjoying tennis and good life;
"larger events" --  V-J day.; some detailked discussion of research
on Neurospora --  cf. P-1; Bernie Amster; Al Bliss; Lillian
Schneider [Wainright]; 

jl 2/12/99

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