From the Department of Genetics

Leeds
LS2 9JT   t q;,.ud
Telephone 3175 1

Professor J. R.S.Fincham. Sc.D., F.R.S.

7 A*73

Dear Dr. McClintock,

  Imeant to reply some time ago to your letter of May 16, but I got distracted
by other things.  I was very sorry to hear that you will not be able to come
to our me-ting in Leeds in September.  Gowever, I will try to let gou know
what goes on, & I am sure that your own results and ideas will be at the centre
of things.

  I think you are too despondent about the impact which your worl: has had.
It's true that it took a long time for the implications to begin to sink in.
This wasn't, I think, due to lack of clarity in what you said and wrote - it
was rather that people couldn't see how on earth it all related to anything else
that they knew about. Something that can't be fitted into any existi.ng framework
of knowledge and ideas tends to get pushed out of mind, even if it isn't actually
disbelieved.   .  I think that genetics has now very neF3.rly caught up and geneticists
are now likely to be very much more receptive to what you have been re orting
?ll these years.  Newer knowledge about chrortmtin structure and its plasticity
has certainly helped, and the whole new world of plasmids and mutagenic bacter-
iophages provddes us with some very po:rerful analogies.  So I think the .maize
phenomena are no longer so difficult to comprehend in principle, though of course
obtaining evidence on detailed molecular mechanisms in D a more formidable challenge
than it is in a simpler prokaryotic system.

Some time ago I rather rashly agreed to contribute a review to Annual Reviews
                                                                         --
of Uenefiics on control1ing elements in maize.
- --I_                     I shah be relying to a very
large extent on your
to number 66.     Carnegie Institute Iieports, of which I h,ve a complete set up
       A little time ago you were kind enough to send me no. 70, but I
I-till lack the intervening numbers 67, 68 and 63.  If you have copies of these
to spare I would be most grateful if you could send them to me.
         Yours sincerely, \