Joshua Lederberg Press Conference (Reception of Nobel Prize)
Madison, Wisconsin: October 31, 1958

The Joshua Lederberg Press Conference about the Reception of Nobel Prize, was recorded at Madison, Wisconsin, on October 31, 1958. A copy of an audio recording was provided by the courtesy of the University of Wisconsin, Madison Archive. The transcription of this Press Conference below is taken from that recording. The audio recording takes about a half-hour to listen to, and may be found at:
     http://www.esthermlederberg.com/JLInterviewIndex.html
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Transcription of Press Conference
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Well, I think the first thing I'd want to not just say but stress, is the cooperative nature of research these days. By this I mean not so much the fact that we work in teams in a single laboratory, although this is more and more true with the growing complexity of scientific work, but rather the mutual dependence of work that goes on in one laboratory; on the contributions that are made throughout the world. From this point of view, the Nobel awards, by focusing as they do so vehemently on individual accomplishments, fall short, I think, of creating the most accurate picture of the nature of scientific work as it goes on today. This — I wouldn't want to demean the contributions that Beadle and Tatum have made as individuals and my own work has followed very directly from the paths which they blazed — but beyond them there are dozens or hundreds of other workers who are putting the bricks into place for the development of the structure. This is true as to various degrees of relationships between one laboratory and another.

In the development of my own work, I feel very abashed to have this attention without mentioning the numerous associates and students and fellows that I've had in my own lab, and the people on whom I've relied and whose ideas and work have been extremely important. First among these is my wife, who is my close associate in the laboratory. And then I happen to have a list of a number of people who have been in the lab before, and I'd like to give you an idea of the international distribution of this cooperation by mentioning some of their names and where they're located at the present time.

Putting them in alphabetical order, there's:
  • Dr. S.G. Bradley, who's at the Department of Microbiology of Minnesota;
  • Dr. L. L. Cavalli, who's in Institute of Genetics at the University of Milan, Italy;
  • Dr. Phil Edwards, who's at the Communicable Diseases Center, Public Health Service, Conley, Georgia
  • Dr. M. L. Morse, who's at the University of Colorado Medical Center in Denver;
  • Dr. Bruce Stocker, who's at the Lister Institute in London (and from whom I received a very gracious telephone call yesterday);
  • Robert Wright, who's at the Department of Bacteriology at Melbourne University, Australia;
  • Dr. Norton Zinder, who's at the Rockefeller Institute in New York; and finally
  • Dr. Tetsuo Iino, who's in Missima, Japan.
These people are now scattered all over the world, but they've been in my laboratory at one time or another and they've played an indispensable part in the development of the research program which the Nobel Committee chooses to recognize by mentioning my name.

And of course I have to mention the people from whom I first learned my trades, and they're primarily Professor Francis Ryan at Columbia University and Professor Tatum who's a co-recipient of the award here.

And this is only the top layer of the levels of interdependence that I really want to stress is the main fabric of scientific research at the present time. There have been many other students and fellows in the laboratory; much more than that, through the medium of scientific publication, there is an incredibly intricate technique of communication of scientific information; I think the pubic can't begin to be aware of the complexity of it and the intensity of it, and this is the way scientists communicate with each other on an intimate day-to-day basis, and this is the only way in which we can make progress in this day and age.

Question:
Can you explain to the group so that we can actually understand, a little about how you go about doing — I think we all have a description of what the discovery is, what the breakthrough is, that you were given the prize for — how you go about doing these things with this material that you can't see?

Answer:
Well, the approach to analyzing sexuality in bacteria was, as you pointed out, one that did not require seeing what was going on. It meant looking for evidence of genetic recombination, by the exchange of hereditary traits. Now, the possibility that bacteria might have sexual processes was considered during the earlier years of this century on the basis of attempts of visual observation. People looked to see whether or not there were mating processes going on in bacterial cultures. By and large, these observations were inconclusive and I think for the most part rejected as having no basis in fact, or not being verifiable. On the basis of the work that Beadle and Tatum did around 1940, on the biochemical genetics of fungi, techniques were developed that made it possible to look for recombination not at the level of visual observation of mating, but looking to see whether there were in mixtures of different kinds of bacteria, cross-bred progeny.

It was as if we had a population of cattle, one group of which was old or hornless and black, and the other group of which was brown and had horns. We knew nothing else about the biology of cattle, but if we left a field with a mixed herd, after a number of years we would discover that there were calves being produced that were black but had horns, or that were brown, and did not have horns, although the pure line herd would remain true to type. Knowing nothing else about the biology of cattle, and having no common sense information about the barnyard, you would still be able to conclude that cattle were able to undergo genetic recombination.

Well, in order to apply this type of test for a genetic exchange, in order to apply a progeny test, you'd have to have clear-cut markers; you'd have to have features of bacteria that for the technical purposes of this experiment would correspond to the horned or not-horned, or to the black or brown. Well, bacteria are so small, that there isn't very much about them by way of their visual appearance that would be useful to look at. However, by looking at their physiological characteristics, by seeing how they differ in biochemical ways, we do find — and this is on the basis of the work Beadle and Tatum have done with fungi — ways of recognizing different types of bacteria, and this is what was exploited in looking for recombination. Now in fact black or brown is also a biochemical difference. It has to do with the particular chemical composition of the pigment that's formed in the skin, but by looking for more subtle chemical differences we could find markers, as we call them, that we could use instead of [unintelligible] the bacteria.

Now subsequent to that, by the guidance that we could get by looking at the genetic recombination of processes in mixed culture, we have the necessary clues by which ultimately it was possible to see what was going on in visual terms. This might have been possible earlier, but we had no way of checking up on the results until we had markers to work with to see whether what looked like mating events really were, and whether they had as a consequence the occurrence of hybrid progeny.

Well, I have some pictures here which are not the best that have been produced — Professor Anderson at the University of Pennsylvania has since made much more elegant photographs — but here's a picture of bacteria mating. (I hope I can furnish them; I'm looking for the negative; it's filed away somewhere in the lab.) This is an electron micrograph, and it might give you some idea of the scale here. Here are two bacteria which have fused near one end. This is the characteristic way in which these cells are able to mate with one another.

Now this distance, the width of one of these bacterial cells, is a unit we call one micron. A micron is one-twenty-eight thousandth part of an inch. So it takes — even the ordinary light microscope is not sufficiently powerful to give detail of these dimensions, and this is a photograph taken with an electron microscope, with the cooperation, I might add, of Professor Caseberg in the Department of Biochemistry. I don't want to bore you by always giving other people's names, but this is really such a fundamental aspect of scientific research, that it has to be emphasized. Yes. As I said, Professor Anderson has developed superior techniques of electron micrography, and has a better picture.

Now, a picture like this, by itself, would not have been utterly convincing as evidence of genetic recombination or sexuality. You might have said, "Well, these two cells are just stuck together for some irrelevant reason, and it's not evidence that would hold up in court." In order to verify that this is a mating process, it's necessary to manipulate these cells, so that we can follow the progeny from each of these cells after they have mated in this way. You can see the same sort of thing going on in living cells; here we have to use the light microscope and we have nothing like the detail, but here are some prints of cells, showing approximately what they look like they they're living. They have been stained in order to improve the photography, but this gives you an idea of how much detail we can see. Well, we can look for pairs — there's a pair over here — observe that they are stuck together by seeing them under the microscope, then leave them alone for about an hour, and then pick out the individual cells that have been paired and look at their progeny. We find that the progeny of one of these cells will have genetic characteristics that must have been derived from the other cell. So we say that there has been a genetic exchange going on, and we can then correlate what we see under the microscope with the genetic factors that we can identify by looking at the chemical traits of the bacteria when they have grown up.

I think that's the essence of the story.

Question:
[unintelligible] I think Dr. Lederberg said that this might lead the way toward a cure for cancer. Can you go into that for a little bit?

Answer:
Well, I think there's always a temptation when pressed by the public, to look for practical applications for what one does, and because this is what might be the easiest to explain. I would say that in the first instance that Tatum and Beadle and I, I'm sure, are not thinking of a cure for cancer in the work that we design. We're not thinking of any industrial application or any medical application or agricultural or any other. I think this doesn't make us out to be un-humanitarian in our ultimate motivations; I think as a matter of experience that our society was founded, the fundamental research which is not directed to any practical goal, is in fact the best method of getting the fundamental information that's needed to solve practical problems; and that too close an adherence to the goal is NOT the way to solve practical questions. Now, the fact is that when it comes to looking for cures for cancer, that asking that question in its baldest form is not like a cure for cancer. The problem is that we simply lack the necessary basic information about growth, about the heredity of cells, and so on, that would be needed to make the intelligent approach to that question. From that point of view, to the extent that we are devoted to studying the behavior and the growth and inheritance of characteristics in cells, the information that comes out inevitably will have some bearing on cures for cancer; but there is still much that has to be learned about the fundamentals of it. It's like having to learn the language before you can read Shakespeare. When you teach someone the alphabet, you're not thinking about whether he's going to be writing newspaper articles or whatever uses he's going to be making of that skill.

Question:
Dr. Lederberg, how does it feel personally to win the Nobel prize? Has it made much of a change in your life since yesterday morning?

Answer:
Well, there's been a certain amount of harassment from newspaper reporters. I think that's been the principal change here for the time being.

Question:
Isn't that sort of a pleasant harassment?

Answer:
No.

Question:
We have to harass Nobel prize-winning scientists just the way you have to harass bacteria in your libraries, sir. That's the way we make our discoveries.

Answer:
I'm by no means unsympathetic to your task. Don't misunderstand me.

Question:
How did you learn of this, sir? Have you been notified?

Answer:
I received a cable from Stockholm yesterday afternoon, which was my first formal notification. The press has published a certain amount of gossip on this point; I think I'd better not remark on that subject.

Question:
Do you have any plans for spending the $20,000?

Answer:
No. Haven't thought about it. I think the usual remark in the circumstances is to say that my wife will discover excellent uses for it.

Question:
I notice — well, I don't notice, I know, sir, that you several months ago remarked that Stanford University had asked you to come out there to take over their Department of Medical Biology, or Genetics —

Answer:
— Department of Genetics. And it's in the Medical School at Stanford, yes.

Question:
Will this make any difference in your plans to go out to the West?

Answer:
Oh, I don't think so.

Question:
You're still going? You may reconsider?

Answer:
The question hadn't occurred to me that it would make any difference, and I'm busily making all sorts of plans, and it would create incredible confusion if they were altered at this stage in the game.

Question:
Is there any reason why you're leaving Wisconsin? Are you dissatisfied here?

Answer:
No, I think Wisconsin is one of the finest Universities in the country in all points of view. I'm not sure I can enumerate all of the reasons that finally altered the balance in my own decision. It was not an easy one to make. I certainly would not have been unhappy to have stayed. There were certain very particular lines of research that I was interested in undertaking immediately, that, on balance, seemed to be easier to manage at Stanford than here. It was a short-term situation, but one that happened to be convenient enough to make it warrantable.

Question:
Sir, I've been told that you asked for some people on your staff, that you didn't get, here, and that this is one of the reasons that influenced your decision to leave for Stanford.

Answer:
Well, I think nothing has happened here that would be any discredit to the Administration, or the Faculty; I certainly wouldn't want that impression at all. I've had certain plans for development here that for one reason or the other haven't come through; for the most part they've involved other commitments that people I wanted to ask had made, rather than what's happened here. I'd say that over the years that Genetics has possibly not had the recognition that it felt it should have, by way of space and facilities and so forth; I think that's remark you might get from any group in a University. That was not an immediate consideration; it's a consideration that was well on its way to being solved in part, at least as far as I was concerned, by my move over into Medical Genetics this year. But I hope the University does take account of these remarks in any case.

Question:
Are you going to follow on the same lines of research you have been, or have you had some new ideas?

Answer:
Well, for the most part I'm planning to continue the work that we've been doing on the genetics of bacteria. However — and this goes back to one of your previous questions -- just as the development of the biochemical genetic approach that Beadle and Tatum did was so fruitful in the analysis of the genetics of bacteria, I think the total present information that we have now gives us some exciting prospects for looking and experimentally analyzing the genetics of tissue cells; and this comes much closer to questions of the nature of cancer, for example.

Question:
Human tissue or animal tissue?

Answer:
Well, I had a thought about this, which I might just as well express: I would say animal tissues because, for experimental situations, mice are very much more suitable than human material and if one's goal is fundamental knowledge, one should use the best experimental material that's available. I think there's been some overemphasis on using human material per se, because of the media's goal orientation. I think that sometimes this has been a mistake. For example, in genetical analysis inbred lines of mice can be — first of all, we know their genetic constitution, and second, they can be subject to experimental matings that are at will for experimental purposes, and so on. And I think that mammalian genetics has not had the attention it deserves for the development of fundamental knowledge that could be indispensable in human problems.

Question:
This has nothing to do with the Nobel prize, but I remember several months ago I had a discussion with you about the so-called "lunar contamination". You had given a speech in Washington.

Answer:
That's right.

Question:
Since that time there was an attempt to fire a rocket at the moon. Are you still concerned about having this contamination from the moon?

Answer:
Well, you might say this has been something of a hobby of mine. I think the matter has been brought to the attention of the necessary authorities, and that was the main point of the remarks that lot of them make. I think the question had not been thought of before then, and I understand the Air Force and other agencies are taking this into account in their plans. I don't know the details of them, and I sent around a survey.

Question:
Dr. Lederberg, there's so much interest in the development of more scientists in this country. It might be interesting to know what some of the earliest influences were that drew you into this field.

Answer:
Well, I certainly share the concern for the development of wholesome attitudes about science and the nature of scientists and so forth. I'm not sure that my own experience was entirely typical in judging what I've heard about others, insofar as I've been interested in science in my earliest recollections. I've always known what I wanted to do, at least in general terms, and I think I've been incredibly lucky in being able to do it.

Question:
Exactly what was it?

Answer:
I don't know the ultimate origins. They go back so early in my childhood I think it would take a psychoanalyst to find out. I'm sure by the time I was 5 or 6 I already had some idea what I was going to be when I grew up.

Question:
[unintelligible] special characteristics that draw other people to science?

Answer:
Well, that's a problem that's being actively studied, or attempts are being made, you might say, to design experiments to test this point. There's no satisfactory information on this right now. That's one thing that should be given serious consideration. We just have no idea. Nothing has yet been done to constitute a satisfactory test for that preference. For technical reasons, bacteria are very much more convenient than cells of higher organisms. You can grow bacteria very easily. It takes considerable apparatus and organization to grow tissue cells in culture. It's more difficult to do.

Question:
You said your next work will be on the genetics of tissue cells.

Answer:
No, I did not. I said that I intended to continue my present program of study, but I hope also to indulge in this, and in particular at the department at Stanford I'm hoping that the number of people that we're talking about coming out there will follow that particular program.

Question:
Are you going to Stockholm to accept the award?

Answer:
I assume so.

Question:
When will that be?

Answer:
Well, I don't have any official information on this point, but when I heard that this might go on I went to the library to look up what the Nobel awards were all about, and so forth, I didn't really know a good deal about them except what I read in newspapers. I might mention there are two very interesting articles that appeared in the New Yorker last Spring that I remembered, and that I picked out; I'll recommend them to you if you'd like some rather colorful background. And then there's a volume which the Nobel Foundation itself puts out, so from that I had an idea. I understand from them, that the award ceremonies are to be held on the 10th of December, but I've not made any arrangements about it.

Question:
Do you have any reaction to what happened to Boris Pasternak?

Answer:
Yeah, I have a number; I'm just trying to sort them out. I've been waiting for an opportunity to read his book; I've heard good things about it. In fact, I ordered it while I was in London last summer without realizing that it would soon be published in the States. It was out of print and hadn't arrived, so I haven't seen the book. It seems to me extraordinary that man can survive in a totalitarian state and still exercise his critical functions. The man himself seems to be even more extraordinary.

Question:
Does that pretty well take care of any questions?

Question:
[unintelligible] can you tell us what the immediate significance of your work is to the scientific world?

Answer:
Well I think the most important element is that it bring bacteria back into biology. Historically, bacteriology has tended to be developed as an applied science and as a medical science, and not from a fundamental biological point of view. Because of this divergent outlook, there's been a limited connection between general biological studies in other organisms and similar studies in bacteria, and many people have felt that bacteria were side issues in the evolution of life on this earth, and not on the mainstream; were curiosities totally different in their makeup and composition and behavior. I think the fact (a) that as Beadle and Tatum helped to point out, their biochemical constitution is so much like that of other cells and (b) as we now know, that their genetical behavior is so much like that of other cells, if that a large aspect of life becomes part of the same universe again. I think that from a philosophical point of view that this is the most important aspect. From a laboratory technical point of view, bacteria had been made available for genetic investigation that will still have some relevance to the genetics of other organisms, and as laboratory organisms they are extremely convenient; much more so for certain types of work than anything else, because they multiply so rapidly. Tremendous populations can be handled; a test tube the size of this fountain pen will hold a billion organisms, or 10 billion organisms. That's more than the total number of people on the earth, you see. And you can deal with these in a matter of minutes and hours, instead of weeks, months and years. I'd say those were the two most important features: (1) that we learn more about bacteria than cells as aspect of life, therefore we learn more about life in general; and (second) that they make better tools for studying specific problems, including biochemical problems, that are otherwise not available.

Question:
Dr. Lederberg, are you concerned in any way in your research with the effects of radioactivity on heredity of genes?

Answer:
I make use of radiation as a means of obtaining mutations and biochemical markers that I have identified in my own work, but that's the extent of it.

Question:
I want to get back to one question that I wanted to clarify: when you were talking about one of the reasons you were going to Stanford, you said over the years geneticists have not had the space and the facilities you hope to have there. Can I extend that to mean you think it's been neglected here in that respect?

Answer:
I think that I'm personally as responsible for this as anyone else. I haven't taken the energy and time needed to organize the improvement of facilities in the Department I've had.

Question:
There's not a responsibility that goes to the Administration? I mean, we don't get a Nobel prize winner here every day and then find out that he's leaving.

Answer:
Well, the work was done here but liking the recognition of the Nobel prize; that might be an argument about complaining too much about facilities. But have you read Parkinson's Law about the inverse correlation of elegance with productivity? I wouldn't want that to be taken too seriously either.

I don't know the full reasons for this. I think that "neglect" is too negative a word in this respect. I assume that the genetics building programs have had a relatively low priority but I think there are historical reasons that the departments go in turn in replacing their facilities, and I just happened to come in at a time when the circle of fortune in genetics was a long way off in getting new programs. A bacteriology department here was living under very much worse circumstances at the time I arrived, and they certainly merited the improvement in the building they had.

I think you're asking rather loaded questions, John, in this respect. I wouldn't want the wrong impression to be created that —

Question:
— I'm just concerned about this business of your leaving. What are you leaving for? Can you do your work better there, or is there another phase of it that you can do better there?

Answer:
There's another phase of it, that represents cooperation with a number of significant individuals who just don't happen to be on this campus. This is a final consideration.

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