March 20, 1982

Dear Arline and Walter:.

   My warmest thanks for your gift of "The Eighth.Day of Creation".
I have read every word of it, even the appendices and footnotes.
This has been one of the most enjoyable reading experiences of
my life.  Throughout the book wander a host of persons whom I
knew personally or through their works; and as they each appear
'.'my recollection of them is a vivid accompaniment of the authors
narrative.  Maurice Wilkins, for example, appeared to me as the
scrawny Englishman who rode with me and the Vendrelys as I made
a trip into the White Mountains on a vacant afternoon from a
Gordon Conference on Nucleic Acids. Maurice never once would 4
.look up even to "The Old Man of the Mountain"; instead he kept
'boring us with a persistent monologue about his X-ray diffraction
patterns from nucleic acids (this was many years before the famous
DNA model).  Of-course Erwin Chargaff reappeared with his similar
obsession with the base ratios.  This book makes clear the point
I indignantly made in a note to Erwin at the time of the Nobel
award, that they never could have made the model without his
underlying abundant proof that DNA was not the monotonous polymer
postulated by P.A. Levene's tetranucleotide hypothesis. When Avery's
name appeared early in the narrative I recalled the quiet little
man who was at the luncheon table with Mirsky Hotchkiss, Bous and-
others on the days I worked at Rockefeller with Alfred - so quiet
was Avery that I had to see his picture in the "Creation" book
to remember what he looked like.  Of course, I was pleased to note
that Mirsky was mentioned only as the diehard opponent of the view
that DNA could be the gene; "it had to be a protein".  In an aside,.
. note that the source of A.E.M.'s stand on this point was merely
Rockefeller politics; both he and .Avery were struggling to attain
the permanent statusofMember of the staff - hence Alfred must
belittle Avery's contribution.  Even in the less enthralling sec-
tion on hemaglobin there are many people whom I met or heard lec-
  ture.  It would take a small notebook to enumerate my reaction's
to this marvellous volume.  Do you know anythin.g about the Author?
He is indeed a most remarkable Science writer - the only one I
ever read who seems to have been able to get inside the skin and
brain of the scientific personality.

St., Harleyvrlle,
and would welcome

If all'goes well, we will be back in Pennsylvania (311 Broad
          PA. 19438 - Tel. 215-256-9466 [or son Jim, -64981

a visit.

and warm regards,
          Arthur Pollister


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Thanks again