P209

P209 was a project that began at the Center for Advanced Studies in Behavior Science in Stanford, CA. CASBS had a unique opportunity for scholars, the Program on Science, Technology and Society (POSTS), to collaborate on a year-long project. For the academic year 1973-1974, JL was a POSTS fellow at the Center, where he worked primarily with the sociologists of science Harriet Zuckerman (HAZ) and Robert Merton (RKM). Yehuda Elkana and Arnold Thackray were also members of this group. The five came together to study the broad category of the historical sociology of science, and RKM drew up a comprehensive list of the different projects which the group would cover during the year. This document is entitled "Historical Sociology of Science: A POSTS group, 1973-74" and it is contained in a file of the same name. This file can be found with the CASBS/POSTS files.

This sub-series contains many drafts and states of proof of the manuscript on which JL, HAZ and RKM collaborated. Although it was never published in its entirety, their work led to two publications: Joshua Lederberg. "Forty Years of Genetic Recombination in Bacteria: A Fortieth Anniversary Reminiscence." Nature 324:627-628 (1986.) [P266] and Harriet Zuckerman and Joshua Lederberg. "Forty Years of Genetic Recombination in Bacteria. Post-Mature Scientific Discovery?" Nature 324:629-631 (1986.) [P267]. These were the two substantive publications which resulted from the work of JL and HAZ, but there are other publications tangentially related to the topic which are scattered throughout the files.

Also included is work on pre- and post-mature discovery, the topic on which JL and HAZ ultimately published papers. These files contain notes, research on scientific examples which fulfilled the criteria of pre- or post-mature discovery and correspondence between JL and HAZ.

Lastly are some miscellaneous background material and a number of files on the examination of scientific disciplines, part of a small project which JL worked on with Arnold Thackray.