University Briefs

Lederberg Plans Ahead With his successor, David Baltimore, waiting in the wings, Joshua Lederberg, president of the Rockefeller University in New York, can now think about his retirement. Lederberg, who has served as president since 1978, says he’s “looking forward to another change.” Lederberg will retire at the end of June, after reaching the mandatory retirement age of 65 in May. As for the future, “I’m still making my plans,” he says. “I’ll remain here [at Rockefeller] as a university professor. I’ll set up a small lab of my own, so that I can remain hands-on in the work I do.” Lederberg says that he plans to continue his work in both computer systems and molecular biology. He primarily wishes to bring these two fields together. “There’s a number of unresolved questions,” he says. “Lots of gaps But the field is ready for that jump.” Cold Ice, Hot Rocks When most scientists prepare for field work, they usually check out their equipment. But Steven Richard and his colleagues had to prepare their bodies as well. Richard, a geologist at the Institute for Crustal Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is part of a team that left for westem Antarctica earlier this month. Its aim is to produce the first detailed geologic map of the Fosdick Mountains, an undertaking that could help explain how Antarctica split apart from New Zealand more than 80 million years ago. According to Richard, only 5% to 10% of the 40-mile-long by 6-mile-wide field area is actually outcrop. The rest of the region is nothing but glacial ice—ice the team will have to hike and snowmobile across. So, in addition to the physical conditioning, which included a regimen of running, bike riding, and aerobics, the team had to leam the basics of ice safety from experienced mountaineers, who are accompanying the geologists for the two-and-a-half-month expedition. As for the cold, he remains wary. “I’m accustomed to working where heat is a problem,” says Richard, who says that the coldest place he has ever lived is Boston. A Technical Two-Step “Right now, it’s the only player in the game,” says Richard F. Browner. The game is chemical analysis, and the player is a new device that will link two complementary but normally incompatible methods of analysis. The device, invented by Browner, professor of chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and James A. de Haseth of the University of Georgia, Athens, will integrate liquid chromatography with infrared spectrometry. Unlike mass spectrometry, which breaks molecules into fragments, infrared spectrometry keeps them intact. As a result, says Browner, infrared spectrometry gives information on the structure-that is, the atomic arrangement—of whole molecules, information that could be valuable to biochemists, environmental scientists, and pharmacologists. The device, which allows both instruments to work in tandem and is tentatively called a particle beam infrared interface, has been licensed jointly to the Perkin-Elmer Corp. of Norwalk, Conn., and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto, Calif. The rationale for the joint license, says Browner, was to reach much larger market. “We’re hoping that this [device] will become a standard,” he says. Since the patent is owned by the two universities, license royalties will be returned to the university system. Fifty percent of the royalties will fund research at the universities. The rest will go to Browner and de Haseth.

University Briefs

The Scientist Staff

Lederberg Plans Ahead

Cold Ice, Hot Rocks

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