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Correspondence: Shockley, William

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Some brief correspondence with William Shockley, but largely material circulated to members of the National Academy of Sciences - including Crick - in support of Shockley's campaign to promote research on inheritance and intelligence.

Shockley (a physicist at Stanford University) had sought to obtain Crick's personal support for his campaign following Crick's lecture "The Social Impact of Biology," the Rickman Godlee Lecture, delivered at University College London, 24 October, 1968. Crick replied (2 April, 1969) to suggest that the "story about my talk was slightly garbled, but was essentially correct. I certainly think these problems are important and that they should be dealt with objectively. Your experience clearly shows that this is not easy."

However, Crick was reluctant to be drawn publicly any further, and eventually wrote to Shockley (23 February, 1970): "Although, as you know, I am interested in all these problems, I must stick to my decision not to get involved with topics of this sort for the next few years...."

The file includes a typescript of Shockley, "Human quality problems and research taboos" (1969), marked as Crick's copy.

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Correspondence: Shockley, William

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