Professional correspondence between Peter Medawar and David Steinmuller

The collection includes three letters sent by David Steinmuller to Peter Medawar and eight sent from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller over a period of September 23, 1961 through January 7, 1985. The individual dates are shown below:

Steinmuller to Medawar: September 9, 1961

Medawar to Steinmuller: September 26, 1961

Medawar to Steinmuller: November 6, 1961

Medawar to Steinmuller: April 10, 1962

Medawar to Steinmuller: June 6, 1962

Medawar to Steinmuller: September 16, 1963

Medawar to Steinmuller: July 15, 1968

Medawar to Steinmuller: August 23, 1974

Steinmuller to Medawar: September 12, 1977

Steinmuller to Medawar: October 10, 1977

Medawar to Steinmuller: January 7, 1985

The following catalogue information was supplied by the donor, David Steinmuller:

PM1: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated September 26, 1961.

One-and one-half pages; subject: transfer of skin homograft immunity with antiserum

On September 9, 1961 I wrote to Dr. Medawara to tell him that I had succeeded in passively transferring immunity to skin homografts in a strain combination of inbred laboratory ratsd. Transferring immunity with antiserum was a controversial matter because it was assumed that such immunity only could be transferred by immune lymphocytes, not immune serum. Medawar wrote back expressing much interest in my findings with recommendations for further experimentation. Ironically, later I was not able to repeat and confirm my original findings for reasons that never have been satisfactorily explained.

Notes:

I have a copy of the letter I wrote to him.

Immunity in this context refers to the ability to reject grafts in accelerated fashion

"Homografts" are grafts exchanged between genetically dissimilar donors and recipients of the same species. This term later was replaced by the term "allografts"

I gave a paper on this subject at an international transplantation conference at the New York Academy of Sciences which subsequently was published in the proceedings of the conference:

D. Steinmuller. Passive transfer of immunity to skin homografts in rats. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 99:629-644, 1962.

I reported this failure later in the following publication:

D. Steinmuller. Failure of passive transfer of skin homograft immunity in rats. Transplantation 2:549-550, 1964.

PM2: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated November 6, 1961

One page; subject: preparing suspensions of skin epidermal cells

I wrote to Medawar asking him for instructions for preparing single-cell suspensions of epidermal cells from mouse tail skin (I do not have a copy of my letter). He replied with detailed instructions for this procedure.

PM3: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated April 10, 1962

One page; subject: response to a letter from me on some general laboratory matters

I do not have a copy of my letter to Medawar. His mention of the "ex-manuscript editor" refers to his daughter, Caroline, who had worked as an editor at the Wistar Institute and whom I befriended while I was a graduate student at the Institute.

PM4: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated June 6, 1962

One-and one-half pages; subject: my appointment as a Fulbright Lecturer at a Spanish medical school

Notes: I do not have a copy of my letter to Medawar. I told him that I had accepted a Fulbright grant to lecture on embryology at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Valencia in Spain. Among other things, he consoled me on my failure to confirm my original findings on the passive transfer of skin homograft immunity in rats (see PM1 above).

PM5: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated September 16, 1963

One page; subject: preprint of a manuscript I sent to Medawar on the use of lyophilized tissue to immunize mice to skin homografts

Notes: I do not have a copy of my letter to Medawar. This manuscript subsequently was published:

D. Steinmuller. Failure of lyophilized tissues to evoke a secondary response to skin homografts. Transplantation 2:383-386, 1964

PM6: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated July 15, 1968

One page; subject: acknowledgment of a reprint I sent to Medawar on my failure to confirm a controversial published report by another group on the genetic transmission of acquired tolerance to skin allografts in mice

Notes: I do not have a copy of my letter to Medawar. The reprint I sent to him was of the following publication:

D. Steinmuller. Behavior of skin allografts in backcross progeny of tolerant males. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 39:1247-1251, 1967.

PM7: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated August 23, 1974

One page; subject: acknowledgment of a manuscripta I sent to Medawar on the differential survival of skin and heart allografts in mouse radiation chimeras

Notes: I do not have a copy of my letter to Medawar. This manuscript subsequently was published:

D. Steinmuller, J.S. Lofgreen. Differential survival of skin and heart allografts in radiation chimeras provides further evidence for Sk histocompatibility antigen. Nature 248:796-797,1974.

Radiation chimeras are animals whose bone marrow cells are destroyed by whole-body radiation and subsequently reconstituted with bone marrow cells from a genetically different donor.

PM8: Letter from Peter Medawar to David Steinmuller dated January 7, 1985

One page; subject, acknowledgment of my sending Medawar a copy of a letter I had written to Ted Steele, a British scientist who had claimed he had evidence for Lamarckian inheritance, which both Medawar and I strongly disputed

1961-1985

1 file

Transferred to Wellcome