We had already been working on the Genetics Citation Index at the same time I was also doing my doctorate and the Index Chemicus. It's amazing when you think back how many different things we were doing, back in those days.

[Q] After your '55 paper, what was the next big impetus?

Well, I think one of the key events was the fact that Dr Lederberg wrote to us, he wrote this classic letter in which he said, and I paraphrase, for lack of an access to a science citation index, I don't know what happened to your paper of 1955 in Science. And as a result of that, I wrote him this long letter saying how difficult it had been for us to find any support for the idea amongst the granting agencies, for a variety of reasons. And he thought that... and frankly I had never really heard much about the NIH in those days although I guess I must have known a little bit and it wasn't till a little later, I discovered such a thing as... that NIH grantees had funds that they could, they could buy subscriptions to Current Contents if they thought it was considered relevant to their grant. That was a major marketing coup when we were able to write on a brochure, these, you can charge this to your grant, and it made a big difference. But anyhow, Dr Lederberg wrote to us about '59, I think it was, it was in the year, so, after he got the Nobel Prize. And we met, he came down to Philadelphia and we met here and he and I had a long talk. We were walking, we walked, he was staying at the hotel at, there was a hotel called the Penn or something like that, at 40th and Chestnut or, I think it doesn't exist anymore. But we walked around the block several times and he said, why don't I write up a grant proposal to the NIH and that would be submitted to the genetics study section,and that was when we created this proposal to do the Genetics Citation Index.