Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
CSHL Misrepresentations
CSHL Website Snapshot: Nov. 8, 2009

Note that papers for Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg are improperly listed under the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories website. The Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories listing of papers is incomplete (10 of 46 papers, or 22%); does not include two papers published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, and five papers written under Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg's maiden name ("Esther M. Zimmer"), including those co-authored with M. Demerec, A. Hollaender, and N. H. Giles, Jr. The site also omits Esther Lederberg's celebrated discovery of lambda phage, documented in the 1950 paper, "Lysogenicity in Escherichia coli strain K-12", Microbial Genetics Bulletin, 1, pp. 5-9, Jan. 1950, Univ. of Wisconsin [Evelyn Maisel Witkin, Editor], Ohio State University, ISSN: 0026-2579, call No. 33-M-4, OCLC: 04079516, Accession Number: AEH8282UW.

The list of publications was found is under the James Watson collection, but searches throughout the entire CSHL database found only these same ten papers.

A second search was made of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories database, as the above search was limited to the Special Collections for James Watson. Was it possible that a more complete listing of publications existed elsewhere in the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories collections? In fact, the same ten publications were found, along with three photographs: two of Esther with Josh, and one of 1980 with Esther and an unidentified researcher (Dennis Kopeco). Two additional lists of participants in the 1946 and 1947 CSHL Symposia are also listed (Esther is listed as Esther Zimmer in 1946). Lastly, a mention is made of Esther being associated with the Sydney Brenner Collection. No complete listing exists under CSHL of Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg publications.