| [B foro FE ACA eg re RANDeeoatin 1790 MAIN 37%, . SANT A TA i A CAL? FORATA US DQE,ABCHIVES 326 U.S. ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION 23 April 1953 Dre Walter D. Clans Chief, Biophysics Branch Division of Biology and Medicine U. S. Atomic Energy Commission - _O0E" HISTORIAN (08/4) Box 3363 Collection Washington 25, De Ce Dear Dr, Claus: , RG Folder //32 #2 This confirms our conversation by phone with you andU%~ We are going ahead with plans for an AEC sponsored extended radtosstive.fallout and.brojeatGabrigh. We confer= hope to get participation by high caiiber talent not otherwise available. We have generally had good duck with such conferences. The luck depends on the choice of the chairman, amount, of preparation before and after the session, and the caliber of the participants. Preliminarily, we are planning the session to last three or four weeks, broken into three phases. The first will be a two or three day session devoted to familiarizing the entire group with the work that has already been done and to formulate the course of action for a smaller, working group. In the second phase, the smaller working group will spend the next two weeks preparing a report summarizing the state of the art and a recommended research programe Then, in the third phase the summary report will be submitted informally to the entire group for critical review, revision, and final acceptance, Final editing will probably be done largely by the RAND staff, If the session is successful, the resulting report should form an authoritative statement of what is known and what might profitably be further investigated in the fallout problem. We suggest that the conference be limited to the radiochemical and geophysical aspects of the problea, While it might be well to do a similar thing on the biological side of the problem, we suggest that this be considered separately, if for no other reason than the fact that HAND has relatively little experience in this area, while your staff dces have considerahle competence. Attached is a preliminary list of people who might be invited for the first and third phases. Some six or eight people of the total group, tabulated separately, in addition to the RAND people, would be appropriate for the second phase, with occasional participation by others. or Dr. Wexler would make an excellent chairman. BEST COPY AVAILABLE 27906 ————— Either Professor Libby Dr. von Neumann is, of course, ORGANIZATION & pagiencres”77 - -DO® ARCHIVES