Correspondence regarding Society for Experimental Biology Symposium 25 ('Control Mechanisms for Growth'), held at Eliot College (University of Kent at Canterbury) and Wye College (University of London), 7-11 September, 1970.
Crick chaired the evening session of 7 September and presented "A Basic Theory of the Scale of Pattern Formation" on 10 September.
The file includes symposium-related correspondence, amongst which Crick writes (to Dr David Davies, symposium organizer, 12 March, 1970): "As you probably know, I published a paper recently in Nature about Diffusion in Embryogenesis. I have been distressed to find from the letters that people have written to me and various conversations I have had that the main idea I wanted to put over has been completely missed. This basic idea can be crudely stated as follows: all ordered patterns in biological structures originate when the region is small. For most cases the word small implies the distance of one millimetre or less. I am naturally hopeful that this rather rash generalisation will apply over the whole of biology and, in particular, to both botany and zoology ... Because the basic idea does not seem to have got across, I am, therefore, considering publishing a short note about it, in which I state this very explicitly and ask people to provide me with counter examples ... It has occurred to me that a very nice place to publish such a short paper would be at the SEB symposium ... A possible title would be 'A Basic Theory of the Scale of Pattern Formation'."
The file includes a letter from Stig Nordling to Lewis Wolpert (30 July, 1970) regarding Nordling et al, "Transmission of morphogens: measurements in a model system," a copy of which (typescript) is attached.
Also included are notes (holograph) by Crick and abstracts from Hans Grüneberg, Bruce M Cattanach, Anne McLaren, and Beatrice Mintz.