August 7, 1940
Dr. Warren Weaver
The Rockefeller Foundation
49 West 49th Street, W.
New York City, New York
Dear Warren:
I have Just received letters from Bernal and Wooster in England, expressing the hope
that Dr. Max F. Perutz might be enabled to work on proteins in our laboratories.
Dr. Perutz is now in Canada, interning as an anti-fascist refugee. His address is
Internee Max F. Perutz, Ph.D., c/o Army Post Office, Canada. I do not know Dr. Perutz
personally, but from his papers and especially from the recommendations of Bernal
and Wooster, I would judge him to be a good man. It would, of course, be fine to
have him carry on his work here, since it fits so closely into our protein program.
We do not have any money available for his support, however. In fact, in order to
get some immunological investigations underway this year, we have used up our budget
so thoroughly that we have not been able to give re-appointment to Dr. E. W. Hughes,
who is working on the crystal structure of peptides. Dr. Hughes was not included
in our budget because it was thought he had an appointment at Cornell, which fell
through, and he is now continuing his work through the summer without an appointment.
I am writing to you to mention that if you have any plan of providing fellowships
for people such as Perutz, we would be very glad indeed to have him in our laboratories.
My paper on the Structure of Antibodies has been accepted for publication in the Journal
American Chemical Society, and is scheduled to appear in the September issue. I
have revised it somewhat, removing the section dealing with other theories. Did
you notice that Delbruck and I have published in Science a discussion of the forces
involved in biological processes. I shall send you a reprint of this when the reprints
arrive. This publication arose from an argument between Delbruck and me, at the
time of his visit here last month on his way to the Hopkins Marine Station.
Our experimental work on immunology is moving along steadily, but slowly. So far,
our quantitative determinations on the sera provided by Lonsteiner indicate that Lonsteiner's
qualitative conclusions, which seemed incompatible with my theory, are really not
justified.
With best regards, I am,
Sincerely yours,
Linus Pauling
LP:err
