December 2, 1935
Dear Oliver:
Your letter of November 30 has just arrived and I thank you for the remarks regarding the article, I shall go over them carefully when I read proof and decide wither it is worthwhile to stake any changes. In regard to the paper itself, I have not had any concern about it except that I thought that perhaps you should be included as an author. I still feel confident that the interpretation given for ortho chloro-phenol and similar substances is correct, but I have become a little less certain in regard to the pyrol explanation although I still think that it is probably right. At any rate, I think that it is worthwhile to publish the suggestion, Mr. Stilt and I have had reasonable success with aniline, our predicting the second overtone spectrum agreeing pretty well with your data. In case that the three other amines show a second overtone spectrum different from that of aniline, and the theory also looks pretty well for them, we shall have considerable confidence that the interreactions that we neglect are not very important.
The missing fundamentals and second overtones in chelated compounds show that the phenomenon of decreased absorption is not due to increased symmetry of the potential function, but instead probably to a big shift in frequencies as you suggest.
Why don't you give a reasonably complete discussion of the ortho- compounds in your paper? It seems to me that the data should be discussed when they are reported, and there is no reason why you shouldn't give the discussion. Also when you publish your work on pyrogallol and similar substances, I think you should discuss the data. There is no reason for you to feel at all hesitant about using the explanations given in my article, or, indeed, about giving alternative explanations or criticizing my suggestions. I do not intend to write any more papers on the interpretation of your data (except the amine paper) and I would be greatly disappointed if you were not to use my suggestion in making interpretations yourself.
Yours very sincerely,
Linus Pauling
December
2, 1935
