February 11, 1936

Professor G. B. Kistiakowski,

Department of Chemistry,

Harvard University,

Cambridge, Mass.

Dear George,-

I want to congratulate you on the excellent and valuable researches on heats of hydrogenation that you are carrying on, and now that you have published some of your results I trust that you are continuing the investigations. It seems to me that accurate work of this type could he carried on for a very large number of compounds with great value.

I was pleased to learn from Wilton that you would be willing to provide us with samples of some of your purified hydrocarbons for electron diffraction investigation. Dr. Brockway has already photographed cis and trans 2-butenes obtaining a direct verification of the identification that you have adopted. In addition he found that the interatomic distances and bond angles are those given by the table of radii and the idea of the tetrahedral carbon atom. We would like especially to have a small sample (a gram or two) of tetramethylethylene. In case that you happen to have dimethyl acetylene or methyl acetylene we would be very glad to have samples of these also. We would be happy to carry on the electron diffraction study of any substances in which you are interested. If in your entropy calculations you come to the point where such an investigation seems to be worth while I trust that you will let me know.

With very best wishes, I am

Sincerely yours,

LP:M