Dr. G. W. Wheland
18 Romney Court
Shepherds Bush, Green
London, W. 12.
Dear George,
I am writing to your London address, though I do not know for sure that you have not moved during the months since I wrote last. I feel that I am able to write, now that the typed script of Chapters I and II of the book have finally been sent. I continue to be as busy as during the first part of this year, and how strong the prospects are of getting a large amount of writing done during the next few months can only be guessed. Perhaps my conscience will begin to hurt pretty soon, however. Have you anything more to send me? I am looking to you to learn the point of view of the English chemists thoroughly and to see that our book is written in a way that is satisfactory to them. I was interested to learn that Lennard-Jones and Penney had decided that the double bond radii should be reduced somewhat. You know that for the last two or three years Brockway and I have been slowly getting data on hydrocarbons, and we too had decided on the value 1.34 Å for the carbon-carbon double bond, on the basis of electron diffraction measurements on ethylene, allene, and various substituted ethylenes. The experimental evidence for the earlier value of 1.38 was almost non-existent. I chose this value by lineal interpolation between single bond and triple bond values. This was supported by the band spectroscopic data on the 3 and 1 state of the oxygen molecule, which now offer a problem, since they have r values about 0.06 Å larger than the double bond distance. The resonance curve is now changed in the region between single bond and half and half bond, so that practically all of the earlier arguments are still valid. This work will be published shortly in the J.A.C.S.
Perhaps you noticed that Brockway had pulled a boner in his identification of the epoxybutanes. He has now repeated the work, using models in which the strain is distributed among five bond angles, and has reached the opposite identification.
We have got some interesting results on acetone. Levy found that trigonal bonds in B(CH3)3 gave boron a radius of 0.1 Å less that its usual radius. We have found the carbon-carbon bonds in acetone to be very short, apparently as the result of a large contribution of a semi-polar double bond type of structure in which carbon forms only three single bonds.
Coryell and Stitt are continuing to make hemoglobin measurements. Stitt is applying for a National Research Fellowship and may be at Harvard during the first semester. I shall be at Cornell from September to February, giving the Baker Lectures. Sturdivant will lecture here on crystal structure during this time, and I shall take over the course here on returning. I think the chances are good that Brockway will get he Guggenheim Fellowship, since he received a request for an estimated budget, just as you did last year. He is working hard to finish a number of investigations before summer comes. The two Oxford men here as Commonwealth Fellows, Hampson and Springall, have been making some interesting studies, Hampson having determined the structure of P4O10, as well as of P4O6 and As4O6. P4O6 shows some anomalously small phosphorus-oxygen distances.
Isn’t Shepherd’s Bush the place where dog races are held in London? I am sure that you and Mrs. Wheland are having a fine time, and I suppose that you are planning to breast the crowds in order to see the Coronation Procession.
I trust that you enjoyed your trip to Italy, and that you are not forgetting to see as much of the country as possible.
[Linus Pauling]
March
11, 1937
