December 23, 1937

Professor W. Mansfield Clark

Department of Physiological Chemistry

The Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

710 N. Washington Street

Baltimore, Maryland

Dear Professor Clark:

I am very glad to have received your letter about Mr. Thomas Harrison Davies, and I am writing to hire extending an invitation to him to carry on his work here in case that his fellowship is granted. The problem which he mentions regarding the structure of hemoglobin seems to me to be a good one. Dr. Coryell and I are continuing our investigations and I believe that in a year or two we shall know much more about hemoglobin than we do now. Moreover, it is probable that a further attack on protein structure will be made in our laboratory. We have been made a large grant by the Rockefeller Foundation for the development of organic chemistry here, and we are just completing the construction of a new wing of our laboratory, which will provide space for the new work in organic chemistry. Dr. Carl Niemann, who has been working with Bergmann on proteins and is now in London with Harington, has been appointed Assistant Professor of Organic Chemistry, and Dr. A. R. Todd, who is to lecture here during the coming term, may stay permanently.

We also have available funds for fellowships for graduate students in organic chemistry, and we are hoping to build up this side of our work until it ranks with physical chemistry here.

I am looking forward to learning the results of Davies' work with you on oxidation-reduction equilibria of metallo-porphyrin.

With best wishes for a happy New Year, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP:jr