4 February 1953

Dear Peter:

I am writing to tell you that we have found that the atomic coordinates inour nucleic acid structure need to be changed a bit. One of the van der Waals contacts is too close – between carbon atom 5’ and an inner oxygen atom of the phosphate group to which it is bonded. I judge that I overlooked this contact when I was making the final calculations – in the preliminary structure there were several van der Waals contacts that were pretty small, and I hunted around for parameters that would increase all of them until they were at least acceptable. Apparently I forgot to include this contact in the final process. It will be a few weeks before we have finished the job of checking over the parameters again, but I expect them to come out all right – at any rate I hope so.

At the present time I have reservations to leave New York on Thursday 2 April and arrive in London on Friday 3 April, and then to leave London on Monday 6 April. However, Bragg wrote that he and Lady Bragg were planning to go to Brussels on Tuesday 7 April, and I probably shall delay my trip for one day, thus arriving at London Airport on Saturday 4 April and leaving on Tuesday. Then I shall fly directly back to the United States after the Solvay Congress is over. I plan to meet Mama in New York. Then we shall stay for a few days in New Haven, where I am to give the Treat B. Johnson lectures, go to Philadelphia for the American Philosophical Society meeting, to Washington for the National Academy meeting, to Buffalo for a few days, where I shall give the Foster lectures, and then home.

Let me say that we have enjoyed very much having the copies of the London Times and the New Statesman and Nation that you sent us. I hope that you will save up more, and send them to us.

I think that I should get another Riley –essentially the same as the one that I have, but not in such bad shape. Do you think that we could save any money if you were to buy the Riley for me, in England, or should I approach International Motors and put in the order right away? I do not want you to buy it until summer time – anyway, you probably will be so busy with myoglobin that you wouldn’t have time to drive it around. Please let me know at once whether the plan for you to buy it for me is feasible. We are hoping to get on a freighter, probably in Scandinavia, about 20 August, to go by ship, with the car on the same ship, to the eastern United States, and then to drive home across the country. We are due in Tübingen on 8 July. We have a chemistry teachers workshop scheduled for Pasadena from 22 June to 29 June, and accordingly probably shall fly to England about 1 July. This means that we shall have to move right along to get to Tübingen. I hope that you are planning to make part of the journey with us.

I am still working on the job of finishing up the new edition of GENERAL CHEMISTRY. I do not think that it is done perfectly, but it will be interesting to see whether the new chapters are useful in teaching our own freshmen.

Love from

[Linus Pauling]

4 February 1953

Professor C.H. Best

University of Toronto

Toronto, Ontario

Canada

Dear Best:

I am writing to ask for advice for a friend of mine who is interested in the possibility of coming to Canada, in order to carry on medical research.

The man is Richard W. Lippman. I have known Dr. Lippman for six or seven years - I met him first when he was working in Dr. Thomas Addis's laboratory, in San Francisco, at a time when I was a patient of Dr. Addis. After Dr. Addis's death I have been a patient of Dr. Lippman. Dr. Lippman came to Los Angeles, and for several years operated a kidney clinic in the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. At the same time he carried on research in the Cedars of Lebanon Institute for Medical Research, with Dr. Goldblatt. Then a year ago, in December 1951, Dr. Lippman and two other members of the staff of the Hospital were notified by the lay board that they were not being continued. It was pretty clear that this action was taken by the lay board because of political reasons, but no statement has ever been made by the board, and Dr. Lippman has not been allowed to discuss the matter with the board.

The more recent history is that Dr. Lippman stayed on at the Cedars of Lebanon Institute for Medical Research for one year. This Institute has the same lay board as the hospital, but the director, Dr. Harry Goldblatt, has complete authority with respect to the staff. During the year, however, the board returned to the Public Health Service the research grant on which Dr. Lippman was operating, so that he ran out of funds to carry on his research, and decided to leave. He was offered a job as chief of medical service in an eastern hospital, accepted the job, and then was informed that because of representations from the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital the job would not be given to him,

Now he has decided that it would be a good thing to move to Canada. The alternative is for him to practice medicine, and not carry on research - most of the foundations or agencies that provide money for support of research give it to a hospital or research institute, and Dr. Lippman is doubtful that he can get a job with circumstances as they are in the United States in a hospital or research institute.

Could you give us some advice about the possibility of some sort of opening being found for Dr. Lippman in Canada? I may say that the way that Dr. Lippman has been living for several years has not involved his receiving a regular research salary. Most of the time he has made his living by practicing, devoting perhaps half of his time to his practice, which was mainly consulting work in the field of the kidney, and devoting the other half of his time to research on the kidney. For two or three years he received a stipend from the Columbia Foundation, and was able to devote three quarters of his time to research; then for two years he worked on a Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which was in part a stipend for his personal use, and in part a support of his researches; during this period he devoted most of his time to research. He has written me from New York that he would be willing to accept an appointment that carried only a small salary, and permitted him to devote most of his time to research. I think that he would be interested in an arrangement under which he could earn his living by practicing, provided that he also had facilities for carrying on his research.

I think that Dr. Lippman is one of the leading research men in the field of kidney function in the world. You may have seen some of his papers - some of them have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has continued Dr. Addis's work, and has introduced a number of new techniques of his own. In particular, he has developed a tissue-culture technique that permits him to test for the presence of nephrotoxic substances in the plasma of patients. He has also, in part in collaboration with Professor Dan H. Campbell of our laboratories, done some work on the effect of injecting into rats antibodies made by the injection of rat kidney tissue into rabbits; he has investigated the effect of these substances only a few minutes after the time of their injection into the rats, and has also been studying the nature of the reaction of the antibodies with kidney tissue. For several years I have been in close touch with Dr. Lippman in his research work, and I have formed a high opinion of his abilities as a research man.

I may say that Dr. Lippman seems to me to be an extraordinarily fine man, with respect to character and personality. He has been interested in questions of medical freedom, and has had some trouble with the American Medical Association. He has opposed special loyalty oaths for doctors, has supported federal medical insurance, and in other ways has expressed opinions that run counter to those generally held by medical men in the United States - or, at any rate, officially held by the Medical Association. Dr. Lippman's trouble with the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital seems to be one of the results of the upset political situation in the country today.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:w