March
12, 1953
Letter from Linus Pauling to Peter Pauling. March 10, 1953Linus first discusses financial matters with Peter in regards to travel, before conveying his flight details to London. He writes that he recently visited UC-Riverside to examine a collection of organic phosphate compounds, and that he has obtained samples of various phosphate diesters, which will be useful in the nucleic acid work. He further discusses the sports car purchase he may make in Europe. Linus then discusses the nucleic acids. He states that it is still not clear to him, through Peter's correspondence and a letter from Watson to Delbrück that Linus has obtained, what the Watson-Crick structure is. Linus mentions that he has solved many of the spatial issues of his molecule by rotating the phosphate groups and notes as well that Rosalind Franklin just wrote to him and that she feels strongly that the phosphate groups must be located on the outside of the molecule. Linus has assumed that the phosphates were located in the center of the molecule all along and further notes that he doesn't think much of the argument of the instability of his DNA molecule due to the packing of negative charges, mentioning other molecules that also have close negative charges. Linus also suggests that RNA could take a similar form to his DNA structure, with some modification. Linus closes his letter by mentioning his recent focus on ferromagnetism. View Transcript
Associated: Louis Budenz, Charlie Cox, Francis Crick, Linda Pauling, Alexander Rich, Verner Schomaker, Robert Watson-Watt, J.T. Randall, John S. Rollett, Max Delbrück, Rosalind Franklin, W.L. Bragg, Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin, National Academy of Sciences, Royal Society, University of Oxford, Medical Research Council, Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, Birkbeck College ID: sci9.001.29-lp-peterpauling-19530310 |
