Fri.

Dear Mom:

I'm glad that you're enjoying yourselves. I'm just fine. I'm afraid I fear leading a rather hectic week, but since it is after finals I don't care.

The Porsche is just fine. I've used it a little. I got the little dent fixed, & just had it lubed. I used it while my car was getting its top. The top is really beautiful. I know Linus makes comments about the Porsche. Make some back, about his big, heavy, truck-like Jeep. I didn't get to the race it rained, I was sleepy. I didn't have too much energy, no one to go with, etc. I was going to go with [Peter?], but I had a date Sat. night & he left Sat. morning. I'm taking Mary Ellen to the concert on Sun. I hope you don't mind.

Much love,

Crellin

[Written] Jan.-1954

2 January 1954

Southern Commercial and Savings Bank

30 South Rosemead Blvd.

Pasadena, California

Gentlemen:

I enclose my savings department book.

Will you please transfer $3000 from my savings account to my commercial account.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W

January 5, 1954

TO: President L. A. DuBridge

FROM: Linus Pauling

SUBJECT: Budget increase

Dr. J. B. Koepfli desires to return to his work at the Institute beginning 1 January 1954. His return to the payroll following his leave of absence has been recommended to the Dean of the Faculty.

To provide for his salary through the six months which remain in the fiscal year, I request that Account 501-23000 be increased by $1800.

JHS:at

cc: Dean Watson

Arletta Townsend

11 January 1954

Dr. Vincent du Vigneaud

Cornell University Medical College

1300 York Avenue

New York 21, N.Y.

Dear Vincent:

I am very glad to learn from your letter that you have crystallized L-glutaminyl-L-asparagine, and can give us a sample of it. Fifty milligrams of the crystalline material would be enough for us to have. We should be grateful to have advice from you about solvents to use in our effort to make larger crystals - it is likely that your preparation would not contain individual crystals large enough for our need. Also, we probably could return some of the material to you, if you wish.

As to the oxytocin flavianate, I do not think that we would want to begin work on it if Dr. Barbara Low has begun. The effort involved in a structure determination of such a substance is extremely great, and it should not be duplicated. Of course, neither we nor Dr. Low are sure that it is possible to determine the structure of this crystal. I think that we might prefer that Dr. Low continue with the flavianate, and in case that another derivative is obtained in crystalline form perhaps the men here could investigate it. We should prefer not to have such a complex anion in the crystal.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W

January 12, 1954

Russian Science

Russia in the past has produced a few truly outstanding scientists, such as Mendeleyev and Pavlov. Russian publications indicate that in recent years there has been a great increase in the number of scientists being trained and the amount of scientific work being done. In the number of published scientific papers Russia seems now to rank second among the nations of the world, with the United States first. The quality of the work is good, and some of the scientists show great originality and brilliance.

Probably the greatest handicap under which Russian scientists work is the necessity of keeping their scientific ideas in conformity with arbitrary political and ideological dicta. For five years the Russian geneticists have been held down by the Lysenko ban on the gene theory of heredity, and since 1950 the chemists have been forbidden to use the resonance theory of molecular structure. It is a fundamental principle that science progresses through the consideration of all facts and all imaginable theories, and the restrictions imposed on Russian scientists may well have prevented them from making some important discoveries.

Another difficulty is the lack of contact between the Russian and the Western scientists, which interferes with the interchange of scientific knowledge, causes much duplication and wasted effort, and handicaps both the East and the West. The whole world benefits from new basic scientific discoveries, and scientists everywhere look forward to a future of world-wide collaboration.

13 January 1954

Professor Farrington Daniels

Department of Chemistry

University of Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin

Dear Farrington:

I thank you for your letter of 8 January. I am very pleased that you and your colleagues should offer me an appointment as Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin for two weeks this summer, but I believe that it would be wise for me to not accept that appointment. I am planning to spend the summer working on the preparation of a third edition of my book THE NATURE OF THE CHEMICAL BOND, and although the proposed period in Madison is short, it would, nevertheless, interfere, I am afraid, with the course of my work on the revision.

Please express my thanks and my regrets to your colleagues.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W

14 January 1954

Dear Peter:

Mama and I stayed for a week in Washington with Edith and Sterling Hendricks, and then on Wednesday 6 January we flew home. Crellin had got home from Honolulu the day before, and he and George met us. We were sorry not to be able to go on to India -- and also to miss our week in Greece and our week in Israel. The Vice-President of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem wrote that he had arranged a fine schedule for us during the week, with a tour of north Israel -- Sea of Galilea, etc. -- which I had seen before, and also a tour of the Negev, the desert region to the south, going as far as (the northern region goes as far as Dan).

I am not sure that I told you just what our situation was. Our passport has not been revoked, nor was the validation for India refused. Instead, the Department of State simply delayed action, and when no action had been taken by the close of business on 31 December I withdrew the application, because even if the travel had been approved on 4 January, after the holiday, it would have been impossible for us to reach Hyderabad in time for the Congress, and the people at the Indian Embassy said that the Congress was the principal reason for inviting us. We are now hoping to make the trip a year from now.

Mama and I have decided to go to Honolulu for a two-weeks' trip. We shall arrive there at 6 P.M. on Tuesday 19 January, and stay for two weeks. Perhaps I shall give a lecture or two to the University or to the American Chemical Society while there. I am planning to take along the books by Charlotte Moore on term values of atoms -- these are publications of the Bureau of Standards, extending the tables of atomic energy levels in the book by Bacher and Goudsmit -- and to work over them, in order to obtain a set of approximate energy values for different electronic configurations of atoms, not including the interactions that give rise to Russell-Saunders states. That is, I want to know by how much the configuration 1s²2s²2p² lies below the configuration 1s²2s22p² for carbon, for example, and so on for the other atoms. The problem is complicated by the fact that the Russell-Saunders states often do not represent pure configurations, and accordingly some sort of averaging process has to be carried out. I am planning to look for a set of values of promotion energy that will show a reasonable dependence on atomic number. I am not trying for great accuracy. There are many chemical problems which require for their discussion the knowledge of these promotion energies, and so far as I know, nobody has published tables of them in recent years.

Then I am hoping to use the promotion energies, together with assumed bond energies and resonance energies, in the discussion of the electronic structure of the transition metals, in order to find out whether a simple treatment will indicate more or less clearly what the electronic configurations are upon which the metals are based. You remember that for copper, for example, the physicists have usually assumed the configuration 3d¹⁰4s, whereas I assume resonance between the configurations 3d⁸4s4p² and 3d⁷4s4p³.

Since getting home I have continued work upon the structure of collagen, and have found one structure that looks promising, except that it does not seem to give the right value of the density. The problem of the structure of collagen is a very difficult one. Crick sent me, last month, a copy of a letter that he has submitted to NATURE, describing a new structure that he has found. This structure involves two polypeptide chains twisted about each other. Each of the chains consists only of amide groups with the cis configuration. In each chain one amide group lies in a horizontal plane, and one in the vertical plane. The one in the vertical plane spands the pseudo identity distance 2.86 A. The group in the horizontal plane forms two hydrogen bonds with the corresponding group in the other chain, which is related to it by a horizontal two-fold axis. There is, however, serious steric hindrance between the hydrogen atom attached to the alpha-carbon atom ( groups) and a vertical amide group above or below does not show up in the electron micrographs.

Please write to us.

Love from

[Linus Pauling]

Chulalongarana University

Bangkok, Thailand

15 January 1954

Prof. Thong Sook Bongsadadt

The Ohio State University

Columbus 10, Ohio

Dear Professor Bongsadadt:

I am sorry that I was not in Pasadena at the time of your recent visit here. I trust that Dr. Roberts succeeded in giving you all of the information that you were interested to obtain.

I am writing to ask your advice about a visit that I hope to make to Thailand in the course of a trip around the world. This year I was invited by the Government of India and the Indian Science Congress Association to spend six weeks in India, and my wife and I had planned to go to India by way of Europe, and then to continue on to California by way of Bangkok, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Unfortunately we found it necessary to postpone the trip, and I am beginning to plan a similar trip for a year from now.

According to these plans, we shall leave Pasadena about 1 December 1954, and spend the period from 1 January to 15 February 1955 in India. We would then fly to Bangkok, and could stay several days there.

I should be glad to have advice from you as to a suitable hotel in which we might make reservations. Also, let me say that I should be pleased to give some lectures - perhaps a lecture at the University, or before the Chemical Society of Thailand. I might speak on any of the following topics:

The Structure of Antibodies and the Nature of Serological Reactions.

The Valence of Metals and the Structure of Intermetallic Compounds.

The Chemical Bond and the Electronic Structure of Molecules. A Theory of Ferromagnetism.

The Hemoglobin Molecule in Health and Disease.

There is plenty of time - over a year - before the proposed trip, but the fact that the arrangements for the trip this year, which had to be postponed, were made very hastily has suggested that I get in touch with you now. Please let me know if I should write to someone else about the matter of the visit in Thailand.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W

>18 January 1954

Dr. Fritz Lippman

Research Laboratory

Massachusetts General Hospital

Boston, Masschusetts

Dear Fritz:

The announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize to you came while I was on a trip to Israel, and since my return to Pasadena I have neglected to write to you to congratulate you.

Accordingly, I now extend my sincere congratulations. I think that it is fine that you have received this honor.

You know that I am not on the Scientific Advisory of MGH this year, my term having come to its end. Perhaps I shall be reappointed later on, giving me the opportunity to see you at least once a year. In any case, I am looking forward to seeing you again before very long.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:w

18 January 1954

Dear Daddy and Mamma,

I am sorry I have not written to you and Mamma, I was uncertain until today where you were.

I was very disappointed that you could not go on your trip, as I know you were. It was actually quite a blow to me. I had hoped, when your letter of the 4^th came, that you would go on this Cruise to Honolulu. In a way, it would be better than Linda, because you would have rest.

I am working on absolute intensities, molecular space models a radial distribution curve of sperm. I hope to get this finished.

I am trying to arrange a month or so in Naples next summer gathering meat. John would probably go too. Linda has some scheme up her sleeve, but I do not know yet what she will do. I told her I would not make the grand tour, but only go to Italy. More or less.

Crick is really in hot water. Randall and his people are hopping mad. His letter is to be in February J Chem Phys. I made his structure using these brass models here, and think it is wrong. Much too tight. Without straining it, the C α (A) to O (B) distance is 2.2 , and the O (B₁) to C (B₂) is 3 . Now, Francis reduces these I suppose by bending bonds, the C αH (A) to O (B) is 2.4 . It is the DNA structure in peptides; perhaps Francis has spiral staircases on the brain. Anyway, Pauline Cowan, and Morris Wilkins and Randall are pretty angry.

It would seem to me to be pretty useful to know the stabilities of various electronic configurations. A research student friend of mine here has been trying for a couple of years to prove you wrong, but now has about accepted you and become converted.

I received a very nice letter from Anita. I shall write her soon. I cannot tonight, because I must sleep.

It has become rather cold here. My room and bed are now cold.

I rather hope that Linda comes. Perhaps I should buy a car to travel with her. I do not really wish too. I am on a grand book buying spree, my account at Hiffers now being £ 40. I must pay it. I rather like the books.

Mamma, you should give that illustrated history by Trevalyan to Daddy as a Christmas present. You did not seem much impressed, and he suggested it, and it was too expensive to waste.

Daddy, I am not sure you want to keep up all the Penguins. It will be about $50 a year. The[y] have begun a 48 volume series on the History of Art; of which four volumes have appeared. The rate is 4/year st 42/ per volume 1) The Art of Architecture of India. 2) British Painting of 1530-1790 3) English Architecture 1530-1700. They are really very good. Perhaps I should edit the Penguins, and send the ones I think suitable. I can tell in the next few months. The Art Series are really very good.

Your letter of the 4^th January has some reference to a change in the regulations concerning the issue of passports and an intination that you had something to do with this. I have read nothing of it and would appreciate knowing a bit more.

I received a very wonderful letter from Jim Watson. I like him very much. I am sorry he is not here because he added a great deal. I am sorry he must go to Bethesda. Perhaps I shall have to go there also.

I think I shall probably have to stay here four years altogether for my Ph.D. I shall try to get some support somewhere. I am unsure, but it looks as if you shall. I had hoped to get a job with Jera Jagin Viglie and live with Linie and Anita and the boys, but I guess I must be here. Very sad in that respect. Really they must stay two years. One is not enough. A[l]ways rush and cannot learn enough. Two are ten times better. I shall write them.

I wrote Holmes to ask if he would give us the design for his interchangeable base for goniometer heads a couple of months ago, and have received no answer. I am unsure what it means and do not know quite what to do. Perhaps write Arletta and ask her what kicks. If we design them I will probably have to do it. Too bad. I am no engineer and it is very time consuming. This lab is terrible. The Automatic recording powder spectrometer was built by some research student and is now maintained by another. Stupid.

Mamma , you are a darling, I received my package and it is wonderful. The nuts are grand, and the springerlie superb. The dates are wonderful, and I have not yet openned the fruit cake. When it came, I ate the last of last years fruit cake, which I had saved. I like the sweater very much. It is a beautiful light sweater, and I shall try to take care of it. A really lovely color. I think grey sweaters are the most beautiful. There are many sales now. Perhaps I shall buy an overcoat. I am using a raincoat of Jim Watson's , which he left behind.

I have deposited the $175 cheque. I need the money to pay my bills. It will arrive in a week or so. Thanks you very much for the present. I shall find (or really already have found) it very useful.

My Christmas was rather lonely, and I was a bit sad. However the time was very interesting and I learned a great deal from reading and so on. I suppose I am at that stage when Christmases are rather sad and that I should accept it and take advantage of the freedom I am offered.

Please give my greatest love to Linus and Anita and warmest greetings.

Much love , and many hugs and kisses

(XXXXOOOO)e^10! Peter

OOO

19 January 1954

Memo from LP from Himself

Third Report on Collagen

Linus Pauling 11 January 1954.

During the past year I have been trying to find a structure for collagen to replace the 3-chain structure originally proposed.

All of the work has been based on the assumption that the collagen molecule consists of a single polypeptide chain, and also the assumption that the amide groups all have the trans configuration.

A thorough study was made of helical structures involving a repeating unit of three trans amide group, forming two hydrogen bonds. Over a dozen possible structures were found, of which two or three seemed to merit detailed consideration. No structure was found, however, which accounts satisfactorily for the observed negative infrared dichroism, which indicates that the hydrogen bonds make an angle of about 65° with the fiber axis (this is, rather, the angle made by the carbonyl groups and the NH groups). One promising structure is (10, 10, a). (In this nomenclature the numbers of atoms in hydrogen-bonded rings are given, in a sequence in the direction in which the N-H groups point; a signifies that no hydrogen bond is formed by the nitrogen atom.) This structure makes about three turns of the large helix for ten units, and can be made to have axial length 2.86 A per unit. There seem to be somewhat too small van der Waals contacts, however; moreover, the structure gives about zero dichroism, and cannot be made to give negative dichroism. Another interesting structure is (14, 14, a), a gamma-type structure. Interatomic distances in general seem satisfactory. The structure has one three-residue unit in axial length 2.86 A, and is hence satisfactory in this respect. The structure does not account for the layer-line intensities, inasmuch as it has five units in three turns (ten in six turns, rather than ten in seven turns, as indicated by the layer lines); moreover, it gives positive rather than negative infrared dichroism.

It is, in fact, very hard to find structures which give negative infrared dichroism. The three-chain structure with two cis groups and one trans group per unit, is satisfactory in this respect. Crick’s new structure, with the chains, each having two residues in 2.86 A, is also satisfactory – there are four residues per unit, and two hydrogen bonds, in this structure. It is, however, ruled out by some very bad contacts.

I have found a gamma-type structure with a two-residue unit, its symbol being (11, a). Half the residues form hydrogen bonds. The identity distance is about 1.6 A – perhaps it can be made as large as 1.8 A. The infrared dichroism is negative. It does not seem to be compatible with x-ray data.

I have now made a search for structures which have a repeating unit of either three residues or four residues in 2.86 A, and which form a compound helix with ten units in three turns (or seven turns), giving up, however, the requirement of N-H• • •O-C hydrogen bonds be formed in number one less than the number of residues per unit. This search has been thorough but not exhaustive. No promising structure of the gamma type has been found. No structure of the alpha type with one N-H• • •O-C hydrogen bond per three residue unit has been found – it is not possible to achieve three turns in ten units, even with only one hydrogen bond per unit. Moreover, in a structure of the alpha type the hydrogen bonds are nearly parallel to the axis of the helix, and a three-residue structure with length 2.86 A cannot give negative dichroism. A four-residue structure is satisfactory in this respect. The length of four residues along the axis of the alpha helix is 5.9 A. If this is reduced to 2.86 A, the square of the direction cosine becomes (2.86/5.9)² = 0.235. The square along each of the directions in the basal plane is then 0.383, the direction cosine being 0.619, as compared with 0.485 along the fiber axis. This gives a negative dichroic ration of 1.28.

I have assumed that van der Waals contacts eliminate structures with a ten-membered hydrogen-bonded ring. I have not found any satisfactory structure based on the sixteen-membered ring. A structure has been found, however, based on the alpha helix, with four residues per repeating unit, and ten units in three turns of the compound helix. In this structure two N-H• • •O-C hydrogen bonds are formed per unit, and a third nitrogen atom forms a twelve-membered ring involving a water molecule. The symbol can be written (13, 13, a, 12*). The water molecule can, in fact, also be hydrogen bonded to the fourth carbonyl oxygen, by way of an additional water molecule. The angles of the two water molecules are tetrahedral. All van der Waals contacts seem to be satisfactory. The predicted length per unit is close to 2.86 A. The average basal-plane component for the three N-H groups, which make angles of 15°, 15°, and 20° with the basal plane is 0.95, and the axial component is 0.29 – a predicted negative dichroic ratio of about three. For the four carbonyl groups the values are 0.86 and 0.39, respectively, giving a negative ratio of 1.6. These values are in approximate agreement with experiment. Badger has reported that the ratio is about 1.6 for carbonyl and only 1.2 for N-H.

There seems to be only one serious difficulty with this structure. Using the value 1.34 for the density and 95 for the average residue weight, the spacing for the plane 10.0 is calculated to be 12 A, whereas the value 10.4 A has been reported by Astbury for dehydrated collagen, and about 11 or 11.5 for collagen in equilibrium with the atmosphere at ordinary humidity. The difference between 12 A and 10.4 A corresponds to the ratio of four residues to three residues.

The molecules are predicted to be about 12 A in diameter, if the larger side chains are packed into the cavity down the center.

Bear has suggested that the well crystallized parts of collagen have four residues in the length 2.86 A, and perhaps consist mainly of the smaller residues. The presence of what seems to be a meridional reflection with spacing about 4.1 A suggests that there may be two kinds of molecules present in collagen. Further evidence is needed to settle the question.

cc: RB Corey

January 26, 1954

Professor Linus Pauling

Department of Chemistry

California Institute of Technology

Pasadena 4, California

Dear Professor Pauling:

Thank you very much for the draft of the enneamolybdomanganate ion paper. I am glad to see that off the docket. Is anyone in particular planning to continue the work and refine the structure?

Thank you also for getting after Tucker. Tucker had sent a previous draft of his β-Uranium paper to me, and it was much worse. I sent him a bill of complaints, and when his paper came back from the referees for other changes he made the ones I had insisted on, but the result, as you saw, wasn't too happy.

Proof for the paper on Brillouin zones came today and I'll get it off right away.

Today I am sending the draft of the sigma phase paper back to Gunnar. I am in accord with virtually all of the changes and deletions that you and he made, and have made some more of my own. The paper is now by no means short, but is perhaps not over-long. On the seven pages that you suggested be omitted, I agree that there was much too much there considering the paucity of conclusions that could be reached. The suggestion of mine that the space between the two zones is filled with electrons was made rather half-heartedly, and with the half-expectation that you and Gunnar would not like it and with the half-hope that you and he would come up with something better in the way of a Brillouin-zone interpretation. I am now just about reconciled to the conclusion that that big, wonderful Brillouin zone is only about 5/6 filled. It is, however, something of a disappointing contrast to the alloys which so beautifully show filled zones.

My main purpose in writing this letter is to ask you about one of the deletions you made. This was in connection with the fact that the Curie temperatures of sigma phases seem to be very sensitive to (say) the iron-chromium ratio, but not affected at all by the replacement of iron by cobalt or of chromium by molybdenum. I cited this as partial support for the supposition that the ordering of atoms in Sigma FeCr might be the same as in FeMo, on the grounds that the Curie temperature ought to be to some extent a function of the arrangement of the atoms that carry the magnetic moment. Your notation beside the deletion was, "Not required by my theory". By which you mean, I take it, that the uncoupled electrons at the top of the band do not care where the atoms with magnetic moments are.

However, in your paper in the Trans. Far. Soc., in connection with cobalt and nickel, you point out that an improvement in the treatment can be made by assuming that the wave functions are perturbed so that (in the case of nickel) the unpaired electrons spend more of their time near the atoms with J = 1 than near those with J = 0. Presumably, as you state, this would affect the energy and improve the agreement with the observed Curie temperature. However, if it can affect the Curie temperature in the case of cobalt and nickel, could it not also affect the Curie temperature in the case of the sigma phase, if the positions of atoms with magnetic moments were changed? Then, if the Curie temperature is constant, cannot one take this as some indication that the positions of the atoms with magnetic moments are constant, other things being the same?

I do not regard this as a point worth holding up the sigma phase paper over, though, if my reasoning above is correct, my personal preference is that the deletion be restored. However, I would appreciate very much hearing your views on this.

By the way, if you have any spare reprints of your article on ferromagnetism, I would appreciate it very much if you would send me one.

With best regards,

Sincerely yours,

Dave

David P. Shoemaker

DPS:fd

cc: Professor Gunnar Bergman