20 August 1954

Mr. Herbert Hoover, Jr.

915 Orland Road

San Marino, California

Dear Mr. Hoover:

I am writing to express to you my pleasure on learning of your appointment as Under Secretary of State by President Eisenhower. I wish also to congratulate you on this honor, and the opportunity for service to the Nation that it provides. I am especially pleased to know that an unusually able man, with sound understanding and high principles, will be occupying this important post in our national government.

Have you seen the big hole that has been dug just west of the Crellin Laboratory? The contractor is now pouring concrete for the fittings, and Professor Beadle and I are hopeful that the new Norman Church Laboratory of Chemical Biology will be available for occupancy in September 1955.

I enclose a reprint, not quite up to date, about some of our work on application of chemistry to problems of biology and medicine. It has pleased me very much that the discovery that diseases could be the result of abnormalities in the structure of molecules was made in the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry of the California Institute of Technology.

With best regards, and my congratulations, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP:mf

Encl.

The Hemoglobin Molecule in Health and Disease AND Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease (1333)