11 October 1954

Dear Peter:

I am writing to you again because there is a chance that you could help us improve the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of the California Institute of Technology.

Here is some information that you should keep to yourself. You know that after the death of Professor Tolman John Kirkwood was appointed Professor of Physical Chemistry here. He gave some very good graduate courses, and everything was going alone fine, until he resigned, to become chairman of the department in Yale. We have not appointed another professor of physical chemistry, and we should like to do so. I have had a hard time thinking of a physical chemist who was doing unusually outstanding work, in a filed of unusual promise for the future.

Now we are considering the possibility of offering appointment as professor of physical chemistry to Charles Kittel. He is Professor of Physics at Berkeley. He is now 38 years old, and he has written a book on physics of the solid state. He uses it as a textbook for seniors and graduate students in the University of California. It seems to me to be a very good book.

Mama and I got acquainted with him when we went to Idylwild this summer, to take part in the small conference on the magnetism of rocks. By the way, his last name is accented on the second syllable.

I think that he is responsible for what is called cyclotron resonance in germanium. This is an experiment in which, if I understand correctly, electrons are made to move in circles inside a germanium crystal. They are, of course, electrons that have been excited into the upper band, usually unoccupied. They move in a circle because of the presence of a magnetic filed that is imposed on the crystal. They are accelerated by sending in microwaves, which correspond to the alternating electric potential between the dees in a cyclotron. I judge that he has done a number of other interesting things in solid state physics. His book shows that he has more of an appreciation of chemistry than many physicists have.

I understand that he was asked if he would care to be considered as successor to Pryce in the chair of theoretical physics in Oxford. Now, here is where you come in. Kittel was in Cambridge for three or four years, I think. At any rate he got his bachelor’s degree in Cambridge, in 1938. The he took his Ph.D. in Wisconsin.

You might inquire discreetly about him, and see whether the Cambridge people have any information that you think would be interesting to us, in making up our minds about how hard we should work to get him on our staff. I don’t know what college he was connected with. No doubt, however, the theoretical people in the Cavendish know about his work, and it might be worth while for you to find out what their opinion of him is.

You may be interested to know that was Mama’s idea that we consider Kittel for appointment.

Also, he married an English girl, in 1938, about the time when he got his bachelor’s degree. We have not met her.

Mama has mentioned to me that you had asked her if Norman Davidson was going to continue teaching general chemistry. We have an agreement with him that sooner or later he will be transferred to the teaching of more advanced courses, probably physical chemistry. At the present time he gives a couple of advanced courses- I think one on reaction kinetics and one on radioactivity. I think that has been doing a good job handling the graduate assistants in the laboratory. Did you know that he is to receive a medal? He will be given the California award in a day or two, by the California Section of the American Chemical Society. It is a gold medal that is given to a young Californian chemist, each year. He is to receive it because of his work on the rates of extremely fast reactions – he measures them by studying the properties of a shock wave moving through a tube containing the gas that can undergo chemical reaction, and studying the shock waves spectroscopically. Also, Professor Swift will receive a national award, the Fisher award in analytical chemistry, given by the national American Chemical Society.

Love from

[Linus Pauling]