16 January 1956

Dr. Richard T. Arnold

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Inc.

30 Rockefeller Plaza

New York 20, N.Y.

Dear Dr. Arnold:

I am writing to nominate Professor John D. Roberts for a grant for support of research by the Sloan Foundation, in the field of exploratory work on organic syntheses and reaction mechanisms.

For some time I did not think of nominating Professor Roberts, because I had the feeling that you were interested in younger men. However, I realize that Professor Roberts is only 37 years old, and that I had thought of him as older because he has such a fine reputation as a scientist. I think that you know Professor Roberts well enough for me to make only a rather brief proposal.

Professor Roberts would like to have some uncommitted funds to permit him to investigate rather long-shot possibilities in the field of organic chemistry - researches requiring rather more skillful and adventurous personnel than even the best graduate students, who tend to conservatism because of thesis requirements. He would like to have funds enough for a post-doctoral fellow, over a two or three year period, who might work on meta-stable organic substances obtainable only by unusual reactions, and preservable in substantial quantities at liquid air or liquid helium temperatures. This work might be done in part in collaboration with Professor Pellam. The grant required for this purpose would be about $6,000 per year.

At the present time Professor Roberts is carrying on research in organic chemistry with the aid of general funds of the California Institute of Technology, and also of the following special funds:

1. Carbonium ion rearrangements (l954-1956), supported by the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society, about $8,000 per year. Application has been made for a terminal award, for the year 1956-1957.

2. Small-ring compounds (1955-1957), supported by the National Science Foundation, about $6,000 per year.

3. Fixation of nitrogen (1954-), supported by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, one grant of $15,000, to be spread out as desired.

In addition, Professor Roberts has applied to the Office of Naval Research for support of research in the fields of photochemistry and nuclear magnetic resonance, $10,000 per year for one to three years.

It is my opinion that Professor Roberts is so outstanding in originality that it is well worth while for him to be given support that he may use in carrying out investigations along imaginative and perhaps unpromising lines. His Guggenheim Fellowship grant is of this sort, but it will be used up before long, and Professor Roberts has some other ideas that he wishes to try out.

I think that Professor Roberts is one of the most promising, able, and original organic chemists in the country, and that he could be counted on to do something worth while with a grant made to him by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W