6 January 1958

Dr. and Mrs. Linus Pauling, Jr.

3909 Round Top Drive

Honolulu, T.H.

Dear Linus and Anita:

I have just received word from the Office of President DuBridge that you have made a gift to the California Institute of Technology for support of research in the field of chemistry and chemical biology under my direction during the coming year, and I am writing to express my thanks to you.

I think that I may have told you before that this fund is the most useful of all of the funds that we have for support of my research, because it is not restricted to research of a particular sort, and hence permits us to attack some problem that had not been thought of some months or a year earlier, at the time when applications are being made for funds.

Right now I am especially interested to see how the experiments on injection of deoxyribosenucleic acid into rats will turn out. We are injecting material obtained from the glands of brown rats into albino rats, in the hope of inducing some pigmentation. At the same time, of course, we are injecting material similarly prepared from other albino rats into the albino rats, which can then serve as controls.

We are also starting to build up a stock of rats with congenital jaundice, known to be the result of the lack of a certain enzyme. We are going to find out whether the injection of deoxyribosenucleic acid prepared from normal rats will cure this disease.

Mama and I have just returned from a week at the ranch. We drove up to Carmel on Saturday 28 December, and on that evening I spoke to the meeting of college students at Asilomar, a meeting sponsored by the Y.M.C.A. and Y.W.C.A. Then on Sunday we drove back to the ranch, where I worked most of the time on the preparation of a third edition of THE NATURE OF THE CHEMICAL BOND. Crellin and Lucy and their baby stopped by for one day, on their way back to Portland. On the way home Mama and I stopped at Shell Beach, just north of Pismo Beach, where we talked with a fuchsia grower about sending 40 or 50 small plants to you. He said that the best time to ship would be in March or perhaps April. I think that he will write to you, sending a catalog, inasmuch as he does not have all of the varieties that you have listed.

Much love from

Linus Pauling:w