April 6, 1967

Dear Peter:

Sometime ago you talked with me about the possibility of our writing a textbook for High School chemistry. I continue to think that this would be a good idea. It would, however, require that you do a lot of work; I think that the minimum would be that you put in a year of full time work, here with me in California.

My circumstances are such that I find it difficult to do the various jobs that I need to do, and it would be rather hard for me to find even one day per week, say, to devote to this activity.

I am writing to you now about another possibility that might be an alternative.

The third edition of The Nature of the Chemical Bond appeared in 1960. Over the years I have received royalties on this book, since the second edition was published, in 1940, I think that the book is selling at the rate of about 5,000 copies per year, not including translations into foreign languages.

I devote part of my time, possibly ten percent, to reading scientific literature in the field of molecular structure and quantum mechanics of molecules, and making notes of papers that might be referred to in the fourth edition. I have in mind publishing the fourth edition in 1970, if I can get the job done by then. The amount of work now being carried out in the molecular structure field is so great that it would not be sensible, I think, to try to cover the whole subject in an exhaustive manner. What I have in mind is to revise the treatment of the portions of the subject that are discussed in the third edition, and to add references to new results that bear on the subject or that provide good examples of the general principles. I probably would add some new sections (for example, on the rotational motion of molecules in crystals and on the nature of the forces of van der Waals attraction) that have not been treated in the third edition.

Would you be interested in assisting me in the preparation of the fourth edition? If you were interested, you could start out at once by making notes about papers of importance, stating or adding to the note the page of the third edition to which the work is pertinent. Then you could send me the notes, perhaps once every three months, keeping carbon copies. I would attach the notes to the special interleaved copies of the book that I have had made. I have been checking Acta Crystallographica, Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the Royal Society, Transactions of the Faraday Society, and a few other journals. I have not been checking the journal of the Chemical Society, although I receive it. Also, I have not been checking the Scandinavian journals and German and French journals. I would think that these would be journals that you should check.

Also, it would be fine if you would consider the question of what new topics should be added to the book, and perhaps also of what sections in the third edition that might possibly be omitted. Especially important is the question of whether there are some new principles of molecular structure that ought to be included.

If you were interested in doing this work, and would put in as much time at it as I put in (four hours per week, say) I would ask Cornell University Press to send you $3,000 out of the next year's royalties, and an additional $3,000 each year.

I think that it might well be justified to continue work, after the appearance of the fourth edition, with the idea of getting out a fifth edition in 1980, a sixth edition in 1990, and so on.

Perhaps in the course of time you could take over the major part of the work.

Much love from

Daddy