May 15, 1969

Dr. Peter J. Pauling

Flat 11

1/S Hornton St.

London W8

England

Dear Peter:

Thanks for your letter, with news about the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mama and I have bought a house in the neighborhood of Stanford University. It has a lot of bookshelves, and I suggest that you mail the new dictionary, volume by volume, to me at Chemistry Dept., Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.

We have bought a rather interesting house (the sale is not yet concluded, because it hasn't gone through escrow, but there seems little doubt that it will go through). It is in the hills southwest of Stanford, approximately five miles from the lab. I think that it is in the city of Portola Valley. It has 2.4 acres of land, shaped almost exactly like the Fairpoint property, and with a house with a bend in it, again with a slight resemblance to the Fairpoint property. We are to move in on about 15 June.

Mama seems to be better pleased with the idea of being at Stanford than she has been here in La Jolla, but I think that she would like to move permanently to the ranch, before many years.

The Chemistry Department at Stanford is rather crowded. I shall have one lab there, for the work on schizophrenia, approximately the size of the lab here. I think that this work has been going along well. We now have some new results on 35 chronic schizophrenics at Patton State Hospital. They were tested for three vitamins. Of the total of 105 tests, 22 came out abnormally low. Fourteen patients were abnormally low in one vitamin, and four in two. I think that this is good evidence against the rather generally accepted idea that the low values found for schizophrenics were to be attributed to malnutrition, because I would expect the malnourished patients to be low in all three vitamins, and we found none in that category.

We probably shall change the nature of our schizophrenia work somewhat at Stanford. Art Robinson is going along with me. The Biology Department here got him to accept a one-year leave of absence from his appointment as assistant professor. My theoretical assistant, Dr. Ian Keaveny, is also going along, as well as two graduate students, John Blethen and Margaret Blethen. Art and Ian and I have just finished a paper on the low-temperature form of molecular fluorine correcting a pretty poor paper published by Barrett and coworkers. It came out quite nicely. John Blethen is working on the general problem of magnetic moments of molecules. I have a second note on this subject in press, and hope that a more thorough analysis will give some interesting results. I think that I shall have Ian Keaveny do some more x-ray work, using experimental intensities from the literature (in papers where I think the authors have made a mistake). Also, we have some powder photographs of some of our own preparations, the powder photographs having been made by the Geology Department at CIT. Ian is also asking some quantum mechanical calculations about bonding.

Your mail to us should be addressed to Stanford after 15 June.

I don't know about any jobs in the United States, but I am sure that there are plenty of them. I suggest that you ought to teach general chemistry. It is hard to find enthusiastic teachers of general chemistry, who can hold the interest of the students, and many universities would probably be glad to grab you up for a job of this sort. The old fashioned laboratory is on its way out. The teaching of qualitative analysis is being dropped, and there is less emphasis on laboratory for general chemistry in the better universities than there used to be. Linda said a few days ago that Jurg Wasser seemed to be unhappy, and she thought that this might be in part the result of the decision of the Department of Chemistry at CIT to cut down on the freshman lab in chemistry in a very significant way. I think that you have a good background for handling general chemistry.

I do not think that the problem of getting grants is as serious as you suggest. The people in NIH and NSF have in mind that young men need to be supported.

I look forward to talking with you about the structural problems that you mention in your letter, especially about angles around single bonds.

Mama and I are still uncertain about our travel plans for the summer. I am speaking on 13 August at Stony Brook (the crystallographic meeting). Then about 17 August or 20 August we shall probably fly to London, to visit you for a few days. We want to go to Oslo. We are required to be at a meeting in Bellagio, north of Milan, from 10 September to 14 September, and in Stockholm from 14 to 20 September, and shall probably fly to Stanford on 20 September or 21 September. Is the period around 20 August satisfactory to you for us to visit you?

Much love from,

Daddy