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Letter from Linus Pauling to James Watson and Francis Crick. March 27, 1953.
Pauling writes to thank Watson and Crick for providing him with a pre-publication copy of their Nature letter and to express his excitement at learning which of the two proposed DNA structures is correct. Pauling also briefly details a few corrections that he and Corey have made to their model.

Transcript

27 March 1953

Dr. J. D. Watson

Mr. F.H.C. Crick

Cavendish Laboratory

Free School Lane

Cambridge, England

Dear Dr. Watson and Mr. Crick:

I am very glad to have your letter of 21 March, and to see the letter that you are sending off to NATURE.

I think that it is fine that there are now two proposed structures for nucleic acid and I am looking forward to finding out what the decision will be as to which is incorrect. Without doubt the King's College data will eliminate one or the other.

We have taken care of the trouble of too small van der Waals contacts in our structure by rotating the phosphate groups. I do not think that the matter of repulsion between the charged phosphates is an important one. I am not saying, however, that I feel strongly that our structure is right, rather than yours.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W

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