SEP 25 1944 REC'D
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
49 WEST 49th STREET, NEW YORK 20
September 21, 1944.
Dear Linus:
I am sorry that there has been so much delay in answering your letter of August 18th.
I am still spending all of my time on war work, and Frank Hanson and I accordingly
get very little opportunity to talk things over. We have talked about your letter
several times, however, and I would like to give you a wholly informal and personal
reaction to it.
First of all, let me say at once that the problems you have in mind seem to us to
be of absolutely first-rate importance. It seems to us one of the fields in which
we ought to have a specially active interest. Furthermore, it seems to me important
that we try to carry over into peace-time research some of the ways of working together
which have been found so effective during the war.
On the other hand, I must confess to a good deal of skepticism as to whether it is
either possible or desirable to carry over, into peace-time research, many of the
elements of organization and control which properly and inevitably characterize war-time
work.
There is another matter which gives me a little concern- The proposal of your letter
is based, at least in part, on the presumption that a large number of well-trained
scientists will be looking for employment when the war comes to an end. I agree that
there will be a large number of the younger men who will be shifting their employment;
but I cannot persuade myself that it is going to be very easy to get able and well-trained
men. I would anticipate that, to take care of the accumulated backlog, and under
the stimulus of Federal support, the undergraduate registration in our colleges and
universities would be very high indeed. This will make a great demand for teachers,
and particularly for younger teachers and elementary subjects. I should suppose
that the demand for teaching assistants would be a very active one.
Therefore it does not seem to me either realistic or proper or necessary to think
of your proposal as, in any -way, a way of taking up slack. I am sure that you,
yourself, did not intend it so. But I would have been less disturbed if you had
remarked that it would probably be very ...difficult to get the men you wanted but that the problem was so important and the opportunity so attractive that you
nevertheless thought you could succeed.
I hope you will not interpret the tone of this letter as unduly critical or discouraging.
I mean to be neither. As I said at the beginning, the problem seems to me one of
compelling interest and importance. I am not at all sure that we would be prepared
to consider support on quite so large a scale as you propose, but I would certainly
be interested to have your comments as to the probable relative effectiveness of programs
of different sizes. I would also like to have your reactions to the comments of
this letter. I think it would be entirely feasible for us to give active consideration
to such a situation at the present time. Indeed, if the scheme could be set up with
sufficient flexibility to adjust itself to events, I would rather hope that, if we
were in fact going to make any proposal to our Trustees at all, we could make it at
the December meeting this year. This, in turn, would make it necessary that the
proposal be pretty well worked out by November 1st. And this, in turn, indicates
that the correspondence on this subject had certainly better not be much delayed from
now on:
Very cordially,
Warren Weaver.
Professor Linus Pauling
Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry
California Institute of Technology Pasadena
California
WW:WH
