November 5, 1935
Dear Professor Fieser:
Dr. Wheland and I have decided not to publish our manuscript on naphthalene, although Lamb accepted it for publication. Eyring, as a Referee, wrote "One cannot deny the essential correctness of the arguments of Pauling and Wheland" (Eyring is of course a quantum-mechanics man) but also said "P & W.'s paper is unnecessarily dogmatic and rude". On reading it again, I realize that this is so, and I wish to apologize to you for this.
I realize too that you are right in saying that your paper does not discuss resonance (aside from a brief remark), but rather the different question of tautomerism, and that it provides a valuable contribution in this regard. Our paper was a recapitulation of arguments to show that your results are also compatible with a resonating structure. I would be sorry if you were to ignore resonance completely - perhaps you could devise some chemical method of testing for resonance.
Yours truly,
Linus Pauling
November
5, 1935
