December 27, 1938

Dr. H. D. Springall

Lincoln College

Oxford, England

Dear Spring:

I was very glad indeed to receive your letter and to learn about your life during the list six months. This period has indeed been a serious one for the world. I am glad that you are able to continue work for some time at Oxford, and I hope that a suitable permanent position for you turns up.

For some months my spare time has been devoted to completing the structure determinations for dimethylacetylene, dimethyldiacetylene, cyanogen, diacetylene, and methyl cyanide, for incorporation with methylacetylene in a paper treating the methylacetylene problem thoroughly. This work is now being completed, and after much thought I have succeeded in writing what seems to me to be a satisfactory discussion. When the paper is typed, in a day or two, I shall send a copy to you, and at the same time submit it to the J.A.C.S. for publication. Please write immediately to me about any suggestions which you have to make, so that they can be incorporated in the proof.

We have on hand photographs of bromohydrindene, bromotetralene, and dibromoxylene, which seem suitable for structure determinations. I could send them to you, or I can measure them and make the calculations here, for joint publication with you. This second course would probably be simpler, since we have facilities here, although it is true that now that you are at Oxford you could do the work in Sutton's laboratory. I shall keep the photographs until I hear from you.

Schlatter has not yet completed his cyclopropane preparation, mainly because he has been kept so busy with class work during his first term as a graduate student that he hasn't been able to devote much time to research.

I shall write to Sutton separately about sulfurylchloride. Beach and Stevenson at Princeton have also made another investigation of this substance.

If you send some trimethylstibinedibromide I shall have the trimethylstibine photographed.

We are now getting nicely settled in the new laboratory, with the electron diffraction apparatus just about in operation again and with most of the x-ray apparatus at work. Did you know that Coryell had been appointed Instructor at U.C.L.A.? We see him about once a week, but not often enough to keep us from missing him. Corey is staying on here, and he has just finished up Albrecht's investigation of the crystal structure of glycene, which is thus the first amino acid for which a satisfactory crystal structure determination has been made. Levy is spending a post-doctorate year, and is working on alanine, while Hughes, whom you remember at Cornell, is attempting to handle glycylglycine. I hope that complete structure determinations can be made of other compounds in this group also. Corey himself is going to carry on x-ray work on the proteins themselves from now on.

Please write again. With best wishes for the coming year, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP/jr