July 31, 1939
Dr. L. E. Sutton
1, Eastchurch
Iffley, Oxford
England
Dear Sutton:
The sight of your letter of April 25th on my desk has reminded me that I owe you a letter. Without doubt you know by this time that I have decided that our projected European trip for this summer is not taking place. This decision was due to several factors; (1) that I have a great deal of work to do in the Laboratories, (2) that the European political situation looked sufficiently disturbing to suggest that our trip might not be as pleasant as it should be, and (3) that the job of financing our new house has left me pretty short of money.
Schomaker and Stevenson and the other electron diffraction men have been making good progress, with the help of the best photographs that the apparatus has yet produced. They have photographed methane, N2, O2, Br2, and CO2, and have obtained results agreeing with the spectroscopic ones to within 0.005 Å in every case except methane, for which 1.11 Å was found. Schomaker has shown that it is often desirable to consider the temperature factors in calculating intensity curves. The boys have completed structure determinations for formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, finding the C-O distance 1.21 or 1.22 Å, and Schomaker's new value for the C=C double bond distance is 1.33 Å. This suggests a small revision in the double bond radii.
Niemann and I have received a reply to our protein paper in the form of a very long rebuttal submitted by Wrinch. This consists mostly of repetition of old published statements together with some new incorrect statements, and we are hoping that Lamb will be able to talk her out of publishing the rebuttal or will require extensive revision of it, so that the issues involved are not clouded in a mass of verbiage.
My wife and I had a pleasant months trip by car to Chicago. On the way back we camped in the Black Hills of South Dakota, in Yellowstone, and in the Grand Teton National park, where we made some interesting climbs.
With best regards to Mrs. Sutton, I am
Sincerely yours,
LP/jr
July
31, 1939
