October 20, 1939

Dr. Warren Weaver

The Rockefeller Foundation

49 West 49th Street

New York, New York

Dear Warren:

Since the publication of our protein paper Dr. Niemann and I have received a number of letters regarding it, in addition to a great many requests for reprints. I have thought that you might be interested to read some of these comments, and I am enclosing a copy of the remarks made by Homer Adkins and by Todd. The letters have all been in this vein.

After the publication of the paper, a long rebuttal was submitted by Dr. Wrinch to Lamb for publication in the Journal. Lamb sent it to us, in order that we might make any comments we desired. We pointed out that the rebuttal contained no new material, except for a few statements, all of which we felt to be either incorrect or trivial. We suggested that Lamb might accept for publication in the Journal a clear and concise rebuttal to our paper, but not one of the sort submitted. We have heard nothing about this for some time now, and I think that perhaps no response will appear.

Wrinch's work has indeed caused a great deal of attention to be focused on the fundamental problem of protein chemistry, that of the structure of protein molecules. I hope that the work which we are carrying on now which is progressing nicely, will help in the solution of this problem.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling