April 16, 1947

Dr. E. Bright Wilson, Jr. Department of Chemistry

Harvard University

12 Oxford Street

Cambridge 38, Massachusetts

Dear Bright:

I am sure that you will do a fine job in presenting a talk at the Richards Medal ceremony.

It is correct that my paper with Dickinson on molybdenite was my first published work, and the one on magnesium stannide the first one without co-authors. You have received my bibliography, have you not?

Ava Helen and I are very pleased to accept your invitation to stay with you and Emily. We arrive in Boston, from Princeton, on Tuesday morning, at 6:45 A.M. If you will write to me at the Hay-Adams House, Washington, where we shall arrive on Monday, the 28th, giving your address, we shall take a cab directly out to your place. We are leaving for home on Friday afternoon. I am afraid that we have accepted dinner invitations for the two free evenings, with Warren Lothrop and the Bridgmans — I am not sure about the latter, because Ava Helen has been carrying on the correspondence. However, this will lighten the load on Emily.

I am very glad to learn how well your microwave work is going. I have been excited about this, since talking with you and seeing the apparatus in operation at the Ball Laboratories. I am sure that you are right in expecting to get very exciting results quite easily. After getting back to Pasadena I bustled around trying to arrange to have work of this sort done here, but finally gave up. It will be fine to be able to see your equipment and results.

Norman Davidson, about whom you ask, is Instructor in Chemistry here. He is in charge of the freshman laboratory work, and supervises the nine teaching fellows who serve as assistants. He also gives some of the freshman lectures, when I am away from town, which is about one-third of the time. I think that he is an able man. He is pleasant, lively, and original. He has an interest in general inorganic chemistry, especially problems dealing with the solid state, and he has a background of experience in structural chemistry and in radiochemistry. He is in charge of our hot laboratory, but he does not plan to make radiochemistry his primary field. He is not available for appointment next year, because he has definitely accepted renewal of his appointment here, and he will have responsibility for all of the freshman teaching during the second and third terms, when I am at Oxford. The responsibility is so great, and the problem that we would have in case that he were not here so great, that I am sure that he would feel that his acceptance of the appointment was binding. He has been here only since last August, and the Division has not yet made a decision about his promotion to an Assistant Professorship.

Sincerely yours,

[Linus Pauling]

Linus Pauling:par