13 March 1954

Mr. Ben May

P.O. Box 1186

Mobile 7, Alabama

Dear Mr. May:

I am writing to tell you that I am grateful to you for sending me clippings about sickle cell anemia, and I hope that you will continue to do so. Moreover, I hope that you will send me clippings about any other matter that you think might be appropriate for our attention. I am at the present time looking about for another field of application of chemistry to medical problems. Dr. Harvey Itano, who has done most of the work on abnormal hemoglobins here, is soon to be transferred to Bethesda - he is an officer of the Public Health Service, and the Service plans that he have a group of people working on these problems there. I feel that I could do best now by trying to start up another new field of research.

I have been invited to give a Harvey Lecture in New York next month, and I shall summarize our work on the abnormal hemoglobins in this lecture.

Professor Beadle and I are well pleased with the way things have been developing for us during the last year. A new laboratory of chemical biology is to be built, with use of a bequest of something over a million dollars, from Mr. Norman Church, who died last year. The biologists who are interested in application of chemical methods to biological problems will occupy one end of this laboratory, and the chemists the other end. We have been very crowded in the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry during the last few years, and the new laboratory space will fill a great need. In particular, it will permit us to have several young M.D.'s around, who will through work here become better trained for a career of medical research.

The problem that we have to work on now is that of equipping the new laboratory. In December 1953 the Rockefeller Foundation approved a grant of $1,500,000 to the California Institute of Technology for support of the program of research in the field of chemical biology, on condition that an equal sum be raised for the same purpose during the next three years. We have just learned that a gift of $300,000 for this purpose has been made by a man in the Los Angeles district, and accordingly 20 percent of our goal has been achieved.

On Monday I am going to Antioch College for a few days, in connection with their celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the college. Then I am stopping in Kansas City, where my collaborator Dr. Harvey Itano is to receive the Eli Lilly Award in Biochemistry, given him for his work on the discovery of abnormal hemoglobins.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W