11 June 1954
Dr. Fred Allen
Department of Chemistry
Purdue University
Lafayette, Indiana
Dear Fred:
Thanks very much for your good letter of 8 May. I am glad to have the news of you and your family. Ava Helen and I hope that Mrs. Allen has a fine trip to Alaska by bus.
We are going to make quite a long auto trip this summer, beginning day after tomorrow. Ava Helen and I are driving to Portland, where I am to give the Commencement address at Reed College on Sunday. Then we are starting off on Monday with Linda accompanying us. We are driving to Toronto, then to Hanover, New Hampshire, and then back home. Perhaps Linda will not come home with us, but take the plane from Toronto to England. She is planning to stay in Cambridge for a year, with Peter, who is still working toward his Ph.D. there. He is working on the structure of myoglobin, as determined by x-ray diffraction.
I am going to prepare a second edition of COLLEGE CHEMISTRY this summer, and I am very glad to have your comments on the second edition of GENERAL CHEMISTRY. I think that I shall change my discussion of kinds of atoms - thanks very much for your remarks.
I believe that I shall put in a little more about colloids, but not very much more.
As to water-cooling of blast furnaces, I wish that you would tell me what I should say. I am afraid that I do not know what the situation is.
Thanks also for the comment about the melting point of
arsenic.
Here is a question that I should like to ask you about COLLEGE CHEMISTRY. It seems to me that there is definitely too
Dr. Allen
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11/6/54
much material in the book, and that something should be cut out. I have asked a number of people about this matter, and so far no one has given me a definite answer as to what should be cut out. What sections do you think should be removed?
I am going to try to rewrite parts of the book in simpler language. I judge that students find it a hard book to read.
With best regards, I am
Sincerely yours,
Dictated by Linus Pauling Signed in his absence:W