13 July 1956

13 July 1956

Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, Georgia

Dear Bill:

Your letter of 6 June arrived while we were in Italy, where I was giving a lecture on Avogadro, in connection with a commemorative ceremony, and also speaking before local sections of the Italian Chemical Society.

As to Dr. R. F. Bacher, I may say that I think that he would be a first-rate president of Georgia Tech. He has a very good personality, and is in my opinion unusually well suited to administrative work - he is thoughtful and reliable in his administrative decisions. It seems to me that he resembles Dr. DuBridge, President of the California Institute of Technology, in his personal characteristics and his suitability to university administration.

As to whether he would be interested in the position, I am not able to say. He is Chairman of the Division of Physics, Mathematics, and Astronomy in the Institute here, and he may feel satisfied with this job - I, for example, do not want to have any other job than the one that I have now, and Bacher may feel the same way. However, I think, judging from his activities during recent years, that he does not have the deep interest in research that I have. His work as chairman of the division here is almost entirely administrative - no teaching, and only rather general supervision of a research program, on the electron synchrotron. If the possibilities of Georgia Tech seemed to him to be great enough, he might be attracted to the job.

Another man that you might want to consider is Harrison Brown. He is Professor of Geochemistry here. He has written a book, "The Challenge of Man's Future," on a popular subject, and he writes a special page for the Saturday Review of Literature. He has also published a book in his own field of geochemistry. He is an unusually personable fellow,

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who is apt, I think, to end up as a university president. His original training was in chemistry, at Berkeley, and then was in the atomic energy work during the war. His wife is an extraordinary person, with interests of her own. She is a granddaughter of William Jennings Bryan.

How are things going with you? We have made some big changes in our undergraduate curriculum, and if you come to Pasadena at sometime you might be interested to check up on them.

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W