February 3, 1965
Professor Gordon M. Harris
Department of Chemistry
State University of New York at Buffalo
Buffalo, New York 14214
Dear Professor Harris:
I am happy to learn that the Committee of the Western New York Section of the American Chemical Society is considering the possibility of giving the 1965 Schoellkopf Medal to Dave Pressman. I think that he would he an admirable recipient of this medal.
I was pleased that the first award of the Schoellkopf Medal was made at the same time as the first award of the Lang Prize (the ACS award in pure chemistry), and that I was on the program together with Mr. Cone when he received the first Schoellkopf Medal.
I have a very high opinion of Dr. Pressman. I worked in close cooperation with him for about eight years. During much of this time we wars working together on the development of a theory of the structure of antibodies and the nature of serological reactions and the execution of experiments to test the theory. The experimental work on artificial antigens and haptens and their interaction with antibodies was carried out very effectively by Dr. Pressman, who contributed a great deal in the way of ideas as well as of techniques. He was, in fact, essentially in charge of this work, which was carried out with a rather large number of collaborators, about ten graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Since that time Dr. Pressman has continued work in this field and has carried on work in other fields. I shall not discuss his later work, because no doubt you have full information about it. I may only say that I have helped him by submitting some papers to the proceedings of the national Academy of Sciences, with my responsibility for their high caliber. These papers are not subjected to any editorial consideration, but are published as received.
With the repeated statement that I consider Dr. Pressman to be fully worthy of the Schoellkopf Medal, I am,
Sincerely yours,
mjh Linus Pauling
February
3, 1965
