"I hope you'll write to Prof. J. T. Randall, Kings College, Strand, London. His coworker, Dr. M. Wilkins, told me he had some good fibre pictures of nucleic acid."
Gerald Oster. Letter to Linus Pauling. August 9, 1951.

"It would be nice if your model of the seven strand cable is correct. Riley and I postulated a nearly similar arrangement for desoxyribose nucleic acid. It is conceivable that the protein cables could fit alongside of or be intermingled with the nucleic acid cables to form nucleoproteins-but I guess I'm off in the realm of fantasy."
Gerald Oster. Letter from Gerald Oster to Linus Pauling. January 26, 1953.

"First, as to the form factor of the 7-strand cable, I must say that Crick has written me that he has evaluated the form factor for a compound helix exactly. His expression is without doubt similar to the Cochran, Crick, and Vand expression for a simple helix. I have been interested, however, in approximate expression that involve less work in calculation."
Linus Pauling. Letter from Linus Pauling to Gerald Oster. January 29, 1953.

"I have read through your paper on deoxyribonucleic acid-I think that you gave me a reprint, which, however, I lost, so that I had forgotten about your work until reminded by your letter. Unless I have misunderstood this paper too, the structure that you discussed for aggregates of nucleic acid molecules did not involved 6 twisted about a seventh, but rather 6 arranged hexagonally about a seventh, and with axes parallel with that of the seventh."
Linus Pauling. Letter from Linus Pauling to Gerald Oster. January 29, 1953.

"I should be interested to know what sort of work you are carrying on at the present time. You mentioned your plan to do some work on proteins in the future; have you started on this work, or are you working on nucleic acids, or other substances?"
Linus Pauling. Letter from Linus Pauling to Gerald Oster. January 29, 1953.

"As you will see from our nucleic acid work, we considered a helical model, however, parameters can so be chosen as to fit any data. Hence, we were satisfied to choose the rod model which, at least, can be discussed more uniquely in terms of our data. Riley and I found, experimentally, a spacing of 16Å for the unhydrated nucleic acid molecule but the value is based on an extrapolation of our observed data and hence may be in error." "I am not at the present time working with the X-ray diffraction of nucleic acid. Curiously enough, my main interest is in the photochemistry of dyes in solution in an optimistic attempt to explain certain biological phenomena such as vision. My work may never help to explain these phenomena but the photochemical properties of dyes in solution are themselves fascinating."
Gerald Oster. Letter from Gerald Oster to Linus Pauling. February 3, 1953.

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