June 12, 1944
Dr. R. B. Corey
Linus Pauling
I think that a part of our post-war program of intensive research might deal with hemoglobin, including the study of the oxygen-equilibrium
curve, the dissociation of hemoglobin by urea, the properties of hemoglobin re-synthesized by adding heme to globin, and so
on; and that a part might also deal with porphyrins, which are important both for hemoglobin and for chlorophyll.
What is the progress of our effort to get a new spectrophotometer for Chemistry-13?
Linus Pauling
P.S. I think that we could do a good job on elucidating the nature of the isomerization of porphyrins. Chromatographic
methods have been successfully applied by S. Aranoff and M. Calvin, Journal of Organic Chemistry, 8, 205, (1943). They have
found six isomers, and I think that they should have isolated seven.
