CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
PASADENA
GATES CHEMICAL LABORATORY
November 29, 1927
Dear Pauling:
I was glad to get Goudsmit’s letter.
In view of the face that the monograph will be used by students and researchers in physics even more than by those in
chemistry, it is probably unwise to publish it as a Chemical Monograph if another publisher can be promptly secured. I am
not at all sure, however, that It will be much used as a class text-book. Probably it would be mainly bought by individual
advanced students in physics and physical chemistry and by investigators in those fields and in astrophysics. Books on small
parts of a science, such as radioactivity, spectroscopy, photochemistry, are seldom used even by graduate classes, who commonly
want the whole of a subject (such at least as sub-atomic physics and chemistry) presented concisely in a singly book. I have
rather hoped our C.I.T. group might get out such a sub-atomic text-book, using Goudsmit’s treatment as an integral part of
it, but it is perhaps too difficult to arrange.
I do not know whether MacMillan is the best publisher for a book of this kind; but have no better suggestion to make.
He isn’t keen after new books, as the McGraw-Hill Company are; and he is likely to make considerable delay. They will want
to see the final manuscript before they will agree to publish it.
I hope Goudsmit’s presentation is really clear and intelligible – not written like Hund’s book for people who know half
the subject already.
The only possibility I see of getting him out here would be during next summer, in view of his Ann Arbor position.
Yours sincerely,
Arthur A. Noyes
