[from the Biltmore? Madison Avenue at 43^rd Street, New York City. Note from Cliff 2/1/46]

Friday night

Dear love:

I have arrived in New York in good shape. The Conants bad to go to a banquet last night and I had dinner with Dean Buck- also Bright W., EJ Cohn, Edsall, Lamb, Fieser, and Van Vleck- at the Soc. of Fellows. Our commitee met today- not very exciting- and then lunched with Conant. We visited the mineralogical museum, and I talked with Bright a while before having to leave to catch the train. All is going well- I've read the Guggenheim digests carefully.

Everyone sends love to you, including your Paddy

Tomorrow I'll see Moe. I've just arrived in New York- 10 P.M.

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Feb 2

Saturday night

Dear love:

Our first Guggenheim meeting has gone along well. Moe, Wallace N., Dr Sabin, & Louie Wright were there. Aydelotte is in London, and EB Wilson in Glasgow- he has been retired at Harvard, and has a lectureship " " [in Glasgow]. We had lunch together, and dinner (except Miss Sabin).

I asked Moe's advice about the Eastman Professorship. He thinks it is wonderful, and he recommends our suggesting going over at Christmas. (He is Treasurer of the Eastman Trust.) He said AH Compton was E.D. for only two terms, and someone else for only one. He said that the house, now in bad repair after the Fishers has it during the war (renting our some rooms, too), will be repaired this summer; it is somewhat better in heating and baths than the usual English standard, and has some nice furniture, also plenty of room for the children and guests. He thinks that the Trust may provide servants- possibly we have to pay their wages. I think that we should plan on going about Christmas.

Louie is feeling grumpy because the Huntington trustees may get in a stuffed shirt as director; he feels that they are now getting along better than with one, and saving money.

Last night I was worried for a few minutes. After finishing my letter to you I opened my smaller bag- and it wasn't mine, but one very much like it, which I had picked up by mistake! I rushed back to the station (just next door to the Biltmore) and there, at the Pullman Lost & Found was my bag! Love to all

Paddy

[plain white paper]

Feb. 4 Monday noon

[dearest] love:

I came up to Rochester on the train last night- and didn't sleep too well, but have spent several hours in bed in the hotel this morning, and also have written my speech. I shall soon have lunch with Leermakers[?], Maury, Albert Noyes, and others, and then go the University. Tonight I shall stay with Maury, and spend tomorrow at Eastman, returning tomorrow night to New York.

Henry took Louie and me to lunch yesterday. He thinks that Feb. 1 would be suitable for arriving at Oxford, and he says that Eastman House is about as good and comfortable a house as there is in Oxford. He introduced me to Fosdick of the Rockefeller Fn, (also to Waldemar Kaempffert), who asked me to see him on Wednesday. Henry suggested that I talk over the whole scheme with Fosdick. (F. & K. were at the Century Club.)

Then I went to a movie, while waiting till train time. "The Imposter", with Jean Gabin- very good. Also the Marx Brothers in "Horsefeathers"- do you remember it? Its really funny. Groucho's song "I'm against it" keeps running through my head. "Whatever it is, I'm against it," "Ever since I commenced it- I'm against it."

This trip is just half over- whoopee!

Your own

Paddy.

Analogies between Antibodies and Simpler Chemical Substances

By Linus Pauling, Director, Gates and Crellin Laboratories,

California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA

Inaugural Harrison Howe Lecture

February 4, 1946

Let me express my deep appreciation of the honor of presenting the first Harrison Howe Memorial Lecture, and my thanks to you for selecting me. I am sure that Harrison Howe, with his broad interests, covering the whole of chemistry and technology, would not consider out of place the subject I have chosen: "Analogies between Antibodies and Simpler Chemical Substances".

I became interested in antibodies ten years ago. Dr. Karl Landsteiner asked me to come to his laboratory at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research - he knew that I had been working on the magnetic properties and structure of hemoglobin, and that I was interested in the great general problem of the structure of proteins - and when I went to see him he asked me many questions about the possible interpretation of serological phenomena in terms of the detailed structure of molecules.

Having little knowledge of serology, I found it necessary to ask him many questions before I could attempt to answer his, and he was good enough to permit me to spend a day with him on each of several later trips which I made to New York. Then, in December of 1937, when I was at Cornell as George Fisher Baker Lecturer in Chemistry, he came to Ithaca for a visit of several days, which we devoted to the intensive and critical discussion of immunological experiments and their interpretation.

This was a great experience for me - to have this field of knowledge presented and clarified to me by its great Master, the man who had contributed more to it and had thought more deeply about it than any other living being; and I have a deep feeling of gratitude to him for his kindness and interest. Dr. Landsteiner (as well as Professor Michael Heidelberger) encouraged me in 1940 to publish my first paper on the structure of antibodies and to begin experimental work in this field; and he followed the course of the work, carried on in Pasadena in collaboration with Dan H. Campbell, David Pressman, and several graduate students, and with the support of The Rockefeller Foundation, until his death in 1943.

Antibodies as Chemical Substances

Chemists are not accustomed to thinking of antibodies as chemical substances, nor of the serological reactions shown by antibodies as chemical reactions. It is true that antibodies, containing tens of thousands of atoms in each molecule, are far more complex than simple chemical substances with around 10 or 20 atoms per molecule; and some immunological reactions, such as the anaphylactic shock shown by a previously sensitized animal when it receives a small injection of the antigenic substance to which it is sensitive, do not have much in common with chemical reactions. Nevertheless, a comparison of antibodies with simple chemical substances and of serological reactions with ordinary chemical reactions provides a basis for understanding antibodies and their behavior, and also suggests new experiments to be carried out.

When an antigen (a substance, usually a protein, foreign to the animal) is injected into an animal, it may cause the production, in the blood stream and cells of the animal, of substances which are related in their properties to the antigen which was injected.

Antibodies are proteins (serum globulin), with very large molecules, the molecular weight being often 160,000 and sometimes as great as 1,000,000. A striking property possessed by most antibodies and antitoxins is that of forming a precipitate with the corresponding antigen. For example, when an animal is injected with egg albumin, antibodies homologous to the egg albumin are formed, and the serum of the animal gives a precipitate when it is mixed with a solution of egg albumin, the precipitate containing both antibody and egg albumin.

A most striking property of antibodies is their specificity - the serum homologous to egg albumin may give a very large precipitate when mixed with a solution of egg albumin, and give no precipitate at all when mixed with a solution of any other protein. There are some exceptions to this specificity: An antiserum homologous to hen egg albumin will give a precipitate with duck egg albumin, but the quantity of the precipitate will be smaller than that formed with hen egg albumin. This specificity is almost limitless in extent. It was shown by Landsteiner that antisera can be produced which react with different chemical groupings attached artificially to proteins, and these chemical groups can be synthesized in number almost without limit.

Serological Precipitation

After several decades during which the nature of serological precipitation was in doubt, it has now been shown by convincing experiments that a serological precipitate is a framework of antigen and antibody molecules, with molecules of both antigen and antibody in the framework attached to their neighbors by two or more bonds. The molecules of antigen and of antibody are thus to be considered as having a valence (analogous to, but not identical with, ordinary chemical valence) equal to or greater than 2.

There is some evidence that in most antisera many of the antibody molecules have two combining regions - that is, they are bivalent. Some antisera seem to contain univalent antibodies, capable of combining with antigen molecules, but not of forming a precipitate with them. The mechanism of the formation of a serological precipitate is the following: Each antigen molecule attaches to itself two antigen molecules, this process continuing until the framework of molecules reaches a macroscopic size, constituting a precipitate. Many of the ordinary precipitates that the chemist meets in his work are formed in the same way. An example is the precipitate of silver cyanide produced when a solution of a silver salt is mixed with a solution containing cyanide ion. The silver ion has the property of forming two covalent bonds with cyanide ion; it attaches to itself two cyanide ions, which stick out on either side of it. The cyanide ion also has the property of forming two covalent bonds, one formed by the carbon atom and one by the nitrogen atom. In this way long chains of alternating bicovalent silver and bicovalent cyanide groups are formed, and ultimately these long chains arrange themselves side-by-side to form the silver cyanide precipitate.

A similar process is involved in the precipitation of Prussian blue when a solution containing ferrous ion is mixed with a solution containing ferricyanide ion. The ferricyanide ion contains six groups attached to a central ferric atom. Each of these six groups is capable of attaching itself to a ferrous ion, and the ferrous ion can form bonds with six cyanide groups. This process leads to the formation of a cubical framework extending through space, the framework of the Prussian blue precipitate.

Specificity of Antibodies

The second property of antibodies which has an analog in the chemistry of simple substances is the great specificity of interaction of antibody and the homologous antigen. It has been shown that this specificity is due to a striking complementariness in structure between a portion of the surface of the antigen molecule and a combining region on the antibody. After the antigen is injected into the animal, antibody molecules are synthesized by the animal in such a way that a region (two regions for a bivalent antibody) of the antibody assumes a configuration which mirrors a portion of the surface of the antigen molecule. This complementariness in structure leads to a strong attraction between the antibody molecule and the antigen, because it permits this combining region of the antibody molecule to get into close contact with the antigen molecule; the closer that the two molecules can get in contact with one another, the stronger the intermolecular forces of attraction between them.

A protein molecule serving as an antigen usually has a rather complicated surface structure, and it is easy to see how the great specificity shown by antibodies arises. The reaction shown by simple chemical substances which is analogous to that of specific combination of antigen and antibody is the formation of a crystal of a substance from solution. A crystal of a molecular substance is stable because all of the molecules pile themselves into such a configuration that each molecule is surrounded as closely as possible by other molecules - that is, if a molecule were to be removed from the interior of a crystal, the cavity that it would have very nearly the shape of the molecule itself. We can say that the part of a crystal other than a given molecule is very closely complementary to that molecule. Other molecules, with different shape and structure, would not fit into this cavity nearly so well, and in consequence other molecules in general would not be incorporated in a growing crystal. This is the explanation of the astounding chemical process of purification by crystallization - from a very complicated system, such as, for example, grape jelly, containing hundreds of different kinds of molecules, crystals which are nearly chemically pure may be formed, such as crystals of cream of tartar, potassium hydrogen tartrate.

Deviation from specificity occurs in serological reaction when an antiserum combines with an antigen other than the immunizing antigen, and it occurs in crystallization when solid solutions are formed. There are striking similarities between these two kinds of deviation. For example, the antibody to an azoprotein containing azobenzoic acid with a bromine atom in the meta position shows strong precipitation with an azoprotein containing azobenzoic acid with a methyl group in the meta position; this complete cross reaction is the result of the fact that the bromine atom and the methyl group have very nearly the same shape and size, although their chemical properties otherwise are quite different. Similarly, solid solutions are formed by corresponding bromine-substituted and methyl-substituted benzenes.

I could give many more examples in illustrating my thesis, but I shall refrain, remembering the observation by Voltaire that "the secret of being a bore is to tell everything".

Potentialities of the Theory in Other Fields

Although crystallization is the only simple chemical reaction which shows striking similarity to serological reactions with respect to specificity, there are many physiological phenomena which are similarly specific, and for which the specificity can be given a similar explanation. The specificity of the catalytic activity of enzymes is due to a surface configuration of the enzyme such as to make the enzyme complementary to the substrate molecule, or, rather, to the substrate molecule in the strained state that occurs during the catalytic reaction.

The specific action of drugs and bactericidal substances has a similar explanation. Even the senses of taste and odor are based upon molecular configuration rather than upon ordinary chemical properties - a molecule which has the same shape as a camphor molecule will smell like camphor even though it may be quite unrelated to camphor chemically.

I am convinced that it will be found in the future, as our understanding of physiological phenomena becomes deeper, that the shapes and sizes of molecules are of just as great significance in determining their physiological behavior as are their internal structure and ordinary chemical properties. I believe that the thorough investigation of the shapes and sizes of molecules will lead to great advances in fundamental biology and medicine; and because of this belief I am now turning my efforts in this direction. It seems clear that complementariness of the sort we have been considering must be involved in the autocatalytic activity (production of replicas) and heterocatalytic activity (production of other specific molecules) of the tens of thousands of genes that carry to us our inheritance from our ancestors.

And, moreover, I am convinced that progress in our attack against disease, in our better understanding of the human body, of bacteria, viruses, and other vectors of disease, and of their interactions with each other depends on a better understanding of intermolecular forces and interactions. "The long habit of living indisposeth us to dying"; and, as we have got better and better control over the infectious diseases, the degenerative diseases - cancer, cardiovascular disease - have become more and more important, and call more and more urgently for control: but we cannot yet attack these diseases in a straightforward way - we need leads, hints, which a better understanding of the phenomena of growth, development, and disease in terms of molecular structure would surely provide. I have hopes that it will be possible to carry on a program of research in molecular structure that will lead to significant contributions to biology and medicine.

Nearly sixty years ago Walt Whitman wrote about Life and Death: The two old, simple problems ever intertwined, Close home, elusive, present, baffled, grappled, By each successive age insoluble, passed on, To ours today - and we pass on the same.

Let us resolve that as we pass on these problems to our fellow generation we shall make also our contribution toward their solution.

Wednesday night, 10 PM

Dearest love:

I've been very busy since I last wrote. I arrived in Rochester at 6AM, had breakfast, got a room in the hotel, and rested in bed & worked on my speech till 12.45, had lunch with some of the men, and went to the University with Albert. Then came the dinner ([[puuk]), a long boring talk on Harrison Howe by Murphy, and my talk (I mentioned Voltaire's remark "The secret of beig a bore is to tell everything"). There were about 500 people there, and they were unbelievably enthusiastic. I stayed overnight with Maury and Dorothy, and spent Tuesday at the E.K. labs, and Distillation Products (Hickman), taking the night train to New York, This morning I saw Henry, and then went to the Rockfeller Fn. Weaver had his operation Friday, and got along well. He may be back on the job in a couple of months. Fosdick said the R.F. would do part but not all of our job, Then I saw Heffron and Wickman of the Commonwealth Fn- I talked about our plans, but haven't yet asked if they would put up some of the money. Tomorrow I am to see the Natl Found. For Infantile Paralysis.

I had lunch with Miller of the RF, and later saw Dr Willard, Editor of Chem Monographs. It was a tiring day, and my nose began to run, so I came to the hotel, and used Thizodrine, and stayed in bed all evening. Perhaps it won't develop- it isn't bad.

It's fine that Liny is a sergeant.

Love to all from

Paddy

[Letter:]

1 Feb. 16th 1946

E.3628 - 5^th Ave.

Spokane, Washington

Dear Nephew:

Was so glad to get you letter. Am writing you between your two trips East. Thank you for writing and thanks too for you invitation to visit you. How glad I would be to do so. Maybe I can. I have never been in Calif. but most of all I would like to see you. Jan. 29th I was 84 years young. I can't realize it. I feel so young. I can still run for the bus, and can work all day.

The Darling family were born in Collingwood

[page 2]

Canada and our parents moved to Lewiston, N.Y. five miles from Niagra Falls when I was a baby. We lost our parents when I was two years old. There were six of us. John, Linus, Will, Mary, Addie and myself. I was adopted (not legally) into a family by the name of Robertson who lived seven miles from Lewiston. Mary went to live with a family by the name of Gray. Addie was take back to Canada by some of our relatives and I never saw her again. The boys were scattered. Linus told me he lived in different homes till he found one where he could go to school.

[page 3]

2

He must have been not far from me as I remember of his coming to see me when I was a little child. John went back to Canada. Will went to Michigan where he married and Linus drifted out to Oregon. We corresponded for years before he married. What a tragedy for a family to be so separated. I was the lucky one of the family as I had a better home than the others. Though Mother love was lacking. I missed it without knowing what I missed.

Except the one visit from Linus I never saw

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any of them till Mary was eighteen and I twelve and she came to see me. I had driven with the folks past her home dozens of times without knowing that my sister lived there. She went by her own name but I went by my adopted name. Will had two children - Weldon who grew to manhood then was killed in an auto accident, and Gussie who is married and I think lives near Portland. Will visited me here a few years ago and died soon after.

Linus' second wife Lucy was the step mother of his

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girls and was kind and motherly. He afterward married Adaline and they lived in Portland where he had a law office. I visited them there and I was in Condon when he and Lucy lived on her ranch. John and I corresponded for years. He was captain on a lake steamer. Soon after I first saw Mary she went out to work for a Gilette family. L.P. Gillette who lived on the Niagra River road and in after years became my uncle by marriage. I was her brides maid and best man was the young man who afterward

became my cousin by marriage. That sounds like a novel does'nt [sic] it? Wedding was in the L.P. Gillette home. How little I thought what the after years would bring me. I was proud of Linus because he was self made - no one to do anything for him yet he because a lawyer. I am the last of the family. the rest have all passed on. Three years previous to my marriage I clerked in a big department store in Youngstown, five miles from my home on the bank of Niagra River. Just across was Canada

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4

I have a son Harold who is now fifty - a bachelor and lives with me, and a daughter Helen married and living in Spokane. They have a son in second year of High school. Helen works in an office for the city. She need some help at home so I go there two days a week. It helps her out and helps me financially. I get State pension but made my living at sales work till five years ago. I worked for the Avon Co. fifteen years. That is a cosmetic Co. Before that I was city sales lady for a

[page 8]

syrup Co. with them two years. Part of that time I worked other towns for them. Was gone once three weeks. At the end of two years I gave out and had to quit. A hard thing to do. After a short vacation I was quite rested up and took up the Avon Cosmetic work. After fifteen years I was worn out and after a short rest went to help Helen out.

There is or was a Dr. Gillette, a physician in Rome, N.Y I don't see how you could have heard of him unless it was his propagating The Rome Beauty apples. You might

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5

have heard of Clerance [sic] Gillette. He was with a college in Fort Collins, Colorado and had several abbreviations before his name. His sister visited us here two years ago. She lives in Eugene, Oregon. She was a friend indeed to one when we lived in Klamath County. She lived there too. Thanks for telling me of the girls. I did'nt [sic] know till then that you had lost your parents. In one of the articles I clipped from my paper you were called Dr. and in the other one Professor. Are you both and of what? Please tell

[page 10]

me what your work is.

I am really quite proud of you. Your picture was with one of them too.

Well really I think it's time to quit. Hope you are not tired of this long letter. I have written on both sides of paper as I had so much to say.

Hope to see you some day.

Thank you again for writing.

Sincerely,

Aunt Elizabeth

Shell Development Sigma Xi Club Lecture, Berkeley, Feb. 18, 1948

"Bonds between Metal Atoms in Metallic and Non-metallic Substances."

My chairman, ladies and gentlemen. I am not talking about antibodies today, not because I have tired of them, but because I can't repeat my talk here of a year ago. But metals are interesting - and we don't understand them very well yet.

A year ago I mentioned Crellin and his interest in the days in September. Last year he had two teeth extracted - .

To get back to metals - every once in a while a theoretical physicist says something that turns my stomach. This happened a few years ago about metals. Mott and Jones said that in nickel there is a 0.61 bonding electron per atom, and in iron 0.22! This is silly - when we compare tensile strength, etc. of Ni and Fe with K, say, which has 1; or with silk fibers with one covalent bond per string to be broken - there are 12 contacts, and hence there must be ~ 6, say, bonds per iron atom!

Why did Mott and Jones say this? They think of 3d and 4s orbitals as much different. μ = 0.61 for Ni, 0.22 for Fe. But we must hybridize 3d, 4s, and 4p. This would permit 9 resonating bonds for Co. Actually there are ~6 from Cr to Cu. Explanation.

We might ask - since this metal-metal bonds are good bonds, would they not occur in non-metallic compounds? This is an interesting question - there are many interesting questions such as the explanation of the astounding specificity of serological reactions. You remember that here the cause is structural complementariness of antigen and antibody. Is there any analogy among simpler chemical substances? There is a striking one - I don't believe I mentioned it a year and a half ago - I hadn't yet thought of it. It is crystallization.... And there are occasional isolated instances of surprising specificity in inorganic and organic chemistry. For example, tungsten as W ⁺⁺⁺ occurs only as W₂Cl₉ ^--- (also W₂Cl₂₉ ^--). Why not WCl₆ ^---? Why not W₂F₉ ^---? Answer - configuration permits a W-W bond, in addition to the W-Cl bonds.

Are there any other examples? I asked a young man that - UC Ph.D. - and he couldn't think of any. I then said "Have you ever heard of calomel?"

Cl-Hg-Hg-Cl Also Fe₂(CO)₉ diferricdihydroxytetraphenanthroline. Ag₂F, Pb₉4^-, Ta₆Br₁₂ ^--, sulvanite, Mo₃Cl₄ ^--, MoS₂ - molybdenite, like graphite.

What about hydrolysis of Fe(H₂O)₆ ⁺⁺⁺? Can yellow color be due to polymers? Limonite yellow. Lepidocrocite and Goethite red, also FeOCl. Hematite red-black. Also Cu(OH)₂ blue -> CuO black.

This brings me to a matter that has long interested me - effect on color of having an element in two valence states. Fe(OH)₂ white -> green black -> Fe(OH)₃ red brown.

CuCl and SbCl₃ colorless -> brown black -> CuCl₂ and SbCl₅ blue.

Cs₂AuAuCl₆, Biotite, Mica -> Russian blue; magnetite, tourmaline, Fe⁺⁺, Fe⁺⁺⁺, iluvaite, all black.

But why go on? Voltaire said "The secret of being a bore is to tell everything." It is clear that there is much here that we do not understand - perhaps that is its attraction. Thomas Wright in 1601 said "Nothing is so curious and thirsty after knowledge of dark and obscure matters as the nature of man." So let us continue to think about these questions - to look for uniformities among facts that at first seem disconnected - and in this way do our bit in obtaining an understanding of the great and complex and terrifying world about us.

24 February 1946

Dearest Mom

Life has been moving along at a fair rate, and I was very happy to get your letters.

I went to see Moe one afternoon, and then had lunch with him. He told me about Dad's going to England next February and about the Oxford house and the situation. Sounds like a fine thing. He also talked about being in the navy during World War I, and since he was a first mate on a transport we had fun discussing the sea and the changes in present day operations.

Mirsky's tell me that Dubjakuski (or however it is spelled) told them that Dad and Tolman are a sort of governing committee for Caltech. Committee sort of leans toward chemistry, doesn't it? Anyway, such information through biologists can't be much trusted through the same channels I'm told that there is some mistrust of Beadle.

Several days ago I shipped some boxes home collect, because I thought that is good way to insure their delivery. The moving will follow later some 13. The boxes contain some of the last I've acquired in the last six months.

Now for the news to date: I'm off the ship, and in Fort Hamilton awaiting processing and orders to proceed to fort McArthur for separation from the grand old army. So if all goes well I'll be hitch hiking my weary way to Pasadena within two weeks! That's a conservative estimate, because I should be out of here in three days, but I want to average in stop over in Indiana for a couple of days if I can. Might just possibly make it home by March 10^th the best possible way I could celebrate coming of age and a new freedom. Makes me pretty happy.

Right now I'm uncomfortable with a bad cold acquired with the move from ship to barracks. The snow, ice, and freezing weather don't bother me particularly I don't have to stay outside. The snow is often beautiful.

I'm tremendously happy to learn about Pete's being president of the frosh class. A fine achievement. Give him my congratulations and best wishes. I'll be glad to get home and see the growth of the family it's been a good half-year.

All my love,

Linus

24 February 1946

Dear Dad

This hasn't happened for a long time I'm caught without ink. Poor form to write in pencil, especially since I write so seldom anyway, but I hope you'll forgive me.

I've been existing in a sort of vacuum for the last four or five days, since I found out that I could be taken off the ship for discharge. It was a surprise , you see, because I have only 29 months service, and the very lowest authorized time is thirty months. Also I hadn't realized that I has so much time. I left the ship even though a lot of pressure was put on me to stay. I want to get adjusted to normal life as soon as possible; also, there is some chance that radar mechanics will be part of the essential list, and that would slow me up badly.

Now I've been at Fort Hamilton four days, but with the holiday and the weekend, as orders have come out. But I expect to be on the way to Fort McArther by the middle of next week.

I wrote to Berkeley before leaving Europe in January, and received a letter enclosing application forms and saying I could be readmitted (according to my records) upon approval of the dean, So I shall submit the application as soon as I acquire an official record of my army tech school carrer [sic].

I'm too late for the spring term, and if I go to England with you in February. I'll have a hard time squeezing the fall semester in since it ends in late in February. That makes thing rather simple. I want to get as much time in as possible by going to PCS now perhaps, and to summer school.

Although this teller talks principally of my troubles, it is meant to be a birthday greeting to you. So best wishes Pop, for the coming year, and Happy Birthday!

My love to you

Linus

February 25, 1946

Dr. Paul H. Emmett

115 Yorkshire Road

Pittsburgh

Dear Paul:

I was pleased to receive your letter, which came while I was on my trip East. I did not plan to stop in Pittsburgh, and, now that my work with the Explosives Division of the NDRC is over, and that they have closed up the Central Explosives laboratory at Bruceton, it is unlikely that I shall be stopping there in the near future. I was sorry to find you away from town the only times when I came through and tried to get in touch with you.

I am very glad that your work is getting along well. I hope that you will be making a western trip some time, and will stop in to see us.

We are all well. Young Linus is still in the Army - he is on a transport, going back and forth across the Atlantic, and he has even made one trip to India. He should be out of the Army before very long. Peter is in the junior year of high school, and is getting along well - he is the President of his class at Pasadena Junior College.

I was, as you might suspect, misquoted on the atomic bomb matter - some rough estimates that I was making got misinterpreted by the press representative, and spread all over the country. The General didn't think that it was very funny. You probably know that I have never had any connection with the atomic bomb project - I am just an outsider, relatively free to make guesses.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling

LP:gw

25 February 1946

Dear Mom

Today the bubble is punctured the Fort Hamilton processing section refused to let me go through because I have only 29 month one less than required. Fort Ham will keep me until March 27^th when I become eligible or until the service time requirements go down. So now I have a 15 day furlough in any pocket which puts me in the quandary or I can hang around Indiana or any other place for that matter, I think I'll try ATC if my attempts at discharge fail. The advantage of that is that I spend less money. I'm actually afraid to walk around N.Y. because I can't keel the shekel from flowing out of my pocket.

I think the best place for write one is care of Reba Mirsky, 1 W. 68^th St. N.Y. I'll keep in communication with her more after than I'll be of deciding where to go. This afternoon I discovered one thing more Brooklyn Army Base is processing men with only 29 moths. Therefore tomorrow morning I head for Brooklyn to see if I can't work some deal. I'm pretty disappointed.

One thing I want to do is spend a weekend in Indiana with Reba II, that leaves a week or more free I can forge a priority form and try to make it to California via ATC or I can hang around N.Y. at the fort. But don't say anything personal in the letter. I may ask her to read it to me over the phone.

Another factor of my depression is the cold that I caught the night of leaving the ship, and which keeps me form feeling energetic. Bad luck is dogging me.

I'll write tomorrow to inform you of any doings.

All my love,

Linus

28 February 1946

Dear Mom

I got this far after 13 hours on the road although I stopped overnight in Harrisburg. But the roads out of Pittsburgh are many and small, so after I'd gotten 20 or so miles out of town and here standing on one shot for an hour. I quit and turned around. I'll continue to Indianapolis by rail. Possible next week I'll make it to Chicago.

When does Dad expect to go east again? I'll probably be in N.Y. if he gets there in March. When I get back I'll call up Moe and find out.

I decided not to go to California too much trouble since I'll be out in a month. But I'll be glad to see you there.

All my love.

Linus

P.S. Both this weekend and next weekend that is until the 9^th of March ( and probably the 10^th have to celebrate) I'll be in occasional touch with Reba II's address, which is Box 97, West Memorial Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.

While I'm thinking of it it's a rotten deal that I have to be floating around the country on my 21^st birthday.

Pittsburgh is absolutely filthy. I'd hate to live here.

Love,

Linus