August 10, 1947

Professor Arnold Sommerfeld

Dunantstrasse 10

(23) Munich

Germany

Dear Professor Sommerfeld:

I was very glad to find our reprint list with your name on it, and with your address, when I got back to Pasadena a couple of days ago, after a two months' visit in England and Sweden. My wife came with me on this trip to Europe, our first since 1930, but none of the children were along. We thought about you and Frau Sommerfeld very often and wished that we could come to Munich to visit you. However, circumstances did not permit this.

We hope that you and Frau Sommerfeld are not suffering too much under the difficult circumstances of the post-war period. The young man Mr. Merrill who visited you over a year ago and took a photograph of you was good enough to send a print of the photograph to us. We were very glad to see your familiar faces again.

You remember that we have four children, a boy Linus Jr., now 22 years old, a boy Peter now 16, a girl Linda, 15, and a boy Crellin, 10. They are all healthy and happy and are doing well in their studies. Linus Jr. is somewhat behind in his work because he served for three years in the Army. He will be a junior student this fall at Pomona College, where he is taking a pre-medical course. He hopes to be able to go on to Harvard Medical School after another year. He is not married yet. Peter is planning to be a physicist. He will enter Cal Tech this year, but will stay for only one term, and will then go with us to Oxford.

We are planning to take the three younger children with us to Oxford at Christmas time. I am to be George Eastman Professor there during the period January to June. We shall leave Pasadena about December 20 and return probably in August of 1948.

Our visit to England and to Sweden this year was for several reasons. I was given an honorary doctor's degree by the University of Cambridge and also by the University of London, and was inducted as an honorary member of the Chemical Society and of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. I also attended the Centenary Celebration of the Chemical Society, the International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the International Union of Chemistry in London as well as the International Congress of Experimental Cytology in Stockholm. There were many continental scientists at the International congresses, and I was glad to see some of my old friends and also to meet people whom I had known before only through their scientific work.

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Our work in Pasadena is going along very well. We have about one hundred research workers in the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry. Max Delbruck is returning to Pasadena this summer as Professor of Biology. For a number of years he has been at the Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee.

Professor Millikan retired a couple of years ago, and Dr. DuBridge, whom you probably remember, is the President of the California Institute of Technology. Professor Millikan is in good health and he keeps busy with various activities, including raising funds for the support of the Institute. He and Mrs. Millikan suffered a blow two months ago, when their second son, Glenn Millikan who was Professor of Physiology at the Vanderbilt University Medical School, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. Professor Epstein is in good health. You probably remember Dr. H. P. Robertson, who was a graduate student here, in mathematical physics, when I was a student, and who has been Professor of Mathematical Physics at Princeton University for many years. He has now accepted appointment at Professor of Mathematical Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and is due to arrive here in a few days. Also John G. Kirkwood, of Cornell University, has accepted appointment as Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry, and will arrive In Pasadena next month.

You no doubt remember Professor Roscoe G. Dickinson, who played the cello with you at our house. I am sorry to say that he died about two years ago, from cancer of the colon. We were all greatly shocked to lose him, while he was still a comparatively young man.

You may have heard from some visitor to Munich that I was seriously ill a few years ago. I had an attack of glomerulo nephritis in 1941. Fortunately I was able to get it under control, and I am now in very good health, able to do as much work as ever. It is, however, necessary for me to adhere rather rigidly to a special diet, and I find this to be specially inconvenient when I am traveling.

I have just had a new book published - "General Chemistry," a textbook for first-year college students. I have been giving the lectures in general chemistry during the last ten years, and I wrote the book in order to have available a modern introduction to chemical science, in place of the rather unsatisfactory older books. I am sending a copy of this book to you under separate cover.

With very best regards to you and to Frau Sommerfeld, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W