5 January 1952
Dr. Floyd E. Rowland
Boston Naval Yard
Building 58
Charleston, Massachusetts
Dear Doc:
I have not known your address in recent years. However, I have just seen it in the booklet on the Department of Chemistry of the University of Illinois, which contains a list of all Ph.D.'s from the Department, and I am writing to give you some of the news, and to find out
how you are getting along.
It is nearly twelve years since I saw you last. You remember that I was ill at the tine. It turned out that the illness was a very serious one - Bright's disease - and it took me a good while to get back into shape again, I have been feeling fine now, probably as the result of my sticking closely to the diet and prescribed regime generally.
Our eldest son, Linus Jr., was in the Boston region for three
years, as a student at Harvard Medical School. He got his M.D. last June, and is now interning in the Queen's Hospital in Honolulu. He is married, and has three small boys. Our other children are not married. Peter is a graduate student at Cambridge, England, and Linda is a junior at Reed College. The youngest boy is in high school.
My work keeps me very busy. I have been giving, the freshman lectures since 1937, and a graduate course every year in addition. At present my research deals largely with the structure of proteins and of nucleic acid. Our Department of Chemistry is moderately large, but things go along smoothly here.
I see Paul Emmett about once a year. Within the last few years I have also seen Milton Harris, Oz Helmer, Orlando Romig, and one or two others.
Ava Helen and I spent two months in France and England last summer. We were in Paris for seventeen days, and then we rented a car and drove around England and Scotland for one month. We spent nearly a year in Europe four years ago, when I served as Eastman Professor at Oxford.
I have been invited to participate in the Ninth Solvay Congress in Brussels next April, and I am planning to present a report
Dr. Rowland
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5/1/53
on the present status of the problem of determining the structure of proteins.
Please let me know what you are doing now and how you are getting along. Do you ever see any of the boys from Corvallis?
Sincerely yours,
Linus Pauling:W
P.S. I see that I am acquainted with some of the people who were at Illinois with you, including Eugene Geiling, Edward Wichers, Ernest Volwiler, Otto Smith, Allen Stearn, and Carl Marvel. L.P.