11 December 1953

Professor A. Szent-Gyorgyi

Laboratory of the Institute for Muscle Research

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Dear Professor Szent-Gyorgyi:

I am pleased to have your letter, which has arrived just before my wife and I set out on a trip for India. I have been invited by the Government of India to give lectures at various universities and research institutes in India - we shall be in that country six weeks, and shall continue on around the world.

I enclose a reprint of our paper on compound helixes and the structure of hair and other α-keratin proteins. I do not remember whether you had this paper last year. This detailed structure of hair and other α-keratin proteins may not be exactly right, but I think that there is little doubt that it is approximately right.

We had a conference on polypeptide chains and the structure of proteins in Pasadena during five days of September. It was attended by thirty people from other laboratories, and about twenty of our own people. Of the visitors about half were from England - Sir Lawrence Bragg, Kendrew, Perutz, Astbury, Randall, etc. Dr. John C. Kendrew of Cambridge University has prepared an account of the conference for publication in Nature, and I think you might be interested in the following quotation from this account:

"It would appear from the discussion at this conference that the great majority of workers in the field would now agree that the α-helix is the basic chain configuration present in α-polypeptides and α-forms of fibrous proteins; the discussion centered not so much about evidence for the existence of the a helix as about details such as the modes of aggregation of helixes, methods for turning corners, and evidence for left-or right-handedness, etc. mainly in reference to fibrous proteins."

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W