17 September 1954

Professor E. B. Wilson

Harvard School of Public Health

695 Huntington Avenue

Boston 15, Massachusetts

Dear Professor Wilson:

I am writing to pass on to you a suggestion that has been made by Dr. Fritz Lipmann, of Massachusetts General Hospital.

He has suggested that the present system, under which the papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are classified according to the field of the work, be abandoned, and that perhaps they be divided into two sections, one on the physical sciences and one on the biological sciences. He suggests putting chemistry in the biological sciences.

I may say that I think that some simplification could be achieved, and I would go further than Lipmann. I suggest that papers not be labeled according to the field of science involved, in any way, and that they be published simply in the order of their receipt. I think that the title of a paper gives a good idea about its content, and that in general the number of papers in one field in a given issue is small enough so that there is not much value in having them classified together, nor in having an alphabetical sequence.

With best regards, I am

Sincerely yours,

Linus Pauling:W