HARVARD COLLEGE OBSERVATORY

CAMBRIDGE 38, MASSACHUSETTS

December 4, 1963

Mr, Kenneth Snelson

25 West 81st Street

New York 24, New York

Dear Mr. Snelson:

Thank you very much for sending me a copy of your article from "Industrial Design”, describing a model of atomic electronic structure. I find the pictures artistic, to say the least, and very suggestive. As a student of wave mechanics and a believer in the "uncertainty principle”, I am not particularly taken by actual models purporting to show the arrangement of the electrons. Your representation of “orbits” in terms of rings resting on the “cap", something like the Arctic Circle, does not appeal to me.

As you yourself recognize, the primary objective of a model is to explain the physical properties of an atom, including angular momentum, magnetic character, energy levels, and finally spectra. You have made certain qualitative statements, but I see no correspondence between them and the actual facts of the atom. For my purposes, I still prefer wave mechanics despite its ambiguities.

I shall continue this skepticism until you can prove some theorems concerning energies, angular momentum, and the like.

Sincerely yours,

(signed) Donald H. Menzel

Donald H, Menzel

Director

DHM /sc

cc: Jack Wilson