Letter from Richard Willstatter to Michael Heidelberger

In this letter Heidelberger's former mentor, the organic chemist and Nobel Laureate Richard Willstatter, congratulated Heidelberger on his appointment as head of the chemistry laboratory at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. Willstatter's hope that his new position would provide Heidelberger with opportunities for independent research proved premature, as Heidelberger spent his year at Mt. Sinai preoccupied with the reorganization of the laboratory and with routine chemical analysis of patient specimen.

Moreover, Willstatter, who in 1924 had resigned his professorship at the University of Munich in protest over rising anti-Semitism in German academia, lamented the loss of most of his assets during the period of hyperinflation in Germany in the wake of World War I.