Letter from I. H. Kempner to Mrs. Westheimer expressing his thanks for her thoughtful well wishes on his birthday.

Letter from Isaac H. Kempner to Mr. and Mrs. Goldberger thanking them for their greetings for his 90th birthday.

From American Chemical Society 145th National Meeting, New York, Sept. 1963. The pyrolysis of diborane was examined using a chemical shock tube as a reactor. Additional evidence for the existence of hexaborane-12 and heptaborane- 11 and -13 was obtained. The presence of a large net normal isotope effect in the formation of tetraborane and hexaborane and a net inverse isotope effect in the formation of pentaborane-9 are observed. A mechanism, consisting of a series of competitive reactions and eqailibria, in which tetraboraue is the precursor of pentaborane-11 and hexaborane but not of pentaborane-9 is shown to be compatible with the observed isotope effect. Data obtained by examining the pyrolysis of various mixtures of boron hydrides are also consistent with the mechanism. (auth)