Linus Pauling

cientis
"
dvocatc
DAVID E. NEWTON
 COOK MEMORIAL PUBLIC LIBRARY DISTRICT

Al

io- graphy Pauling

Newton, David E.
Linus Pauling
B ^ 18 »95

DATE DUE

i p 1
lw~<J\
C, {)

-N 2 8 W
AUG % 2 ? nn^

MAf - 5 2005

#47-0106 Ungummed

pOOK MEMORIAL LU!***»r

. AUKEE AVE.
U»EHIYVILLE, ILLINOIS COO#a
LINUS PAULING
Makers of Modern Science
LINUS PAULING
Scientist and Advocate

David E. Newton

QEactsOnFile® COOKMF
POOK MEMOIttAL Llftw
AN INFOBASE HOLDINGS COMPANY ^3 N. IWLWAUKEt .'

L«ERTYVILL€ ItLINOIS 600*

f

APR 18 1995
LINUS PAULING: Scientist and Advocate

Copyright © 1994 by Instructional Horizons, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact:

Facts On File, Inc.

460 Park Avenue South
New York NY 10016

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Newton, David E.
Linus Pauling: scientist and advocate / David E. Newton,
p. cm. —
(Makers of modern science)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8160-2959-8
1. Pauling, Linus, 1901 —
Juvenile literature. 2. Biochemists
— —
United States Biography Juvenile literature. 3. Chemists United —
— —
States Biography Juvenile literature. [1. Pauling, Linus, 1901- .

2. Chemists.] I. Title. II. Series.

QP511.8.P37N48 1994
540' .92— dc20
[B] 93-31719

A British CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in
bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions or sales promotions.
Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at 212/683-2244 or
800/322-8755.

Text design by Ron Monteleone

Layout by Robert Yaffe
Cover design by Catherine Rincon Hyman
Printed in the United States of America

RRD FOF 10 987654321

This book is printed on acid-free paper.
 For Betsy, our Friend
Thanks for being there when we needed you,
CONTENTS

1. Linus Pauling: Traitor or Hero? 1

2. Growing Up in Oregon 6
3. The Cal Tech Years 19
4. Two Years in Europe 27
5. "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" 33
6. The Turn to Biochemistry 44
7. Years of Transition 55
8. From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 72
9. Years of Turmoil 92
10. Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 103
11. Linus Pauling: The Man and the Legacy 114

Glossary 121
Further Reading 123
Index 127
1
LINUS PAULING:
TRAITOR OR HERO?

The early 1950s were an exciting time for biologists and chemists.
For more than a decade, researchers had been debating one of the
most fundamental questions in the life sciences: What is the nature
of proteins?
Part of the answer to that question was already known. Scientists
knew that, in the simplest possible sense, a protein
is a long string

of amino acids joined each other by means of a group of atoms

to
know as a peptide linkage. But what was the geometric arrange-
ment of that long chain of amino acids? That question was critical
since the biological function of a chemical molecule is determined
to a large extent by the spatial configuration of that molecule.
The experimental evidence needed to answer that question
already existed. That evidence consisted of a collection of X-ray
diffraction patterns. X-ray diffraction patterns are produced
when X rays are diffracted (bent) by the atoms in a molecule.
Each specific arrangement of atoms produces a characteristic
diffraction pattern.
The problem was that diffraction patterns are extraordinarily
difficult to interpret. They consist of a few spots and arcs on a
photographic plate. Figuring out what these spots and arcs tell
— —
about molecular structure was and still is a real challenge.
By 1951, researchers had proposed a variety of models for the
protein molecule. One stood out among the rest. It was a model
originally suggested by two American chemists, Linus Pauling and
Robert Corey. In October 1950, Pauling and Corey had submitted
a report to the Journal of the American Chemical Societyin which
 Linus Pauling

they theorized that a protein molecule is arranged in a twisting,

spiral-like shape known as an alpha helix.
Although the model was appealing in some ways, it proved
unacceptable to a number of scientists. For one thing, Pauling and
Corey argued that a single complete twist in the protein helix
included 3.6 amino acids. Many of their colleagues found it hard
to imagine that the "twist-number" was not a neat integral number
such as 3 or 4.
By late 1951 a committee of the Royal Society of London, one of
the world's most prestigious scientific societies, decided that a
meeting on protein structure ought to be held to allow scientists
to debate various protein models, including the Pauling- Corey
model. They asked the eminent crystallographer, W. T. Astbury,
to organize the meeting. Astbury, in turn, wrote Pauling to inquire
if he or Corey and one of their colleagues could attend the meeting

and defend their model. The meeting was scheduled to be held in

London on April 28, 1952.
Pauling was eager to attend the meeting since most of the
world's most important protein researchers planned to attend.
It would be his first opportunity to argue face-to-face with those

who questioned his model. Thus, on January 14, 1952, he sub-

mitted an application for a passport to attend the London meet-
ing.
Normally, obtaining a passport in these circumstances would
be a routine matter. Pauling was a United States citizen and
never convicted of a crime. By law, he qualified to receive the
passport.
However, the early 1950s were anything but normal times in the
United States. The country was in the grip of McCarthyism, a
political frenzy that raised doubt about the loyalty of millions of
Americans. Pauling, who had frequently spoken out about the
excesses of McCarthyism, had become suspect among government
officials on both federal and state levels.
As a result, the U.S. Passport Office decided that it "would not
be in the best interest of the United States" to issue Pauling a
passport. It so notified him on February 14.
Pauling's response was to reapply immediately with a letter to
President Harry S Truman on February 29, 1952. In his letter,
 Traitor or Hero?

Pauling pointed out that he had been given the Presidential Medal
for Merit for his services to the nation between 1940 and 1946. He
went on to say:

I am now writing you, as President of the United States, to rectify this

action, and to arrange for the issuance of a passport to me. lam a loyal
and conscientious citizen of the United States. I have never been guilty
of any unpatriotic or criminal act. lam confident that no harm whatever
would be done to the Nation by my proposed travel. On the contrary, I
feel sure that the announcement of the denial . would not be in the
. .

best interests of the United States.

Pauling received his answer not from President Truman, but

from presidential assistant William D. Hassett. Hassett wrote that
the president had gone to Key West and that Pauling's letter would
be referred to the State Department. Pauling followed up on this
correspondence with a personal letter to Mrs. R. B. Shipley, chief
of the Passport Office. In his letter, Pauling explained that the visit
to England was for purely scientific purposes and a "brief vacation
for my wife and me."
On April 18, Shipley wrote back to Pauling, saying that it
would be "impossible to grant you a passport." By that time,
however, Pauling was already in Washington, D.C., supposedly
on his way to Europe. He went in person to the State Department
to talk with Shipley and to ask her why the passport could not
be issued. Shipley responded that the United States did not
issue passports to known Communists, persons suspected of
being Communist, or anyone who associated with Communists.
At the last minute, Pauling had to change his plans and cancel
his visit to England.
The consequences of the government's decision were profound.
On a short-term basis, Pauling was, of course, unable to attend the
London conference, thus preventing him from explaining and
defending a model that was eventually widely accepted. But there
may have been a more long-term effect also.
During 1951 and 1952, biologists and chemists in England were
working diligently on a problem related to protein structure: the
structure and function of nucleic acids such as DNA (deoxy-
ribonucleic acid).By 1953, the American biologist James Watson
and the English chemist Francis Crick were to solve this problem.
 Linus Pauling

accomplishments in recent scientific history,

In one of the greatest
Crick and Watson found that the DNA molecule exists as an
intertwined double helix.
Pauling had also been interested in nucleic acids and had been
working on his own model since the late 1940s. Had he attended
the London meeting, he might well have heard about the key bit
of evidence that Watson and Crick eventually used to solve the
DNA puzzle. That bit of evidence was an X-ray pattern obtained
by Rosalind Franklin, working in the London laboratories of Mau-
rice Wilkins. Franklin's photographs of DNA were the best cur-
rently available and, when properly interpreted, revealed the
molecular architecture of DNA.
By accident, Watson saw Franklin's DNA photographs on Janu-
ary 30, 1953. Almost immediately, he knew that they held the
information he and Crick needed to construct their DNA model.
Within less than two months, they had done so, an achievement
for which they were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize for physiology
or medicine.
What if Pauling had also seen Franklin's photographs in late
1952?Would he also have known how to interpret them and how
to construct a correctmodel of DNA? Of course, no one can answer
that question. Given his success with model-building for protein
and other complex molecules, the answer might very well be
"yes." But given the United States government's rabid anti-Com-
munist tone in 1952, there was never even a chance that Pauling
would have had that opportunity.
The events surrounding the 1952 controversy reveal a great deal
about the central character of this book, Linus Pauling. He was
—
and is one of the greatest chemists of all time. His understanding
of the chemical bond and of molecular architecture is probably
unsurpassed in the history of chemistry.
But Pauling has always had a profound interest in a host of topics
that go beyond scientific research. He was regarded as suspect by
the U.S. government because of his earlier activities in programs
of social reform. He need not have been a member of the Commu-
nist Party to have held progressive ideas that were vigorously
opposed by the conservative philosophy of post-World War II
America.
 Traitor or Hero?

Nothing could be more symbolic of the man Linus Pauling than

the fact that heis the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel

Prizes, one for chemistry and one for peace. Even today, nearly a
half century after his most enduring accomplishments in chemis-
try and peace, Pauling remains an active thinker, battler for causes,
and source of controversy.
2
GROWING UP IN OREGON
The U.S. government's decision to deny Linus Pauling's passport
application in 1952 illustrates the political fanaticism of the day.
Whatever his political views, Pauling was widely recognized as
one of the world's greatest living scientists. His monumental
textbook, The Nature of the Chemical Bond, had been published
13 years earlier and was already recognized as a classic in its field.
Within two years, he would be awarded the highest recognition a
chemist can receive, the Nobel Prize.
Few residents of Oregon in the first decade of the century would
have predicted, however, that this native son would rise to such
heights a half century later. Pauling was born into a family of
modest and sometimes difficult circumstances on February 28,
1901, in Portland, Oregon. Portland was the largest city in Oregon,
but it was also a city that retained many characteristics of the
Western frontier.
Linus's parents were Herman Henry William Pauling, a druggist,
and Lucy Isabelle (Darling) Pauling, usually called Belle. Herman's
parents were originally from Germany, by way of Missouri, while
Belle's father was born in Beverton, Ontario, and her mother, in
the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Two daughters soon joined the
Pauling family, Pauline Darling on August 7, 1902, and Frances
Lucille on January 1, 1904.
Business conditions were not good for Herman Pauling, and he
moved four times in six years, trying to improve his family's living
conditions. The first move, in 1903, took the family to Oswego,
now a suburb of Portland, about seven miles south of the city. The
Paulings lived in a one-room apartment while Herman scratched
 Growing Up in Oregon

out a living as a druggist and a salesman. Pauling's biographer

Florence Meiman White explains that "There was great unemploy-
ment in Oswego, so the only doctor left town. People came to
Herman for free medical advice as well as for their medicines."
A year later, the Oswego experiment having failed, Herman
Pauling moved his family again, this time to Salem. There he took
a job as a traveling drug salesman for D. J. Fry, a druggist and
jeweler. This move proved no more successful than did the one to
Oswego, and in 1905, the Pauling family packed up again. This
time their destination was Condon, a tiny town in the middle of
northern Oregon, 40 miles south of the Washington border. Con-
don is still a remote outpost with a population of less than 1,000.
Herman Pauling chose this unlikely spot for his next home
because Belle's parents had lived there for a number of years. There
seemed to be a promise of emotional and perhaps financial support
from the Darlings for the growing Pauling family. In any case,
Herman opened a drugstore in Condon shortly after the family's
arrival in April 1905.
Life in Condon for young Linus was probably much like what
most young boys dream of: lots of free time, lots of outdoor life,
and lots of sports. He spent much of his time with his best friend
and cousin, Mervyn Stephenson, on the Stephensons' wheat ranch
—
outside of town. And not necessarily on any boy's list of most
—
favored activities he entered the Condon grammar school in
1906.
White writes that young Linus learned to shoot a gun from
Mervyn's father, but he never actually killed an animal. "When the
moment came to pull the trigger," she says, "he shut his eyes and
turned his face away. He just could not shoot an animal."
Linus's short stay in Condon was to have an interesting and
ironic footnote. The little Oregon town was eventually to produce
not one, but two Nobel Prize winners. The second, in addition to
Pauling, was W. P. Murphy, who won the 1934 Prize for physiol-
ogy or medicine for developing a treatment for pernicious anemia,
the disease that was to take the life of Linus's mother in 1926.
By 1909, it had become apparent that life in Condon was not all
that the senior Pauling had hoped for either. Suitcases were
packed, and once again, the Paulings were on the move, this time
8 Linus Pauling

Pauling at about the age of two. (Courtesy of Mrs. Linda Kamb)

back to Portland, where Herman opened another drugstore. This

move would be the last for Herman, however, as he died only a
year later, on July 11, 1910, from a perforated stomach ulcer
complicated by peritonitis.
Suddenly, Belle Pauling found herself a widow with a nine-year-
old son and five- and eight-year-old daughters to support. This
challenge would have been imposing in and of itself. But, by some
 Growing Up in Oregon

accounts, Belle was not satisfied with a survival-level existence in

any case. Pauling's biographer Anthony Serafini has suggested that
Herman's death was hastened by "deepening melancholy over his
wife's increasingly bizarre and unreasonable attitudes toward
money and her obsession with finding ways for Linus to bring in
extra income."
In the meanwhile, Linus was enrolled at Portland's Sunnyside
Grammar School. Biographers look back on those early years for
signs of Pauling's budding genius, but they are not especially
successful. In fact, Pauling reports that it was not science, but
mathematics in which he first became interested. It was clear early
,

on, however, that Pauling's intellect was one to be reckoned with.

By the age of nine, he had read every book in the house, and his
frustrated father had written to the local newspaper, the Orego-
nian, for advice.
"I am and have an only son who is aged 9 years, in the
a father
fifth grade, a great reader and is deeply interested in ancient
history," Herman wrote. He then went on to say:

In my desire to encourage and assist him in his prematurely developed

some of the Oregonian's interested readers to advise
inclinations, I ask
me regarding the proper or at least the most comprehensive works to
procure for him.

There is no evidence that Herman received any response to this

letter.

Indications of a growing interest in science appeared soon enough,

however. Pauling tells of making collections first of insects and then
of minerals when he was 11 or 12 years old. Taking a very scientific
approach, he not only collected objects but also read about them in
library books and then proceeded to classify and catalog them.
The direction of Pauling's future scientific interests is reflected
in his approach to the study of mineralogy. "I was not successful
as a collector," he later recalled, "but I got a book from the library
on mineralogy and I copied out tables of properties, hardness and
various properties, onto sheets of paper and glued the papers to
the wall in my workroom. " In later years it was primarily this kind
,

of speculative, rather than experimental, research for which Pau-

ling was to become famous.
10 Linus Pauling

The year 1914 was a turning point for Pauling in two ways. First,
he graduated from the Sunnyside Grammar School and entered
Portland's Washington High School. Second, and more important,
he was introduced to the study of chemistry. The person responsible
for the latter event was a friend named Lloyd Jeffress, who was to go
on to become professor of psychology at the University of Texas.
Jeffresshad set up a small laboratory in the corner of his bedroom
where he carried out some simple experiments. After watching
Jeffress conduct some experiments, Pauling became fascinated
with chemistry. "I decided then to be a chemist," he has written,
"and to study chemical engineering, which was, I thought, the
profession that chemists followed."
Pauling's interest in chemistry was probably advanced some-
what by his teachers at Washington, William Greene and Pauline
Geballe. But he also carried out a lot of research on his own in a
small laboratory he built in his basement. He "borrowed" the
chemicals he needed for his experiments from a small chemical
laboratory at theabandoned Oregon Iron and Steel Company in
Oswego. Since his grandfather was night watchman at a nearby
plant, young Linus had access to the abandoned laboratory. With
that guaranteed supply of materials, he said, "I became a chemist."
Pauling was also encouraged in his scientific interests by a
retired mountain guide who befriended him and is remembered
today only as "Mr. Yokum." Mr. Yokum was able to bring Linus
some pieces of chemical equipment from the laboratory where he
worked part-time. He also encouraged Linus to learn Greek since
that was the language of "real scholars." By the time he was 13,
Pauling had not only mastered some of that language, but was able
to count to 100 in Chinese and to speak German, the language of
his paternal grandparents.
Over the years, Pauling's passion for chemistry continued to
grow. Writing in 1970 about his early years, he remembered that
"I was simply entranced by chemical phenomena, by the reactions
in which substances disappear and other substances, often with
strikingly different properties, appear."
We have a glimpse of Linus Pauling the teenager from a diary
that he kept during the last year of high school and the first
year of college. At one point, for example, he lists a number of
 Growing Up in Oregon 1

"Tentative Resolutions" about how he will spend his time. The list
includes items such as the following.
/ will make better than 95 (Mervyn's record) in Analysis (Math).

{I made 99 6/11% in Analytic Geom) [added later]

I will take all the math possible.

I will make use of my slide rule.

I will make the acquaintance of Troy Bogart.

I must go out for track and succeed.

Linus was due to graduate from Washington High in 1917, but

a problem developed. He had been under the impression that he
could take two courses required for graduation, American History
I and American History II, at the same time. By the time he found

out that he had to take them in sequence, it was too late to schedule
both courses.* As a result, he left high school in the spring of 1917
without a diploma. (This deficiency was remedied 45 years later
when the high school awarded him his diploma. Even though he
still lacked the necessary history credits, he had earned two Nobel

Prizes in the interim.)

In the summer of 1917, Pauling faced a decision that many girls
and boys have to make every year. Should he apply to go to college
or start looking for work? His decision was a difficult one because
his mother wanted him to stay at home and help with family
finances. She still had two young children to raise, Pauline and
Frances, and income from her boardinghouse was not enough to
provide a comfortable life.
Belle encouraged Linus to learn his future career as an appren-
tice. "You can learn to be a chemical engineer while you're

working," she said. "Your father became a druggist by working in

a drugstore. Your grandfather became a lawyer by working in a
lawyer's office," she argued.

The situation described here is that given in White, p. 14. But Anthony Serafini,
another of Pauling's biographers, quotes (p. 8) an article in the Portland Oregonian
that claims that the course was a civics class, and that Pauling refused to take the class
because he thought he could learn all he needed to know about civics by reading. In a
1964 interview, Pauling appears to confirm the White version of the story.
12 Linus Pauling

The decision was made all the more difficult because Linus was
making good money working at a machine shop. He had earned
$50 a month at first, then $75, and finally $100 a month. The owner
promised him a raise to $150 a month if he would continue
working at the shop instead of going to college and $150 a
. . .

month was a lot of money in 1917!

A section of Pauling's diary reveals his doubts about going on to
Oregon Agricultural College (OAC).

—
Paul Harvey is going to O.A.C. to study chemistry big, manly Paul
Harvey, beside whom I pale into insignificance. Why should I enjoy the
same benefits the [sic] he has, when I am so unprepared, so unused to
the ways of man? I will not be able, on account of my youth and
inexperience, to do justice to the courses and the teaching placed before
me. But it is too late to change now, even if I wanted to, so I will only
do my best. But perhaps every young college student feels as I do. I do
not know. At any rate I will do my best.

Pauling as a student at Oregon Agricultural College, at far left. (Courtesy of

Mrs. Linda Kamb)
 Growing Up in Oregon 13

But, in the end, Pauling's decision never seemed in doubt. He

had developed a passion for learning and could not imagine not
going on to college. So, to almost no one's surprise, he applied for
and was accepted at the Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon
State University, in Corvallis. He left home for Corvallis in Sep-
tember, ready to begin a new phase of his life.
It and fellow
didn't take long for Pauling to impress his teachers
students. As "He glided through the difficult
Serafini has written,
first-year courses in engineering, chemistry, and math. His fellow
students marveled and his intellect amazed the faculty."
But finances continued to be a problem. OAC charged no tuition,
and fees and books were inexpensive. He lived cheaply in a board-
inghouse, and then shared a room with a fellow student. But if his
expenses were modest, so was his income. And since his mother
could offer no support, Pauling had to earn enough himself to pay all
his college expenses. He held all kinds of jobs, including working as
a general handyman women's dormitory. He claims that he
at a
"worked a hundred hours a month and good hard work, too."
He describes a job delivering milk during his sophomore year,
when he was 18 years old. It was, he remembers, "a very hard job,
working eight hours every night from about eight o'clock to about
four o'clock with a horse pulling the milk wagon and delivering
milk to about 500 customers."
His diary records the budgeting he was obliged to do. He kept a
detailed and precise record of where every penny went, from
shoeshines to ice cream sundaes to books to a game of billiards.
He made sure that his income and expenses balanced every day.
When finances became especially tight, he cut back even further.
At one point in his diary, for example, he notes, "Starting tomor-
row, February 3, 1918, I am going to keep meals down to .50 per
day."
His studies and work may have left little time for a social life.
He is remembered by fellow students as having dated very little

and having taken little part in campus life. In fact, Pauling was
know as "tubbing," a prank played
regularly subject to a practice
on men who had no date on Saturday night. During "tubbing," the
man was held under water by friends until he could force his way
back up.
14 Linus Pauling

On one occasion, Pauling decided to get revenge for the tubbings.

He apparently learned how to hold his breath for a long time by
When his friends put his head under water, he
hyperventilating.
stayed under much longer than normal. They began to worry that
he had drowned until he pulled out of the water and laughed at
them.
As Pauling's freshman year came to a close, a new problem arose
to divert his attention, World War I. Thegovernment had
federal
created a program called the Students Army Training Corps
(SATC) to help qualified students stay in college. These students
were expected to attend officer training school when they were not
attending classes. After Pauling's stint with SATC in 1918, he got
a job at a shipyard in Tillamook. He spent the rest of the summer
of 1918 working at the shipyard with his cousin Mervyn Stephen-
son, ofCondon, who was also a freshman at OAC.
Pauling's sophomore year mirrored and magnified his first year.
Although he continued to do well in his classes, finances became
more and more of a problem. His mother had become ill with
pernicious anemia, and Linus now had to help support her and his
sisters as well as himself.
Fortunately, Pauling was able to find a job as a paving-plant
inspector for the State of Oregon during the summer of 1919.
His job was to inspect new pavement and take samples back to
the state laboratory for analysis. He earned $125 a month, all of
which he sent back to his mother. He had almost no expenses
since he lived in a tent with the workmen and ate with them in
the mess. He expected that his mother would pay him back at
the end of the summer and he would be able to return to
Corvallis in the fall.

But his family's financial crisis only grew worse, and as fall
approached, it became obvious that he could not go back for his
junior year. Instead, he decided to keep his job as a paving-plant
inspector and help his mother through the next year.
The year turned out quite differently, however. In November,
Pauling received an offer from OAC to teach quantitative analysis
in the chemistry department. That kind of offer would be almost
unheard-of today. Pauling had only completed the course himself
six months before. Now he was being asked to teach it!
 Growing Up in Oregon 15

Pauling during his senior year at OAC. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #324-1)
16 Linus Pauling

Nonetheless, Pauling accepted the offer. He returned to Corvallis

and began his new $100-a-month teaching assignment. His sched-
ule was apparently a demanding one. He supervised laboratories
and gave lectures, spending a total of about 40 hours a week with
students. That amounts to about four times the work of a regular
college instructor today.
One positive was the time he was
aspect of his year as a teacher
able to devote to self-education. Even a 40-hour teaching schedule
was less demanding than the busy two years of classes and work
that had preceded them. Pauling chose to concentrate during
1919-20 on the works of two eminent chemists, Gilbert Newton
Lewis and Irving Langmuir.
Until this time, Pauling had studied almost nothing about atomic
physics. His introduction to Lewis and Langmuir, however, whet-
ted his appetite for the subject. Before long, he developed "a strong
desire to understand the physical and chemical properties of
substances in relation to the structure of the atoms and molecules
of which they are composed. This desire," he wrote in 1970, "has
largely determined the course of my work for fifty years."
In the fall of 1920, Pauling was able to return to OAC as a student
and begin his junior year. For whatever reason, he returned a
somewhat changed person. He joined a fraternity, Delta Upsilon,
and was elected to a well-respected military honor society, Scab-
bard and Blade. In addition, he took second place in an oratorical
contest with a speech titled "Children of the Dawn."
Pauling's senior year at OAC was characterized by two great
events, one a huge success story, the other an uncertain failure.
The success story grew out of an offer made to Pauling in the fall
of his senior year to teach a class in chemistry to home economics
majors. One member of that class was Ava Helen Miller, the future
Mrs. Pauling. Pauling reports that Miller answered one of his
questions about ammonium hydroxide so well that "I thought I'd
better keep an eye on her."
And indeed he did. Romance seemed to blossom almost imme-
diately. In fact, the legend eventually developed that Ava Helen
was the only woman Pauling ever dated at OAC. Although that
story is almost certainly not true, it does illustrate the depth and
strength of the bond that soon developed between them.
 Growing Up in Oregon 17

Today, a few letters between the young Linus and Ava Helen are
preserved in the Pauling Archives at Oregon State University. The
letters convey in a touching way the intense love that they even-
moving that a reader feels
tually shared. In fact, the letters are so
on such a deep relationship.
a sense of embarrassment at intruding
Ava Helen Miller had been born on a farm near Oregon City on
December 24, 1903. She grew up in a family that was neither
especially poor nor rich, but in better circumstances that those of
the Pauling family. She attended Salem High School before enroll-
ing at OAC as a freshman in 1922.
The second event of significance in Pauling's senior year was
his nomination for a Rhodes scholarship. In the first year that OAC
was allowed to nominate Rhodes candidates, the faculty selected
Pauling and Paul Emmett. Pauling certainly received high recom-
mendations. One of his professors, Floyd Rowland, wrote that
Pauling had "one of the best minds I have ever observed in a person
of his age, and in many ways he is superior to his instructors."
Pauling did not receive a Rhodes scholarship, however. Observ-
ers then and now question how badly he really wanted a scholar-
ship. One of his fraternity brothers reported that he spent the days
before his Rhodes interview "reading some kind of story, a wild
west magazine or mystery. " Serafini lists a number of reasons that
Pauling might not have wanted a Rhodes: his love affair with Ava
Helen; his mother's illness; and his plans for graduate school. In
any case, looking back from a vantage point of 60 years in the
future, Pauling said that his failure to win a scholarship was "just
good luck."
On June 5, 1922, Pauling received his bachelor of science degree
from OAC. Three months later, he left for Pasadena and the
California Institute of Technology where he began graduate work
in physical chemistry. Another important and formative period of
his life was about to begin.

CHAPTER 2 NOTES
p. 7 "There was great unemployment ..." Florence Mei-
man White, Lin us Pauling: Scientist and Crusader (New
York: Walker and Company, 1980), p. 4.
18 Linus Pauling

p. 7 "When the moment came ..." White, p. 5.

p. 9 "deepening melancholy ..." Anthony Linus

Serafini,
Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York: Paragon
House, 1989), p. 4.
p. 9 "I am ..." Tom Hager, "Linus Pauling: His
a father
remarkable career," The Oregon Stater, February 1993,
p. 10.
p. 9 "I was not successful ..." Interview with Linus Pau-
ling, John L. Heilbron, Office of the History of Science
and Technology, University of California, March 27,
1964, Part One.
p. 10 "I decided then ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty Years of
Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biol-
ogy," Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 988.
p. 10 "I became a chemist." Heilbron interview with Pauling.
p. 10 "I was simply entranced ..." "Fifty Years of Progress,"
p. 989.
p. 11 "I will make better than 95 ... " Pauling's diary, unpub-
lished. Pauling Archives, Oregon State University,
Corvallis.
p. 11 "You can learn ..." White, p. 14.
p. 13 "He glided ." Serafini, p.
. . 11.
p. 13 "a very hard job ..." Heilbron interview with Pauling.
p. 16 "a strong desire ..." "Fifty Years of Progress," p. 988.
p. 17 "one of the best minds ..." As quoted in Serafini,
p. 22.
3
THE CAL TECH YEARS

Like many college seniors, Linus Pauling was giving a lot of

thought to graduate school during his last semester at OAC. There
is little doubt that he could have been accepted almost anywhere

in the nation. But he had focused his attention primarily on three

institutions: the University of California at Berkeley, Harvard, and
the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in Pasadena.
Berkeley ranked high on Pauling's list because G. N. Lewis was
chair of its Department of Chemistry. Pauling was increasingly
aware that the new view of chemical bonding offered by Lewis and
Langmuir was likely to expand greatly chemists' understanding of
molecular architecture. Working with Lewis would put Pauling in
the forefront of the research that he had already chosen for his own
career.
For whatever reason, however, Berkeley did not respond to
Pauling's application in time. And Harvard removed itself from
contention when its scholarship offer was inadequate for Pauling's
financial needs. The best it could offer Pauling was a half-time
instructorship that would have allowed him to finish his degree
in five years.
In addition, Pauling's biographer Anthony Serafini hypothe-
sizes that "the prospect of abandoning California for the bitter
winters and crowded streets of Massachusetts Avenue was made
all the more terrible by its proximity to the crowded and corrup-
tion-ridden city of Boston."

* Cal Tech is also known as C.I.T., an abbreviation that Pauling himself apparently
prefers.

19
20 Linus Pauling

The choice fell, therefore, to Cal Tech. And so, in the fall of 1922,
Pauling enrolled as a graduate student in physical chemistry at
Pasadena. The decision was not an entirely satisfactory one. Ava
Helen was still a sophomore at OAC, so she remained in Corvallis.
The blossoming romance between the two made Pauling's move
difficult, but he left for Pasadena nonetheless.
As it turned out, the choice of Cal Tech may have been just right,
matching a brash, young, intellectually exciting institution with a
graduate student who could be described in similar terms. Until
1920, the Pasadena institution had been known variously as
Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute, and Throop
College of Technology. Since its founding in 1891, it had had a
relatively undistinguished academic reputation.
All of that had changed in about 1907, however, when George
Ellery Hale, a member of the Throop Board of Trustees, suggested
to his fellow trustees that they develop an outstanding institute for
science and technology on their campus. Hale was director of the
Mount Wilson Observatory at the time and one of the great entre-
preneurs of science in the early part of this century.
Largely through Hale's efforts, a number of America's leading
researchers began to relocate at Pasadena. Among these was per-
haps the most famous physicist in America, Robert A. Millikan.
Millikan left the University of Chicago in 1918 to become Cal
Tech's first administrative head.
Another newcomer was the outstanding physical chemist, Arthur
Amos Noyes. Noyes left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
in 1917 to establish the Gates Chemical Laboratory at Throop. He had
a clear idea of the direction in which he wanted his chemistry
department to go, and he chose faculty and students who would fit
into that plan.Among those students was Linus Pauling.
The pursuit of Pauling by Noyes on behalf of Cal Tech is
somewhat remarkable. OAC was not a particularly prestigious
institution, and Pauling himself was not even a chemistry major.
Historian John W. Servos has pointed out that OAC offered no
graduate courses in physical chemistry and even its elementary
course appeared to be "substandard." But Noyes obviously saw
something in the young man from Oregon that showed promise,
and he offered him a chance to prove himself in Pasadena.
 The Cal Tech Years 21

Noyes was in contact with Pauling during the summer before he

was to arrive in Pasadena. He sent Pauling the proofs of his new
chemistry text, Chemical Principles, with instructions to solve all
the problems in the nine chapters of the book, more than 500
first

problems in all. Pauling completed the task before leaving for

Pasadena, and later observed that it provided a better background
in physical chemistry than had his OAC course in that subject.
This incident provides support for the hypothesis made by one
writer that "Perhaps Noyes saw in him [Pauling] the man he
wanted to train as his successor" at Cal Tech.
Both Pauling and Noyes have commented on the extraordinary
match between student and institution. At various times, Noyes
referred to Pauling as "the exceptional fellow from Oregon," "his
understudy," and "the most able chemist he had ever seen." In
1933, he remarked that "[w]ere all the rest of the Chemistry Dept.
[at Cal Tech] wiped away except P., it would still be one of the

most important departments of chemistry in the world."

In turn, Pauling has written that "[d]uring the last forty years I

have visited universities all over the world. I now have the opinion
that I had the greatest good luck in having gone to Pasadena in
1922. I do not think that I could have found better conditions for
preparation for a career in physical chemistry anywhere else in the
world."
In any case, Pauling's first glimpse of Cal Tech as he stepped off
the train in the fall of 1922 may have been disarming. One writer
has described the 30-acre campus as a collection of "dried, caked
weeds, a run-down orange grove, and a handful of small sound
oaks."
Still, power of the institution was not its physical setting,
the
but its and student body. Twenty-nine graduate students
faculty
were taught and supervised by 18 faculty members in three build-
ings. The small size of the college and its intellectual brilliance
seemed to guarantee a productive learning atmosphere for almost
any motivated student.
One of Pauling's colleagues, James Bonner, explains how the
conditions at Cal Tech contributed to this atmosphere. He tells of
twice weekly seminars that all teachers and students in the chem-
istry department were expected to attend. Each seminar "lasted
22 Linus Pauling

from one totwo hours and was a marvelous teaching device. The
senior professors would decide on a topic, maybe statistical me-
chanics or whatever. You could go a lot deeper than in any course.
Pauling himself has described the intimate relationships that
developed among students and faculty. He tells how Noyes took
Pauling and other graduate students on camping trips to Palm
Springs and invited them to be his guests at the Noyes oceanside
home at Corona del Mar. Such occasions "gave opportunity for the
unhurried discussions of scientific and practical problems" that
were so important at the institution.
The first few months at Cal Tech must have been difficult ones
for Pauling. Whatever he may have thought of his OAC education,
it soon became obvious that his background was not as strong as

that of his classmates. During a seminar in the spring of 1923,

Professor Richard Tolman asked him a question that he couldn't
answer. Pauling's response was, "I don't know; I haven't taken a
course in that subject."
He was somewhat taken aback when a colleague stopped him
after the seminar and told him, "Linus, you shouldn't have an-
swered Professor Tolman the way you did; you are a graduate
student now, and you are supposed to know everything." Little
wonder that Pauling was later to confess that "there were so many
gaps in my understanding that . . . often I did not know whether
to attribute this failure to myself or to the existing state of devel-
opment of science."
Soon after his arrival, Pauling was assigned to work with Roscoe
Gilkey Dickinson on the topic of crystal structure. Dickinson had
been recruited by Noyes also and had been awarded Cal Tech's
first Ph.D. in 1920. Dickinson's specialty was X-ray crystallogra-

phy, a method for determining the structure of minerals, crystals,

and other substances.
X-ray crystallography had its origins in the work of the German
physicist Max von Laue in the 1910s. The nature of X rays,
discovered only a decade earlier, was still a matter of some dispute.
Von Laue realized, however, that if they were waves, rather than
particles, they would have wavelengths much shorter than the
wavelengths of visible light. That fact, in turn, would suggest that
X rays might be diffracted by the orderly arrangement of atoms in
 The Cal Tech Years 23

single crystals the way visible light is diffracted by evenly spaced

lines on a diffraction grating.
In order to test this hypothesis, von Laue designed an experi-
ment which X rays were beamed at a crystal of copper sulfate.
in
After a number of failures, he and his graduate students eventually
produced a photograph consisting of smeared-out spots.
The photograph was of poor quality, but it confirmed von Laue's
hypothesis. The pattern of spots in the diffraction photograph was
caused by the arrangement of atoms in the copper sulfate. It was
clear that, in principle, X-ray diffraction photography could be
used to determine the structure of any substance composed of an
orderly array of atoms or ions (that is, any substance that could be
crystallized).
The techniques of X-ray crystallography were further refined
by
the father-and-son team of William Henry and William Lawrence
Bragg. The Braggs developed mathematical formulas for calculat-
ing the wavelengths of X rays by crystal diffraction and improved
methods for predicting crystal structure based on X-ray analyses.
For their work in this field, the Braggs were awarded the 1915
Nobel Prize in physics. (Von Laue had won the same award a year
earlier.)
Knowing of Pauling's interest in molecular structure, Noyes
believed that Dickinson was the most appropriate advisor for his
graduate work. It didn't take Pauling long to appreciate the com-
plexities of diffraction analysis. He worked for two months with
15 different crystals, trying to find just the right one to analyze.
Eventually he was "rescued by Dickinson," who brought him a
specimen of molybdenite. After Dickinson prepared the specimen
for Pauling, teacher and student worked together to determine its
structure. The results of that work were published in 1923 as "The
Crystal Structure of Molybdenite" in the Journal of the American
Chemical Society. The paper was the first of more than 900 that
Pauling was to produce in the next 70 years.
During his remaining years as a graduate student at Cal Tech,
Pauling was to author six more papers including reports of the
structures of magnesium corundum, and bar-
stannide, hematite,
ite. His interests ranged far beyond the Gates Chemical Laboratory,

however. Cal Tech expected its students to study a variety of

24 Linus Pauling

sciences, a requirement to which Pauling had no objection. He also

took courses in mathematics, physics, and astronomy, fields in which
he was also exposed to some of the leading scholars of the day. He
learned quantum mechanics, for example, from Arnold Sommerfeld
and Paul Ehrenfest when each was a visiting professor at Cal Tech.
During his work on X-ray crystallography, Pauling developed a
problem-solving approach that was to become his trademark years
into the future. He describes this method as follows:

Really only a small fraction of the crystals that we attacked could be

solved in terms of their structure by logical methods. My attitude was,
why shouldn't I use the understanding that I have developed of the
nature of crystals in inorganic substances and proceed to predict their
structures? I would predict the structure and then I would calculate the
X-ray pattern and if it agreed with the observed pattern, then I felt I had
the right to say that it was the right structure.

The irony of this story is that this method led, not only to some
of Pauling's greatest accomplishments in determining the struc-
tures of molecules, but also, when adopted by Watson and Crick
three decades later, to one of the most important single scientific
discoveries of the 20th century, the structure of the DNA molecule.
In the spring of 1925, Pauling completed his requirements for a
Ph.D. in chemistry with minors in mathematics and physics. He
received that degree on June 12 with a summa cum laude distinc-
tion. His doctoral dissertation consisted of a series of papers
resulting from his X-ray crystallography studies.
Two years before graduation, in the spring of 1923 , one fact about
Pauling's personal was becoming more and more clear: His
life

separation from Ava Helen was not working out. The couple
decided to marry, even though she had not completed her studies
at OAC. Thus, on June 17, 1923, the two were married in the home
of Ava Helen's sisters in Salem, Oregon. The only honeymoon they
could manage was the ride back to Pasadena in a Model T Ford.
Two years later, on March 10, 1925, the Paulings' first child, Linus
Carl, Jr., was born in Pasadena. The Paulings eventually had three
other children: Peter Jeffress, born on February 10, 1931; Linda Helen,
born on May 31, Edward Crellin, born on June 4, 1937.
1932; and
The spring of 1925 was also a busy time as Pauling began to plan
his postdoctoral studies. He applied for, and was eventually to
 The Cal Tech Years 25

receive, a National Research Council (NRC) fellowship. His expec-

tation had been work with Lewis at Berkeley, and Pauling had
to
asked permission of him in 1924 to indicate those plans on his
fellowship application. After Pauling had received the fellowship,
however, Noyes convinced him to stay in Pasadena until he
finished writing his X-ray crystallography reports.
The political intrigue that followed was an indication of Noyes 's
respect for Pauling and his eagerness to assure that Pauling would
eventually return to Pasadena. First, Noyes agreed to allow Pauling
to go to Berkeley, as his fellowship had specified. But then he also
suggested that Pauling apply for a Guggenheim Fellowship, a more
prestigious award.
Noyes further offered to pay for Pauling's boat ticket to Europe
and to pay his expenses there until the Guggenheim was approved.
"You know, it's so valuable to go to Europe," Noyes said, "you
ought to go to Europe right away. I'm sure that you'll get the
Guggenheim Fellowship; and the Institute will give you a $1000.
And if you run out of money, I'll advance some money to you."
Noyes 's motive was apparently his fear of losing Pauling to the
University of California. In fact, the competition for Pauling's
services seems to have been a real one. G. N. Lewis had actually
visited Pasadena in 1925 to offer Pauling a position at Berkeley,
an offer that Noyes never mentioned to Linus. "After some years,"
Pauling later said, "I realized Noyes was determined that I
wouldn't set foot on the Berkeley campus. Noyes was just
. . .

determined that I should be a staff member here [at Cal Tech].

In any case, Pauling gave up his NRC fellowship and sailed for
Europe in March 1926. There he spent two years studying with
Arnold Sommerfeld, Niels Bohr, and Erwin Schrodinger, scien-
tists who were reshaping humankind's understanding of physics,

in general, and of the atom, in particular.

CHAPTER 3 NOTES
p. 19 "the prospect of abondoning ..." Anthony Serafini,
Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York:
Paragon House, 1989), p. 24.
26 Linus Pauling

p. 20 "substandard" John W. Servos, Physical Chemistry

from Ostwald to Pauling: The Making of a Science in
America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1990), p. 275.
p. 21 "Perhaps Noyes saw ..." George W. Gray, "Pauling and
Beadle," Scientific American, May 1949, p. 16.
p. 21 "the exceptional fellow ..." As quoted in Servos,
p. 296.
p. 21 "During the last ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty Years of
Physical Chemistry in the California Institute of Tech-
nology," in Annual Review of Physical Chemistry, vol.
16, H. Eyring, ed. (Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.,
1965): p. 2.

p. 21 "dried, cakedweeds ..." Judith R. Goodstein, "Atoms,

Molecules, and Linus Pauling," Social Research, Au-
tumn 1984, p. 696.
p. 21 "lasted from one ..." As quoted in Serafini, p. 28.
p. 22 "gave opportunity ..." "Fifty Years of Physical Chem-
istry in the California Institute of Technology," p. 3.
p. 22 "I don't know ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty Years of Prog-
ress in Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biology,"
Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 992.
p. 22 "rescued by Dickinson ..." Linus Pauling, "Accep-
tance of the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Soci-
ety of America," The American Mineralogist,
March-April 1968, p. 527.
p. 24 "Really ..." David Ridgway, "Interview with Linus
Pauling," Journ al of Chemical Education, August 1976,
p. 473.
p. 25 "You know, it's so valuable ..." Interview with Linus
Pauling, John L. Heilbron, Office of the History of Sci-
ence and Technology, University of California, March
27, 1964, Part One.
p. 25 "After some years ..." Heilbron interview.
4
TWO YEARS IN EUROPE

For all his innate genius, Linus Pauling was also the beneficiary
of having been born at the right time in history. The 1920s were a
decade of profound revolution in the way scientists viewed matter
and energy. It was Pauling's good fortune to be present as this
revolution took place and to study with some of the great minds
that brought the revolution about. But it was also his genius to be
able to see how these changes were to bring about a corresponding
revolution in chemical thought.
The revolution of the 1920s actually had had its beginnings in
1900 in the work of the German physicist Max Planck. Planck was
able to solve an old and troubling problem involving the way heat
is radiated by assuming that energy (at least in this case) occurs in

the form of tiny packages that he called quanta (sing., quantum).

Planck's theory was startling because it suggested that energy
might have characteristics that scientists had normally thought of
as belonging to matter. The theory had to be taken seriously,
however, for one important reason: It worked. Not only did it
explain satisfactorily the previously unsolved problem of black-
body radiation, but also it was soon applied (by Albert Einstein)
in the solution of another theretofore peculiar phenomenon, the
photoelectric effect.
The second key discovery leading to modern quantum theory
was the discovery in 1923 by Prince Louis de Broglie of the wave
nature of electrons (negatively charged subatomic particles). The
French physicist was able to demonstrate that some properties of
electrons can be understood only if one assumes that they are
traveling through space in the form of waves, similar to light

27
28 Linus Pauling

waves. Just as energy appeared to. have matterlike properties, so,

it seemed, could matter have energylike properties.

What followed, then, was an attempt by physicists to develop

mathematical techniques that could be used to describe the dual
properties of matter and energy, as expressed in quantum theory.
One of those techniques was the wave equation, derived by the
Austrian physicist Erwin Schrodinger in 1926. Schrodinger dem-
onstrated that the position of the electrons in an atom could be
accurately predicted one assumed certain properties ("quantum
if

numbers") and assumed that the electron moved

for the electron
in a wave that was described by his equation.
Pauling's course work at Cal Tech had been such that he could
not have avoided hearing about the ideas of quantum theory. One
of the faculty members with whom he studied and who had a
strong influence on him was Richard Chace Tolman. From Tol-
man, Pauling learned relativity theory, statistical mechanics, and
mathematical physics. In 1925, in fact, Pauling and Tolman had
published a paper together using classical quantum mechanics to
solve problems dealing with the heat properties of liquids cooled
to absolute zero (-273.15°C or the temperature characterized by the
complete absence of heat).
Pauling also heard about quantum theory from guest lecturers at Cal
Tech. One of these, Arnold Sommerfeld, had developed the notion that
electrons can travel around an atomic nucleus, not in perfect circles,
but in elliptical orbits. This idea was to be incorporated into
Schrodinger's wave equation as one of the electron's quantum num-
bers, its azimuthal quantum number. Quantum numbers are numbers
that specify the characteristics of an electron in an atom. The first, or
principal quantum number (designated by the letter n) gives the
average distance of the electron from the atom's nucleus. The second,
or azimuthal, quantum number (designated by the letter 1), describes
The third, or magnetic, quantum
the ellipticity of the electron's orbit.
number (designated by the letter m) describes how an electron's orbital
is orientated in space compared to other orbits. The fourth, or spin,

quantum number (designated as s or m s ), tells the orientation of the

electron's spin, clockwise or counterclockwise.
When the question arose in 1926 as to where Pauling was
to spend his Guggenheim Fellowship, the choice was easy, the
 Two Years in Europe 29

laboratories of the new pioneers in quantum theory. So, after a

short vacation with Ava Helenin Italy, the two traveled on to
Munich, where they arrived on April 20. For the next year, Pauling
was to work with Sommerfeld at his Institute of Theoretical
Physics.
Almost immediately, Pauling was confronted with the still-pre-
liminary state of quantum mechanics. Sommerfeld had proposed
a theory that assigned two quite different numerical values to a
single property of the electron. He was certainly aware of this
inconsistency, but he told his students to concentrate on the
mathematical equations themselves, and not to worry about how
they should be interpreted in terms of a physical model.
The fundamental question in Pauling's mind was how this new
quantum mechanics could be applied to the topic in which he was

Electron Quantum Numbers

electron

n = principal quantum number

<= secondary (azimuthmal)

quantum number

m = magnetic (orientational)
quantum number

s(m s ) = spin quantum number

Figure 1
30 Linus Pauling

most interested, the structures of atoms and molecules. Was quan-

tum mechanics "sufficiently close to being correct," he wondered,
"so that if we solve the equation we'll get the right answers in
relation to the properties of atoms and molecules?"
He was confident that the answer to this question was yes. He
was already aware of the successful application by Heisenberg and
Schrodinger of quantum mechanics to the understanding of simple
atoms. What he hoped for now was "similar success ... for more
complex atoms, containing many electrons, and also for molecules
and crystals."
By 1927, more evidence that quantum mechanics could be
applied to chemical structure began to accumulate. The Danish
physicist O. Burrau successfully used quantum mechanics to
analyze the hydrogen molecule ion. He was able to predict values
for the bond energy, bond length, and frequency of vibration for
the ion that closely matched the values obtained experimentally
for these properties.
There quickly followed two analyses of the hydrogen molecule
based on Burrau's approach, one by E. U. Condon and the other by
W. Heitler and F. London. There no longer seemed much doubt
about the value of quantum mechanics in the analysis of atomic
and molecular structure.
The successes of Burrau, Condon, Heitler, and London
prompted Pauling to report some of his own quantum mechanical
calculations on atomic and molecular properties. The paper he
wrote, "The Theoretical Prediction of the Physical Properties of
Many- Electron Atoms and Ions," was published in January 1927
in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. The paper ultimately
became one of the most frequently cited of all his research papers.
(The frequency with which a paper is cited by other scientists is
often regarded as an indication of its importance and influence.)
During Pauling's stay in Munich, he received one piece of bad
news. His mother, Belle, finally lost her long battle with pernicious
anemia and died on July 12, 1926.
By the spring of 1927, Pauling had completed his work in
Munich. The next stop on his European tour was Copenhagen,
where he was to spend a month with Niels Bohr at the Institute for
Theoretical Physics. While in Copenhagen, Pauling worked with
 Two Years in Europe 31

the Dutch physicist Samuel Goudsmit, whose work on spectral

lines eventually led to the discovery of the fourth, or spin, quan-
tum number.
The European tour came to a conclusion with a five-month visit
to the University of Zurich. There Pauling attended lectures by
Schrodinger and Peter Debye. He also continued his quantum
mechanical calculations on the interaction between two hydrogen
atoms.
In some ways, Pauling's two years in Europe solidified the
coming decade. It was now
direction of his research for at least the
clear that a technique derived from theoretical physics, quantum
mechanics, could be applied to problems that are fundamentally
—
chemical in nature the way atoms bond with each other.
Historian John W. Servos has pointed out what a remarkable
position Pauling was now in. As a result of his study in Europe,
he had brought together two important, but formerly separate,
traditions. On the one hand, he already knew a great deal about
building models of atoms and molecules from his work on X-ray
crystallography at Cal Tech. In his European studies, he had
then learned a theoretical technique (quantum mechanics) for
calculating the position of electrons in atoms and molecules.
"Neither approach [by itself] as yet yielded much useful infor-
mation about the nature of chemical bonds," Servos has written.
"But together the two methods might be made to complement
one another."
Pauling acknowledged the somewhat hybrid position in which
he found himself. His research clearly did not fit into any tradi-
tional definition of chemical studies. "Some people seem to think
that work such as mine, dealing with the properties of atoms and
molecules, should be classed with physics," he wrote to Noyes in
December of 1926, "but I, as I have said before, feel that the study
of chemical substances remains chemistry even though it reach the
state in which it requires the use of considerable mathematics."
By the summer of 1927, the Paulings were ready to return home.
That statement could well have been more true for Ava Helen than
for Linus. While her husband had been matching wits with some
of the brightest, most exciting minds in the world, Ava Helen had
little to do other than being a tourist. As Anthony Serafini has
32 Linus Pauling

observed, she "was tiring of spending her days touring cathedrals

and tending to the needs of her husband."
In addition, the Paulings missed their young son. They had
decided in 1926 not to take Linus, Jr., Europe
to with them, but to
leave him with Ava Helen's parents. Mrs. Miller is reputed to have
told her daughter and son-in-law that "You can't drag this infant
halfway around the world. He'll be just fine here."
Still, it is not hard to understand how the long separation from

their two-year-old son must have been very difficult for both
parents. One can easily imagine why Ava Helen was "jumping
with anticipation" as their departure time drew close.
As the ship sailed for America, a new position, assistant profes-
was awaiting Pauling at Cal Tech.
sor of theoretical chemistry,
Some of the accomplishments for which he was to become most
famous and for which he was to win a Nobel Prize were also on
the horizon.

CHAPTER 4 NOTES
p. 30 "sufficiently close ..." Interview with Linus Pauling,
John L. Heilbron, Office of the History of Science and
Technology, University of California, March 27, 1964,
Part Two.
p. 30 "similar success ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty Years of
Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molecular Biol-
ogy," Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 993.
p. 31 "Neither approach ..."
John W. Servos, Physical
Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 284.
p. 32 "was tiring ..." Anthony Serafmi, Linus Pauling: A
Man and His Science (New York: Paragon House, 1989),
p. 51.
p. 32 "You ..." Florence Meiman White, Linus
can't drag
Pauling: Scientist and Crusader (New York: Walker and
Company, 1980), p. 34.
p. 32 "jumping with anticipation ..." Serafini, p. 51.
5
"THE NATURE OF THE
CHEMICAL BOND"
Pauling returned to Pasadena in the fall of 1927, ready to assume
his new job as assistant professor of theoretical chemistry. His
return appears to have been tinged with some disappointment at
not having received exactly the appointment he had expected. He
told interviewer John Heilbron in 1964 that Noyes had offered him
an appointment as "Assistant Professor of Theoretical Chemistry
and Mathematical Physics." He was surprised to find upon his
return, therefore, that the dual appointment had not worked out.
For some reason, he was prevented from joining the physics
department in addition to his chemistry appointment. Pauling
wondered whether this decision reflected Millikan's preference to
keep Linus out of the physics department.
This controversy reflects the ambiguous position in which Pau-
ling found himself then, and has often found himself since. He has
consistently referred to himself as a "chemist" or a "physical
chemist." Yet it is clear that much of his early work was intimately
involved with mathematics and physics. Indeed, his two years in
Europe had provided him with contacts that many "real" physi-
cistshad not yet experienced.
The issue as to where Pauling "belonged" in the scientific
community was not an entirely academic question. His broad
background in mathematics, physics, and chemistry gave him a
perspective on questions of atomic and molecular structure that
someone trained more narrowly in chemistry might not have had.
In later years, his interest expanded even further into biology.
Pauling's ability to interpret the phenomena of living organisms

33
34 Linus Pauling

in terms of mathematical equations and atomic structure eventu-

ally made him one of the pioneers of the new science of molecular
biology.
In any few years back at Cal Tech seemed to
case, Pauling's first
constitute a period of consolidation. He continued to do research
on crystal structures and on the quantum mechanical analysis of
atomic structure. His 30 publications between 1928 and 1931 dealt
with topics such as "The Crystal Structure of Pseudobrookite,"
"The Crystal Structure of Topaz," "Quantum Mechanics of Non-
penetrating Orbits," and "Quantum Mechanics and the Chemical
Bond."

Pauling lecturing at Cal Tech. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #324-47)

 'The Nature of the Chemical Bond 1 '

Included among these papers was one. "The Principles Deter-

mining the Structure of Complex Ionic Crystals." that outlined the
rules now known as Pauling"s Principles. These principles can be
used to predict stable forms of crystalline substances. They are
valuable in determining the diffraction patterns that can be ex-
pected from an X-ray analysis. Three of the six principles had been
used earlier by. or at least were known to. other crystallographers.
including William Lawrence Bragg. However. Pauling was the first
to clearly state the complete set of principles.
During this period of consolidation. Pauling's reputation contin-
ued to grow by leaps and bounds. He was promoted to associate
professor at Cal Tech in 1929 and then to full professor in 1931 (at
the age of only 30). For a period of five years beginning in 1929.
Pauling also traveled each spring to Berkeley, where he lectured
at the University of California. He spent between one and two
months at Berkeley each year, alternating his teaching between
chemistry- and physics.
Pauling's visits to Berkeley were especially valuable because
they allowed him to spend time with G. N. Lewis. The two
chemists spent a great deal of time talking about new ideas con-
cerning the nature of chemical bonds, a topic on winch Pauling
was soon to wTite his most famous works. Pauling writes that the
visits to Berkeley were a great pleasure and that he was "in
retrospect, rather surprised that he and I did not write a paper
together."
Pauling's first book was also published in 1930. He and the
Dutch-American physicist Samuel A. Goudsmit coauthored The
Structure of Line Spectra. The book contains large sections taken
from Goudsmit's dissertation along with additional material that
he sent to Pauling. Much of the final wTiting and translation were
completed by Pauling, however.
The summer of 1930 found Pauling off to Europe once again. The
trip began with a visit to LawTence Bragg's laboratory at the
University* of Manchester. In principle, that \isit might have been
a very productive one. bringing together two of the greatest scien-
tists of the day. In fact, it did not work out that way. Pauling said
?

later that the visit was "a disapp ointment to him. *T had essen-
tially no contact with Bragg. And they failed to ask me to present
36 Linus Pauling

a seminar talk, say, on my work, because I had done a great deal

of work that bore on what Bragg's laboratory was doing." Bragg's
unhappiness with Pauling's earlier failure to give him credit for
the rules of crystal structure seems to have been a factor for this
professional slight.
From Manchester, Pauling traveled on to Munich, where he
and then on to Ludwigshafen,
visited again with Sommerfeld,
where he met Herman Mark. From Mark, Pauling learned about
the use of electron diffraction techniques for the determination of
molecular structure. Electron diffraction analysis is similar to
X-ray diffraction except that it uses a beam of electrons rather than
a beam of X rays and the target is in gaseous form rather than
crystalline form.
After this return to Cal Tech, Pauling directed one of his stu-
dents, L. O. Brockway, to construct an electron diffraction ma-
chine. By using the technique, Pauling and his students
determined the molecular structure of more than 225 substances
over the next 25 years.
The year 1931 marked an important turning point in Pauling's
career. His years of thinking about and working with quantum
mechanics as a tool for understanding molecular structure finally
bore fruit. On April 6, his paper on the nature of the chemical bond
was published in Journal of the American Chemical Society
(JACS). The 34-page paper was eventually followed by six more
papers on the same topic over the next two years. In those papers,
Pauling developed a single coherent theory that described the way
—
atoms bond to each other a theory that is still used in essentially
thesame form by chemists today.
The question of how atoms combine with each other goes back
long before the modern atomic theory had even been proposed.
The Roman philosopher Lucretius had suggested as early as the
first century B.C. that the fundamental particles of matter contain
fishhook-like appendages that allow them to combine with each
other.
Two thousand years Linus Pauling was teaching a theory
later,
of atoms that differed very from that of Lucretius. In 1919,
little

chemists often described atoms as consisting of hooks and eyes

through which they could be joined to each other. Pauling explains
 'The Nature of the Chemical Bond 1

37

that he was "reasonably well satisfied with this explanation of

chemical bonding."
During his tenure at OAC as instructor of quantitative analysis
in 1919-20, however, Pauling was introduced to a new concept of
the chemical bond, that of G. N. Lewis. Over the first two decades
of the 20th century, Lewis had developed the fundamental con-
cepts of the modern theory of chemical bonding. In 1902 he
suggested that one way in which atoms can combine is through
the loss and gain of electrons. For example, a sodium atom com-
bines with a chlorine atom when it gives up the single electron in
its outermost energy level to the chlorine atom. A chemical bond

formed in this way is called an ionic bond.

By 1916, Lewis had proposed a second method by which bond-
ing can occur. In some cases, he suggested, two atoms may share
a pair of electrons between them. The attraction of the nuclei of
both atoms for the same pair of electrons results in a covalent bond
between the two. (This idea was put forward at about the same
time by Irving Langmuir.)

Lewis Theory of Bonding

iodine atoms iodine molecule

or

iodine ions

Figure 2
38 Linus Pauling

bond theory was

Pauling's contribution to the development of
to examine ionic and covalent bonding by applying the principles
of quantum mechanics. Over a period of less than a decade, he
transformed Lewis's somewhat simplistic theory of the chemical
bond into a highly sophisticated analysis of the way electrons are
shared between two atoms. In that process, Pauling eventually
developed almost all of the most fundamental principles of the
modern theory of chemical bonding, including hybridization,
resonance, and electronegativity. Small wonder that some observ-
ershave called Pauling's 1939 book, The Nature of the Chemical
Bond, and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals, one of the half
dozen most important books in the history of chemistry. The book
eventually went through three editions and was translated into
French, Japanese, Russian, and Spanish.

An sp 3 Hybrid Orbital

)
*K
1 s orbital

1 sp 3 hybrid orbital

3 p orbitals

Figure 3
 The Nature of the Chemical Bond " 39

One of Pauling's first breakthroughs concerned the hybridiza-

tion of electrons in the carbon atom. Earlier studies had shown
quite conclusively that the four outermost electrons in the carbon
atom occupy different energy levels, known as the 2s and 2p
orbitals. Thus, one would expect carbon to form at least two
different kinds of bonds. Yet, when carbon bonds to other atoms,
the four bonds it forms are identical with each other.
Pauling explained this apparent discrepancy by assuming that
the four bonding electrons in carbon undergo some kind of hybrid-
ization during bonding in which all assume a new configuration
that makes them equivalent to each other. He referred to this new
configuration as an sp 3 orbital.
In a second line of research, Pauling examined in greater detail
the contrast between ionic and covalent bonding. As late as
1930, it was still not clear which type of bond occurred within
the well-studied hydrogen chloride (HC1) molecule. Pauling
applied quantum mechanics to the question and found that
some intermediary structure between a pure ionic and pure
covalent bond resulted in the most stable configuration for the
HC1 molecule.
He concluded, therefore, that bonding did not necessarily in-
volve an all-or-nothing, ionic-or-covalent bond choice. In fact,
most bonds fell somewhere along a continuum between these two
extremes.
To quantify this discovery, he proposed a concept known as
electronegativity. An element's electronegativity is a measure of
its relative ability to attract the two electrons in a covalent bond.

When an element with a high electronegativity combines with one

having a low electronegativity, the former is able to capture both
electrons, and an ionic bond results. When two elements with
roughly equal electronegativities react, each exerts a roughly equal
pull on the electrons, they share the electrons equally, and a
covalent bond results.
The puzzle of the structure of the benzene molecule also yielded
to Pauling. Benzene had long posed a problem for chemists be-
cause molecular formula (CeHe) appears to be grossly inconsis-
its

tent with the chemical properties expected of amolecule with this

structure. In 1865, the German chemist Friedrich Kekule had
40 Linus Pauling

suggested an answer to this problem. He hypothesized that a

benzene molecule consists of six carbon atoms arranged in a ring,
with alternate single and double bonds between adjacent atoms.
In order to account for benzene's chemical properties, he further
proposed that the molecule could assume two distinct forms in
which the position of the double bonds continuously shifted back
and forth in the molecule.
For more than 60 years, chemists accepted the Kekule model
even though it was not entirely successful. Around 1930, Pau-
ling asked what new information quantum mechanics would
provide about benzene. He found that the most stable form of
the benzene molecule was neither one nor the other of the
Kekule structures, but some intermediary form. "With quantum
mechanics," he later said, "the actual structure involved can be
described as a super-position of the two Kekule structures. So
described, the interconversion would be so rapid that there
would be no hope of describing molecules with just one struc-
ture."
The "rapid interconversion" between two structures was given
the name resonance. Pauling had been able to demonstrate that the
state of a molecule can be determined more correctly by using
quantum mechanics than by using predictions based on classical
atomic theory. This breakthrough was soon put to use in the
determination of other molecular structures.
Pauling's ideas about resonance, electronegativity, orbital hy-
bridization, and other phenomena were laid out in his seven
articles in the Journal of the American Chemical Society and
eventually formed the core of his 1939 book, The Nature of the
Chemical Bond. Interviewers have asked Pauling why it took so
long for the book to appear. His answers suggest that, while he
knew a great deal about bonding during the early 1930s, his ideas
were still developing and maturing. By the mid-1 930s, he was
ready to begin recording those ideas in more permanent form. "By
1935," he has written, "I felt that I had an essentially complete
understanding of the nature of the chemical bond. This under-
standing had been developed in large part through the direct
application of quantum mechanical principles to the problem of
the electronic structure of molecules."
 The Nature of the Chemical Bond' 41

Resonance in Benzene Molecules

Double bonds between

c2+c3, c 4 +c5, c6+c 1 ; ,

)
Structure 1

+
Double bonds between
c 1 +c 2 c^+c 4 c 5 +c6

A
, ,

1/ 01

Structure 2

Electrons shared equally

by all carbon atoms

Resonance Structure

Figure 4
42 Linus Pauling

As the seven JACS papers emerged, so did Pauling's reputation

among his colleagues. In September of 1931, he was the first
recipient of the American Chemical Society's A. C. Langmuir Prize
in Pure Chemistry for "the most noteworthy work in pure science
done by a man under 30 years of age." He was also being courted
by other institutions who felt that his presence on their faculty
would enhance their own prestige. Among these were Harvard and
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.). Physicist John
Slater at M.I.T. wrote Pauling in 1931 offering him a salary of
$8,000 (a lot of money in those days), a full professorship, and a
jointappointment in physics and chemistry.
For a variety of reasons, Pauling did not accept the M.I.T. or
Harvard offer. According to biographer Serafini, weather was
almost certainly a factor since both Linus and Ava Helen preferred
the "warmth and familiarity of Pasadena" to the "awful snow in
Cambridge." Pauling himself has said that "I just thought I
wouldn't feel at home there ... I just didn't want to live in
Cambridge." He did agree, however, to spend a term at M.I.T.
during the spring of 1932.
The M.I.T. visit was apparently not a very successful one, either
professionally or personally. Serafini points out that "the stay [at

M.I.T.] was not the most productive period of Pauling's career,"

and he alludes to the "family squabbling" that took place during
the months in Cambridge. Life was undoubtedly made more diffi-
cult for Ava Helen since she had one-year-old Peter to care for in
addition to Linus, Jr., and was pregnant with Linda, born at the
end of their East Coast stay.
As 1933 drew to a close, Pauling could look back with satis-
faction on a half decade of enormous accomplishment. Awards
such as an honorary doctorate from his alma mater, now Oregon
State University, and election to the National Academy of Sci-
ences were recognition of the achievements he had already
—
recorded. A majority of scientists including some of the most
brilliant —
have begun to slacken off at this point in their lives,
willing to rest on their laurels. Such was not to be the case with
Pauling, however. In fact, he was about to set out on an entirely
new line of research that was to yield yet more revelations about
the structure of matter.
 " The Nature of the Chemical Bond " 43

CHAPTER 5 NOTES
p. 35 "in retrospect ..." Linus Pauling, "Pauling on G. N.
Lewis," Chemtech, June 1983, p. 334.
p. 35 "I had essentially ..." Horace Freeland Judson, The
Eighth Day of Creation (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1979), p. 77.
p. 37 "reasonably well satisfied ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty
Years of Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molecu-
lar Biology," Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 990.
p. 40 "With quantum mechanics ..." David Ridgway, "Inter-
view with Linus Pauling," Journal of Chemical Educa-
tion, August 1976, p. 474.

p. 40 "By 1935 ..." "Fifty Years of Progress," p. 998.

p. 42 "warmth and familiarity ..." Anthony Serafini, Linus
Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York: Paragon
House, 1989), pp. 61, 75.
p. 42 "I just thought ..." Interview with Linus Pauling, John
L. Heilbron, Office of the History of Science and Tech-
nology, University of California, March 27, 1964, Part
Two.
p. 42 "the stay ..." Serafini, p. 61.
6
THE TURN TO BIOCHEMISTRY

Until the 1930s, the study of living systems had not been of much
interest to Linus Pauling. As he confessed in a 1978 interview, he
had "never had a course in biology. No course in biochemistry
either." In fact, he had remarked in a 1924 letter to a friend that
the graduate work in biochemistry at Cal Tech was "interesting but
I wouldn't want to do it. " Such comments are especially intriguing

in view of the fact that Pauling was soon to turn his attention to
the study of molecules that are of importance in biological phe-
nomena. So successful was this line of research to be that Pauling
is now regarded as one of the founders of the modern science of

molecular biology, which, he claims, "one might call modern

biology."
Pauling's conversion to biological topics resulted from two
forces.The first was the changing character of Cal Tech. When
Pauling arrived in Pasadena, Cal Tech was strongly oriented to-
ward the physical sciences, with almost no courses available in
the life or social sciences or in the humanities. That situation began
to change in 1929, however, when the famous geneticist Thomas
Hunt Morgan was persuaded to leave Columbia University to
establish anew biological department at Cal Tech. Morgan's de-
partment soon included some of the greatest names in modern
genetics, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Calvin Bridges, and Alfred
Sturdevant among them.
Genetics was the one field of biology in which Pauling might be
expected to develop an interest. It was far more precise and
quantitative than most other biological fields. Pauling writes that,
by 1931, he "had become interested enough in genetics to present

44
 7/ie Turn to Biochemistry 45

a seminar describing a theory of the cross-over of chromosomes

that I had developed."

Soon, a mutual sense of respect began to develop between

Pauling and the geneticists. The latter recognized in Pauling a
person who respected their field and to whom they could go for
help. As one of the group later explained, "he could understand
what you were telling him that you wanted done, and he could tell
you what mathematics to use."
The second factor moving Pauling toward biology was a certain
sense of restlessness about his own
work. At the age of 30, he had
already studied a wide variety of inorganic molecules exhaustively.
He was ready to go on to greater challenges. From the time he entered
Cal Tech, he explained, he had "worked largely with inorganic
substances . mostly rather simple substances that had ten, twenty,
. .

or thirty atoms in each molecule. But then — —

about 1934 I began to
wonder about the large molecules in living organisms protein
. . .

molecules with thousands of atoms in them."

The first problem to which Pauling turned his attention was that
of the hemoglobin molecule, the protein molecule that transports
oxygen through our bloodstream. Hemoglobin is a highly complex
molecule at whose core is a group of atoms known as heme. The
"working part" of the heme group, in turn, is a single iron atom
located at the group's center.
By the early 1930s, scientists were relatively certain that hemo-
globin functions as a carrier of oxygen because of the ability of the
iron atom in heme to bond with an oxygen atom. Some chemists
believed, however, that the oxygen did not actually bind to the
iron but was simply held loosely within the heme structure.
Beyond these preliminary ideas, however, the exact mechanisms
by which oxygen adds to and is released by hemoglobin were not
well understood. Since these changes involve the formation and
breaking of chemical bonds, Pauling was attracted to the problems
involving hemoglobin.
In order to find out about the bonding between oxygen and
hemoglobin, Pauling decided to study the electronic changes that
occur in both oxygen and iron in the combined molecule (oxyhe-
moglobin) and its uncombined form (deoxyhemoglobin). He was
assisted in this research by a graduate student, Charles Coryell.
46 Linus Pauling

The Quarternary Structure of Hemoglobin

heme molecule

ft
chain
ft chain

a chain

Figure 5

The were remarkable. In

results of the Pauling-Coryell studies
the first place, those experiments confirmed that oxygen actually

forms a chemical bond with iron and is not just held in close
association, as some chemists had believed. Far more important,
however, was the discovery that the hemoglobin molecule un-
dergoes an "extreme structural change" when it takes on or re-
leases an oxygen molecule. Pauling and Coryell called this
discovery "interesting and surprising."
The hemoglobin puzzle tickled Pauling's imagination. One re-
sult, Pauling later wrote, was that he "became interested in the
general problem of the structure of proteins." It was a stroke of
good fortune that this interest developed at a time when another
scientist with similar interests was visiting in Pasadena.
 The Turn to Biochemistry 47

Ava Helen with the three Pauling children, about 1934. (Courtesy of Pauling
Archives; #324-36)
48 Linus Pauling

Alfred Mirsky, from New York City's Rockefeller Institute for

Medical Research, was spending a year at Cal Tech. One of
Mirsky's interests was the denaturing of protein. Denaturation is

the process during which the physical properties of a protein

undergo changes, often dramatic changes. During the frying of an
egg, for example, the clear, colorless protein that makes up the
outer portion of the egg is denatured to an opaque, white solid.
Pauling and Coryell talked with Mirsky at length about the
process of denaturation. They concluded that denaturation occurs
when some outside agent (such as heat, as in the frying of an egg)
causes a change in the shape of protein molecules. In 1936, Pauling
and Mirsky published a paper describing a chemical mechanism
by which such a change might occur.
The obvious challenge that Pauling now faced was to know more
about the molecular structure of proteins. Scientists had long
known that proteins are complex molecules made from relatively
simple building blocks, amino acids. How amino acids are ar-
ranged within a protein was not clear, however.
Some researchers argued for a cyclol theory, in which the amino
acids are arranged in a hexagonal ring. Others believed that the
amino acids are joined end-to-end in very long chains. In either
case, one might then ask if a higher level of organization were also
possible. Might the long chain, for example, be bent, folded,
twisted, or arranged in some other shape?
In 1939, Pauling and Carl Niemann published a paper that
summarized all of the evidence against the cyclol theory. That
evidence was very convincing, and the cyclol theory was soon
abandoned in favor of the chain model. As a result, chemists
became convinced that a protein consists of a very long chain of
hundreds or thousands of amino acids.
To decide what shape (or shapes) a protein molecule might take,
Pauling turned to a technique with which he was familiar and
comfortable, X-ray crystallography. He knew that X-ray photo-
graphs had the potential for showing precisely how amino acids
are arranged in a protein. The fundamental problem was getting
good diffraction patterns from protein molecules, a far more diffi-
cult problem than it was for the crystals with which Pauling had
worked in the past.
 The Turn to Biochemistry

At the time, the best protein diffraction patterns available

were those taken by the gTeat British crystallographer William
Astbury. Astbury was employed at the University of Leeds,
where he worked on the physics of textiles and fibers. Although
the equipment he worked with was still somewhat primitive,
his diffraction patterns provided some tantalizing clues about
protein structure.
The problem was that Pauling had no success in finding a
structure thatwould conform to Astbury 's patterns. He tried to use
everything he knew about chemical bonding to predict bond
lengths and bond angles in the protein molecules. But none of his
models fit Astbury 's data.
After spending the summer of 1937 in this futile research.
Pauling concluded that he was doing something wrong, that some
basic assumption he was relying on must be false. He decided to
tryanother approach to the problem. That approach was to begin
studying not a complete protein itself, but a single amino acid of
which proteins are made. Up to this time, no one had tried to
determine the structure of a single amino acid or of a simple
peptide, a compound containing two. three, or some small number
of amino acids bonded to each other. In fact. Pauling's decision to
study individual amino acids and small peptides was not taken
seriously by other workers in the field.
To assist him in this research. Pauling turned to Robert B. Corey,
who had just joined the faculty at Cal Tech. Like Musky, Corey
had come from the Rockefeller Institute in Xew York City. He too
was curious about the structure of proteins and agreed to begin,
along the lines of Pauling's suggestion, by studying the individual
amino acids and their simple compounds.
Within a year. Corey had found the structure of a dipeptide.
diketopiperazine. a compound containing two amino acids joined
to each other. Before long, he unraveled the structures of many of
the amino acids and of some simple peptides. By 1948. the evi-
dence from Corey's work was overwhelming. "Tt had become
clear," Pauling wrote, "that there was nothing surprising about the
dimensions of these molecules." They conformed in even* way to
the fundamental assumptions that Pauling had used in drawing
protein structures 11 years earlier. It was not he who had been at
50 Linus Pauling

fault, he decided. Instead, there must have been some flaw in

Astbury's work.
Pauling decided to return to the task he had abandoned in 1937
and to work out a model for the structure of protein. The story of
Pauling's successful solution to this puzzle is continued in Chapter
Eight.
The years spent waiting for Corey's results were by no means
empty ones for Pauling. In fact, as early as May 1936 he had found
another topic that called for his attention, the problem of biological
specificity.The occasion was a seminar given by Pauling at the
which he discussed his research on hemo-
Rockefeller Institute at
globin. Present that day in the audience was Karl Landsteiner,
Nobel Prize winner in biology in 1939 and currently on the staff
at Rockefeller.
Landsteiner was intrigued by Pauling's presentation and invited
Pauling to visit his laboratory so that they could talk in more detail.
Landsteiner wanted to know if Pauling could explain some fea-
tures of Landsteiner's current researchon immunology in terms of
molecular structure. Landsteiner had found that the presence of a
foreign body (an antigen) in the bloodstream calls forth a very
specific kind of response (an antibody) from the immune system.
The response is said to be specific because a different antibody
appears to be available for each different antigen that is known.
Was there something about the molecular structures of antigen and
antibody molecules, Landsteiner wondered, that would explain
this specificity?
Pauling did not know the answer to this puzzle. Indeed, he was
hardly aware that the phenomenon existed. But he was intrigued
by the problem and decided to think more about it. Within a few
days, he had read Landsteiner's book, The Specificity of Serologi-
cal Reactions, and started to consider possible molecular explana-
tions for Landsteiner's observations.
By 1939, Pauling had worked out a fundamental theory to
explain these phenomena, the theory of complimentarity. Accord-
ing to this theory,two molecules will react with each other if their
shapes allow them to approach each other very closely. In cases
like those discovered by Landsteiner, an antibody can attach to an
antigen, he suggested, only if the antibody molecule has a structure
 The Turn to Biochemistry 51

that will allow it to with the antigen molecule. His paper

fit tightly
outlining these ideas. "A Theory of the Structure and Process of
Formation of Antibodies." was published in the Journal of the
American Chemical Society in 1940.
Over the next decade. Pauling's students looked for experimen-
tal evidence to support this theory, with extraor dinar}" success.

They found that the space between an antigen and antibody

molecule was often less than the diameter of an atom, showing
how closely the two had approached each other. The search.
Pauling said, '"supported the idea of complimentarity so strongly
as to require its acceptance."
Pauling soon realized that the principle of complimentarity
could be applied to a wide variety of biological phenomena.
Enzyme action can be explained, for example, by assuming that an
enzyme molecule has a geometric shape that will allow it to
approach very closely to the substrate molecule on which it acts.
This kind of explanation lies at the core of one of the best-known
explanations of enzyme action, the lock-and-key theory.
In a strange bit of foresight. Pauling also predicted that gene
action would illustrate the principle of complimentarity. In the Sir
Jesse Boot Foundation lecture at Nottingham. England, on May 28.
1948. Pauling argued that

I believe that the genes serve as the templates on which molded the
are
enzymes that are responsible for the chemical characters, and that they
also serve as templates for the production of replicas of themselves. . . .

In general, the use of a gene or virus as a template would lead to the

formation of a molecule not with identical structure but with compli-
mentary structure.

In less than five years. Watson and Crick were to discover the
structure of DXA. molecule that has precisely the qualities
a
described in Pauling's Boot lecture.
The late 1930s were a period of significant change in Pauling's
academic career also. On June 3. 1936. A. A. Noyes died. The
following year. Pauling was chosen to replace his former mentor
as chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineer-
ing and director of the Gates Laboratory at Cal Tech. He held these
positions for the next 22 years.
52 Linus Pauling

Lock-and-Key Theory of Enzyme Action

T^D ^w
strain

enzyme j n
enzyme

f V^} —
rnotws |
- no fit possible

^3.
C>
s
e nzyme J n
enzyme
reaction
products
s = substrate

Figure 6

During the academic year 1937-38, Pauling was invited to be

George Fisher Baker Lecturer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New
York. These lectures, along with his earlier papers in the Journal
of the American Chemical Society, were eventually to form the
basis of his most famous book, The Nature of the Chemical Bond,
published in 1939.
The Cornell appointment also made it possible for Pauling to
continue his contacts with Karl Landsteiner. He later explained
that during one visit to Ithaca Landsteiner gave him "a thorough
survey of the field of serology (the study of serums used in
curing disease) and [his] opinions about the reliability of some
apparently contradictory experimental observations by differ-
ent people." This tutorial turned out to be invaluable in
Pauling's formation of the theory of complimentarity, first pub-
lished two years later.
The story of Pauling's work on hemoglobin, complimentarity,
and other biological phenomena stretched over a period of world-
wide upheaval. Adolf Hitler's German army had invaded Austria
 The Turn to Biochemistry 53

Pauling with Linda, about 1935. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #324-38)

in 1938. By 1941, the United States had been drawn into the war
by the bombing of Pearl Harbor. For a half dozen years, most
scientific research unrelated to military needs came to a halt.
These changes affected the career of Linus Pauling as they did
those of other scientists around the world.

CHAPTER 6 NOTES
p. 44 "never had a course ..." "The Plowboy Interview: Dr.
Linus Pauling," Mother Earth News, January/February
1978, p. 17.
p. 44 "interesting but ..." Derek Davenport, "Vintage Pau-
ling," Chemtech, December 1982, p. 715.
54 Linus Pauling

p. 44 "one might call ..." Neil A. Campbell, "Crossing the

Boundaries of Science," BioScience, December 1986,
p. 738.
p. 44 "had become interested enough ..." Linus Pauling,
"Fifty Years of Progress in Structural Chemistry and
Molecular Biology," Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 1002.
p. 45 "he could understand ..." Judith R. Goodstein,
"Atoms, Molecules, and Linus Pauling," Social Re-
search, Autumn 1984, p. 703.
p. 45 "worked largely ..."
"The Plowboy Interview," p. 17.
p. 46 "interesting and surprising ..." Linus Pauling and
Charles D. Coryell, "The Magnetic Properties and Struc-
ture of Hemoglobin, Oxyhemoglobin, and Carbon
Monoxyhemoglobin," Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, April 1936, p. 213.
p. 51 "supported the idea ..." "Fifty Years of Progress,"
p. 1006.
p. 51 "I believe that the genes ..." "Fifty Years of Progress,"
p. 1008.
p. 52 "a thorough survey ..." "Fifty Years of Progress,"
p. 1005.
7
YEARS OF TRANSITION

The 1940s were a decade of unusual upheaval for Linus Pauling,

unusual even for a man whose life has always been characterized
by change and evolution. Pauling's life was, of course, affected by
World War II and the dramatic changes that were to follow that
conflict. But it produced only a pause, and not a halt, in his
ongoing research into the chemical explanations of life. In addi-
tion, Pauling began to write an entirely new chapter to his life, one
that focused on politics rather than science. Finally, at the very
beginning of the decade, he faced a personal medical crisis that
nearly ended his life.

During the fall of 1940, Pauling began to complain of feeling

unusually tired. At first, he blamed these feelings on overwork, a
not-unreasonable explanation given his typical schedule of re-
search, teaching, writing, speaking, and traveling. When his health
continued to deteriorate, however, he finally agreed to see a
physician. The diagnosis was not an encouraging one: glomerulo-
nephritis. Glomerulonephritis, also known as Bright's disease, is
characterized by an inflammation of the kidneys. Its cause is
essentially unknown.
Although the disease can be treated today, relatively little could
be done in the 1940s. Pauling was fortunate, however, to find a
physician who was willing to make a major commitment of time
and energy to Pauling's condition. That physician was Dr. Thomas
Addis. For more than four years, Dr. Addis traveled once a week
by train from Los Angeles to Pasadena to treat Pauling. Under Dr.
Addis's care, Pauling slowly regained his health although he
continued to experience relapses of the disease for many years.

55
56 Linus Pauling

Dr. Addis may have had an effect on Pauling that went beyond
medical treatment. Addis was a Communist and had been under
investigation by the federal government for his political views
even before the postwar anti-Communist witch hunts. A decade
after treating Pauling, Addis was to lose his job because he refused
to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee.
During his treatment, Pauling was appalled by the government's
treatment of Dr. Addis. According to Pauling's biographer An-
thony Serafini, "The psychological shock of witnessing the abuse,
vilification, and ostracism of the man who, quite literally, had
saved his life was too much for Pauling to bear." Serafini suggests
that this experience may have been one of the factors involved in
Linus Pauling's growing sense of political awareness.
Until the 1940s, Pauling was largely apolitical. He claims not to
have voted until 1932, and when he did, he voted for Herbert
Hoover. Yet, by the 1950s, Pauling was being investigated by the
U.S. Congress for the revolutionary political views he held and
actions he had taken. The evolution from political apathy to
fervent advocacy certainly seems to require some explanation.
Probably more fundamental to this conversion than the Addis
experience, however, was the influence of his wife, Ava Helen.
Ava Helen had grown up in a liberal family, according to Serafini,
raised by "a mother and father who were outspoken themselves
and who sympathized with the poor and oppressed."
During the early years of their marriage, while Pauling was
devoting himself to scientific research, Ava Helen was involved
with a variety of liberal and progressive organizations and causes.
These included the American Civil Liberties Union, the Women's
International League for Peace, and the Pacific League, an organi-
zation later accused of being a Communist "front" committee.
Serafini argues that Ava Helen's own "energy and passion" inevi-
tably affected Pauling, who gradually became involved in political
efforts similar to those supported by his wife.
Pauling himself confirms this view. His strong moral sense, he
said in a 1981 interview, came from Ava Helen. "Until I was forty,"
he said, "I didn't take much interest in social concerns. I swal-
lowed the argument that people in power use to suppress scien-
tists— a scientist knows a great deal about his field but nothing
 Years of Transition 57

Ava Helen (second from left) at the Congress of Women of America, held
in Bogota, Colombia, July 17-22, 1970. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #326-17)

whatsoever about war and peace." Ava Helen's influence led him
to a new view, he said. "A scientifically moral attitude has to be a
world view. We have to learn to consider the whole of mankind
as an organism."
Pauling's political evolution occurred slowly, over more than a
decade. Besides the influence of Addis and Ava Helen, a number
of specific incidents contributed to his transformation. One of
58 Linus Pauling

these occurred in 1945. At the time, the Paulings had a nisei

(second-generation Japanese) gardener working for them. The
Paulings' son Peter discovered one day that someone had written
"Americans but the Paulings hire a Jap" on their garage door
die,
in red paint. The incident was followed by other forms of harass-
ment, such as threatening letters and telephone calls. Serafini
claims that Pauling was so disturbed by this affair that "he consid-
ered a radical structuring of his life" that eventually "escalated his
interest in politics."
Another factor affecting Pauling's political views was the Sec-
ond World War. Prior to 1940, scientific research was largely
irrelevant to the way governments conducted their businesses.
Two important discoveries resulting from war research—radar and
nuclear fission —were to change that equation forever. It eventu-
ally became clear that those nations with the strongest scientific
establishments were to become the most powerful nations in the
world.
When presented by Robert Oppenheimer with the opportunity
to work on the U.S. government's Manhattan Project, the program
todevelop an atomic bomb, Pauling declined for reasons that he
has never discussed. He did agree, however, to take part in other
kinds of military research. His explanation for this deviation from
his normally pacifist views was simply that "Hitler had to be
stopped."
During the war years 1942-45, Pauling served his country in
a numberof different ways. He was a consultant to the Commit-
tee on Medical Research of the Office of Scientific Research and
Development (OSRD). He also supervised a number of projects
for the National Defense Research Committee of OSRD. The
majority of these projects involved the development of explo-
sive materials.
His first military contribution —an "oxygen meter" —was ac-
tually invented before the war, in 1940. The purpose of the meter
was to detect the amount of oxygen remaining in a closed space
as, for example, in a submarine. According to Pauling, the meter
was developed in answer to requests made by all three branches
of the armed forces. Its operation was based on certain magnetic
properties of the oxygen atom and was eventually used on
 Years of Transition 59

submarines and airplanes during World War II. After the war, it
found applications in hospitals and in many industries. For exam-
ple, it could be used to measure the amount of oxygen present in
blood while a patient was being anesthetized. Pauling reported
that he developed the basic idea for the device in "only three days.
For his wartime contributions, Pauling was awarded the Presiden-
tial Medal for Merit in 1948 by President Harry S Truman.

The development of nuclear weapons had a particularly power-

ful impact on Pauling's views. Prior to, during, and after the war,
he was frequently asked to talk about his area of military expertise,
explosives. On one occasion, shortly after the end of the war, he
was asked to compare the effects of nuclear and conventional
weapons.
In preparation for the lecture, he made some calculations on this
comparison and, he says, "was appalled at the magnitude of what
I discovered." His rapidly growing concerns about nuclear weap-

ons grew out of that experience and his subsequent realization that
—
nuclear weapons "can be so destructive and relatively cheap
that it might be difficult for power-oriented government figures to
resist their use unless the world became acutely aware of the
horrendous consequences."
Ultimately, Pauling took a personal vow to become more active
in the anti-nuclear movement. On a boat trip to Europe in 1947,
he made a "ceremonial commitment" to himself to raise the issue
of world peace in every speech he made in the future, no matter
what the topic.
made himself available
In the postwar years, therefore, Pauling
tospeak about peace on many occasions. In addition, he began to
make connections with other scientists who were increasingly
alarmed by the possibilities of a nuclear holocaust. In 1946, for
example, at the request of Albert Einstein, Pauling became a
member of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. The
committee, also known as the "Einstein Committee," was incorpo-
rated on August 2, 1946, for the purpose of gathering financial
support for groups engaged in public education on problems of
atomic energy.
When the Emergency Committee went out of business in late
1951, Pauling was very concerned. He wrote to Leo Szilard, an
60 Linus Pauling

atomic physicist and a leader of the anti-nuclear movement, "I

have been very much disturbed by the developments about atomic
weapons, as described in the newspapers lately. . What would
. .

you think about formulating a set of questions, asking whether it

would be possible to bring law and order into the world as a whole,
through cooperation between the east and the west in a sincere
effort to reach a peaceful solution of our problems —
to achieve a
permanent peace. . These questions would then be sent in a
. .

letter to President Truman and Premier Stalin. ..."

Pauling's developing political consciousness did not mean that
he had abandoned his scientific research. Quite the opposite.
Throughout the war and in the postwar years, he managed to
maintain lines of research on biological and medical topics that he
had begun in the 1930s. Between 1941 and 1945, he published 34
papers on topics ranging from the crystal structure of metals to
advances in resonance theory to light absorption by free radicals.
The vast majority of these papers, however, dealt with his
ongoing studies of antibody-antigen reactions, originally inspired
by his conversations with Karl Landsteiner. One of these papers,
coauthored with Dan H. Campbell and David Pressman, described
the synthesis in March 1942 of "the first synthetic antibody."
Pauling's team had found a mechanism by which globulin proteins
found normally in blood could be chemically altered to convert
them to antibody molecules. They used these synthetic antibodies
to conduct further tests on Pauling's principle of complimentarity.
The late 1940s also saw the culmination of the 11-year effort by
Pauling and Robert Corey to determine the molecular structure of
protein molecules. Having finally been convinced by Corey's work
that his initial method of attacking this problem was correct,
Pauling went back to the task of model-building.
Pauling's approach to this problem was unusual among biolo-
gists and chemists. He would use paper and pencil or Tinkertoy-
like building blocks to construct a physical model of the molecule
he wanted to represent. From quantum mechanics and other
theoretical considerations, he knew the limitations placed on the
model: bond lengths, bond angles, amount of rotation, and so on.
He used great care to be sure that the models he built were precisely
accurate. Once the model was constructed, he could then use it to
 Years of Transition 61

predict experimental observations produced by the model. Those

compared with actual data.
predictions could then be
The breakthrough on protein structure came, interestingly
enough, while Pauling was in England. In 1948, he had accepted
an appointment as visiting lecturer at Balliol College in Oxford
University. Shortly after his arrival, he became ill with the flu and
spent a few days in bed. After a day of doing nothing other than
reading detective stories, he became bored and decided that he

Figure 8
62 Linus Pauling

should "have a crack" at unraveling the structure of the protein

known as alpha keratin.
Following his usual procedure, he carefully drew out the long
chain of amino acids that he knew made up the protein mole-
cule. He then cut out the molecule, as a child might cut out a
string of paper dolls. Pauling was then able to rotate, bend, and
twist the molecule into shapes that it might be expected to have
in nature.
After a short time, he realized that he had the answer. He
arranged the protein chain in a spiral shape known as an alpha
helix such that all bond angles and bond lengths corresponded to
theoretical limitations and observed data. In addition, forces be-
tween adjacent parts of the molecule, needed to retain its shape,
were immediately obvious.
Pauling did not publish his results, however, for nearly two
years. The main reason for the delay was the continuing discrep-
ancy between the pitch (distance per turn of the helix) as predicted
by the model and as observed in Astbury's diffraction patterns.
—
The difference was small 5.4 angstroms compared to 5.1 ang-
—
stroms but not insignificant. (An angstrom is a unit of length
equal to one ten-billionth of a meter.)
Eventually, this discrepancy was resolved. Astbury's photo-
graphs, turned out, were taken with protein molecules tilted
it

slightly from the angle that would have been expected. When this
correction was made, the pitch shown on his X-ray patterns was
exactly what Pauling's model predicted, 5.4 angstroms.
Pauling has commented on the fact that no other researcher had
been able to solve the protein structure riddle during the 11 years
that Corey was working on amino acids and simple peptides. It
was true that some of the world's greatest scientists were working
on problem. At the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge,
just this
for example, a team of brilliant crystallographers, William Law-
rence Bragg, John Kendrew, and Max Perutz had searched for clues
in Astbury's photos that would lead to a model of protein structure.
The Cambridge team actually published a paper on the topic a few
months before Pauling and Corey's. But the Bragg-Kendrew-Perutz
paper was "long, diffuse, uncharacteristically uncertain, an illus-
trated mail-order catalog of the latest polypeptide models." It did
 Years of Transition 63

Pauling with a model of the alpha helix. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #324-109)

not specifically suggest any one model as the most likely structure
for proteins.
Pauling's explanation for the failure of others to solve this puzzle
provides insight into his own genius. Protein researchers had long
assumed that in any helical model, there would have to be an
64 Linus Pauling

integral number of amino acids in a complete turn of the helix.

That you started at one amino acid in the helix and traveled
is, if

up and along the helix until you were exactly above that amino
acid, you would have had to travel through two, three, four, or
some other exact number of amino acids, never through 2.3, 3.7,
4.1, or some other fractional number. Pauling pointed out that
there was really no reason to make that assumption. Indeed, his
own model contained 3.61 amino acid groups per turn of the helix.
And once the possibility of fractional values is accepted, the model
works out totally satisfactorily.
structure of protein molecules was
The first report of the helical
published in a 1951 paper in the Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences. Over the next year, Pauling and Corey
published a dozen more papers on the structure of proteins found
in hair, muscle, feathers, hemoglobin, and related proteins. In-
cluded among these papers was the report of a second structure
discovered for protein molecules, a shape known as a pleated
sheet This shape, similar to the middle layer of corrugated card-
board, was found to exist in certain types of protein that did not
assume the helical pattern.
Pauling'swork on the structure of protein molecules had led
him second direction at about the same time, a study of the
in a
geometry of nucleic acid molecules. One of the most fundamen-
talquestions in biology during the 20th century was how genetic
information is stored in cells. The pioneering research of Gregor
Mendel in the mid-1 800s had led to a number of quantitative
rules describing the pattern in which hereditary traits are passed
from one generation to the next. Those rules suggested the
existence of certain discrete units that carry genetic informa-
tion. But no one knew exactly what these units were. At various
times, the units were given names such as biophore, gemmule,
pangene, and — eventually gene. Naming this unit of heredi-
tary information did not mean, however, that scientists knew
what was.
it

During the 1930s and 1940s, discussions centered on the possi-

bility that either protein molecules or molecules of nucleic acid
might somehow be capable of storing genetic information. The two
research teams that best understood this challenge were Pauling
 Years of Transition 65

and his coworkers at Cal Tech and James Watson and Francis Crick
at the Cavendish. Both groups assumed that the arrangement of
atoms in molecules provided a mechanism for storing genetic
information.
The puzzle was eventually solved by Watson and Crick in 1953
when they discovered the double helical structure of deoxyribo-
nucleic acid (DNA). Almost to the very end of their search, how-
ever, Watson and Crick worried that Pauling would find the
answer before them. They knew that Pauling had been working on
the structure of DNA for some time, and they feared that he would
get the correct structure first.

Their fears were well based. Pauling had started working on the
structure of DNA in 1948 when he became convinced that DNA
was the carrier of genetic information. All he had to work with,
however, were some poor quality diffraction photos produced by
Astbury and I. O. Bell in 1938 and some "equally poor photo-
graphs" taken at Cal Tech.
Pauling knew by 1951 of better DNA photographs, those taken
by Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin at King's College,
London, but he was unable to get copies of the photographs.
Wilkins claimed that "he had not reached the stage when he
wished to show them." Pauling was thus prevented from seeing
the latest and best set of photographs that would almost certainly
have been the key he needed to solve the DNA puzzle.
In one of the great ironies of the history of science, Pauling
probably would have been able to view the photographs had he
been allowed to attend the protein meeting scheduled for April 28,
1952, in England (see Chapter 1). Historians are convinced that,
had Pauling been at the conference, Wilkins would have shown
him at least some of the work being done in his laboratories.
Instead, it was James Watson who saw and first realized the
significance of the King's College photographs. In his book telling
DNA, Watson describes his
about the search for the structure of
reaction to seeing Franklin's famous "photograph 51." "The in-
stant I saw the picture," he writes, "my mouth fell open and my
pulse began to race." Watson could see at a glance that photograph
51 contained the answer for which he, Crick, and Pauling were all
looking.
66 Linus Pauling

Knowing that the answer was there and finding the answer were,
however, two different things. Watson and Crick still had a lot of
hard work ahead of them. And they were fully aware of Pauling's
genius and his earlier success with the structure of the protein
molecule. Would he win this race with the Cavendish researchers,
ashe had the protein contest?
Their fears were heightened when, in January of 1953, they
learned that Pauling and Corey had submitted a paper to The
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences proposing a
structure for the DNA molecule. The bearer of this news was
Pauling's son Peter, who was by coincidence also working in
Cambridge at the time. It was with real concern, therefore, that they

Pauling and Corey's Model of DNA

nucleotide chains
(helices)

triple helix

Figure 7
 Years of Transition 67

accepted from Peter on January 28 a copy of the paper his father

had just sent him.
Within moments, however, their fears turned to elation. The
triple helix structure proposed by Pauling and Corey could not
possibly be correct. Pauling had made a number of errors that were
immediately obvious to Watson and Crick. They could scarcely
believe that someone of Pauling's stature could have gone so far
wrong. "If a student had made a similar mistake," Watson later
wrote, "he would be thought unfit to benefit from Cal Tech's
chemistry department [where Pauling was a professor]."
The point of this episode, of course, is that even geniuses are not
perfect. Like any other great scientist, Pauling made errors as well
as brilliant discoveries. The big difference in Pauling's case, how-
ever, has been pointed out by one of his colleagues. "Linus's bad
ideas," James Bonner has said, "are better than most people's good
ones."
Pauling's anger at having been refused a passport in 1952 did
not disappear quickly. He had looked forward to debating the topic
of protein structure with the greatest scientists in the world.
Finally he determined that,if he couldn't go to the conference, the

conference would have to come to him. As a result, he scheduled

a second conference on protein structure, this one to be held at Cal
Tech in September 1953.
Almost the entire cast of characters involved in the original
London conference and, later, in the DNA race showed up in
Pasadena, Watson, Crick, Bragg, Perutz, Kendrew, and Wilkins
among them. The presentations were long and the debates excit-
ing, but there seemed to be little controversy over the alpha helix.
Serah'ni suggests that the reason for the unanimity of opinion may
have been that "Perutz, the dean of British protein scientists, had
come to the conclusion that Pauling was right and that the alpha-
helix was correct."
Pauling experienced much greater success with another line of
research that began somewhat than his DNA studies. At a
earlier
1945 meeting of the Century Club in New York City, Pauling first
heard about some studies then being conducted on sickle-cell
anemia. Sickle-cell anemia is a disease in which a person's red
blood cells become deformed and lose their ability to carry oxygen
68 Linus Pauling

efficiently. The disease is often very painful and frequently results

in death.
It occurred to Pauling that, rather than being a problem of red

blood cells themselves, sickle-cell anemia might be caused by an

abnormality in hemoglobin molecules found in the red blood cells.
Such an abnormality might, he thought, prevent hemoglobin mol-
ecules from bonding properly to oxygen molecules.
Pauling's interest in sickle-cell anemia was natural enough. He
had been studying hemoglobin on and off for more than a decade.
And he saw in sickle-cell anemia a condition that might be ex-
plained using his principle of complimentarity. "I thought at

Normal and sickled (inset) red blood cells. (Courtesy of National Institutes of Hearth)
 Years of Transition 69

once," he has written, "that the abnormal hemoglobin molecules

that I postulated to be present in the red cells of these patients
would have two mutually complimentary regions on their sur-
faces, such as to cause them to aggregate into long columns."
To confirm his suspicions, Pauling asked one of his graduate
students, Dr. Harvey Itano, to do a comparative analysis of the
blood of sickle-cell patients and normal individuals. Dr. Itano had
already earned his M.D. degree and was then studying with Pau-
ling for a Ph.D. in chemistry.
Pauling's assignment was a technically difficult one. A tech-
nique for analyzing a mixture of proteins such as those in
— —
blood electrophoresis had only recently been developed by
the Swedish chemist Arne Wilhelm Tiselius. Dr. Itano and an
assistant, S. J. Singer, spent more than three years unraveling
the puzzle of abnormal hemoglobin molecules. They were even-
tually able to show that such molecules differ from normal
hemoglobin molecules in a surprisingly modest way. One of the
amino acids they contain (out of a total of 146) is incorrect. This
single error is sufficient to alter hemoglobin and reduce its
ability to transport oxygen. The report of this discovery was
carried in the journal Science in a 1949 paper entitled "Sickle-
cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease." Pauling later commented
that, to his knowledge, it was the first time that the term molec-
ular disease had been used.
The postwar years marked a period in which Pauling's inter-
national reputationwas solidified. He was awarded with a series
of honors and prizes that are reserved for only the most highly
respected members of the chemical profession. Among these
were the J. Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago Section of the
American Chemical Society (ACS; 1946), appointment as Silli-
man Lecturer at Yale University (1947), the Theodore William
Richards Medal of the Northeast Section of the ACS, the Davy
Medal of the Royal Society in London (1947), and the Gilbert
Newton Lewis Medal of the California Section of the ACS
(1951). In addition, he was elected president of the American
Chemical Society in 1949. He was also awarded honorary doc-
torates by a number of institutions, including Oxford and the
University of Paris (both in 1948).
70 Linus Pauling

The num-
In addition, Pauling continued to publish prolifically.
ber of scientific papers had reached 200 by 1948. He also added
two more books to his list of credits*. Pauling had been thinking
about writing textbooks for beginning chemistry students as early
as 1933. In that year,he began work on "a high school chemistry
book based on structural chemistry," a book that was never actu-
ally published. When he started teaching freshman chemistry at
Cal Tech in 1937, he could not find a book that he liked, so decided
to write his own. That book finally came out in 1947 as General
Chemistry: An Introduction to Descriptive Chemistry and Modern
Chemical Theory. Pauling is reported to have asked W. H. Freeman
of San Francisco to publish the book in order to "help West Coast
publishers." General Chemistry was eventually translated into
French, Spanish, Indian, German, Gujurati, Hebrew, Japanese,
Portuguese, and Roumanian. Three years later, Freeman published
a second introductory text by Pauling, College Chemistry. It was
eventually translated into Hindi and Japanese.
The end of World War II had allowed Pauling to return to his
scientific pursuits. But he was never again to be "only" a scientist.
As the 1950s dawned, he found himself more fully embroiled in
political issues. As he reached the peak of his scientific career, he
also opened a new chapter as an important spokesman for some of
the most critical social, ethical, and political issues of the day.

CHAPTER 7 NOTES
p. 56 "The psychological shock ..." Anthony Serafini, Linus
Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York: Paragon
House, 1989), p. 110.
p. 56 "a mother and father ..." Serafini, p. 107.
p. 56 "Until I was forty ..." Carol Pogash, "The Great Gad-
fly," Science Digest, June 1981, p. 91.

p. 58 "he considered ..." Serafini, p. 111.

p. 58 ..." John Hogan, "Profile: Linus C. Pauling,"
"Hitler
American, March 1993, p. 40.
Scientific
p. 59 "was appalled ..." William F. Fry, Jr., "What's New
with You, Linus Pauling?" The Humanist, Novem-
ber/December 1974, p. 17.
 Years of Transition 71

p. 65 "he had not reached ..." Linus Pauling, "Fifty Years

of Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molecular Bi-
ology," Daedalus, Fall 1970, p. 1009.
p. 65 "The instant ..." James Watson, The Double Helix
(New York: Atheneum Press, 1968), p. 167.
p. 67 "If astudent ..." Watson, p. 161.
p. 67 "Linus's bad ideas ..." As quoted in Serafini, p. 101.
p. 67 "Perutz, the dean ..." Serafini, p. 154.
p. 68 "I thought at once ..." "Fifty Years of Progress,"
p. 1011.
p. 70 "help West Coast ..." Clifford S. Mead, ed., The Pau-

ling Catalogue (Corvallis: Oregon State University,

1991), p. xv.
8
FROM NOBEL PRIZE TO
NOBEL PRIZE
Wednesday morning, November 3, 1954, began like many other
autumn mornings in Ithaca, New York. Linus Pauling was prepar-
ing to give a lecture on hemoglobin to a group of undergraduate
and graduate students at Cornell University. Only a few hours
later, there was no longer anything ordinary or routine about the
day. In the midst of his lecture, Pauling was called to the telephone
where he received word that he had just been awarded the 1954
Nobel Prize in chemistry.
The Nobel citation explained that Pauling was being honored
"for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its
application to the structure of complex substances." Unsurpris-
ingly, Pauling was thrilled with his award and the check for
$35,066 that went with it. The Nobel Prize is the highest honor any
scientist can receive, a recognition of some great accomplishment
in the sciences. Pauling's office was flooded with congratulatory
messages from around the world.
Yet long before 1954, Pauling had turned his attention to other
issues that seemed more important, issues of war and peace, of life
and death. His concern about these issues grew out of his belief in
pacifism and a general distaste for violence, as well as more
specific worries about the growing threat of nuclear weapons. It
was his view that nuclear weapons posed a real and substantial
threat to all of humanity. He argued that a battle to see who could
build the largest weapons and the greatest number of them would
inevitably lead to a horrible holocaust. He called for the nations of
the world to insure peace, not by an arms race, but by forming
relationships among themselves.

72
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 73

Linus and Ava Helen after hearing about Pauling's Nobel Prize in
chemistry, November 1954. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives, #324-82)

In a 1950 speech at Carnegie Hall, he explained: "It is not

necessary that the social and economic system in Russia be iden-
tical with that in the United States in order that these two great
nations can be at peace with one another. It is only necessary that
the people of the United States and the people of Russia should
74 Linus Pauling

have respect for one another, a deep desire to work for progress
and a mutual recognition that war has finally ruled itself out as the
arbitration of the destiny of humanity."
Pauling was by no means the only scientist arguing this position
in the postwar world. Indeed, the number of scientists who pushed
for weapons development was relatively small. Virtually all of the
great names in science who had worked on the Manhattan Proj-
—
ect Leo Szilard, Robert Oppenheimer, Hans Bethe, Harold Urey,
Eugene Wigner, Enrico Fermi, and Eugene Rabinowitch, to name
—
only a few were horrified at the prospect of a spreading nuclear
arsenal in the United States and other nations of the world.
Pauling began to speak out almost as soon as the war ended. As
a member of the Research Board for National Security from 1945
to 1946, he took pains to point out the dangers of nuclear conflict.
In a 1947 speech, three years before the first hydrogen bomb was
tested, he warned that the bomb might "have a destructive effect,
a hundred, a thousand, nay ten thousand times greater than the
bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
An important event in his evolution as an anti-war advocate
appears to have been a 1950 meeting with Albert Einstein. In a
letter to Leo Szilard describing that meeting, Pauling declared that
"the question of peace or war has now become so important as to
—
overshadow all other questions it is of a far greater order of
magnitude that anything else."
Pauling's opinions and activities did not escape the attention of
the vigorous anti-Communist movement that swept the United
States in the early 1950s. Inspired and led by Wisconsin Senator
Joe McCarthy, politicians and legislators at every governmental
level set out to find and punish anyone who was suspected of
having Communist sympathies. The movement spread like wild-
fire, eventually resulting in the dismissal and/or public humilia-
tion of thousands ofAmerican citizens, many of whom had
committed no crime other than expressing unpopular political
views.
Senator McCarthy clearly felt that Pauling was not to be trusted.
He was quoted as saying that the Nobel Prize winner had "a
well-nigh incredible record of membership in Communist-front
organizations." To be sure, both Linus and Ava Helen had been
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 75

members of progressive organizations, but neither had ever been

a Communist. Pauling declared openly that he was "not even a
theoretical Marxist."
McCarthy's opinion was apparently strongly influenced by the
testimony of one Louis Budenz, a faculty member at Fordham
University and a self-acknowledged Communist. Budenz had ac-
cused Pauling of being a member of "a group of alleged Commu-
nists," a charge thatPauling rejected as "a lie."
Suspicions about Pauling's loyalty were especially pronounced
in his home state of California, where McCarthyism was probably
stronger than anywhere else in the nation. On November 14, 1950,
Pauling announced that he had been called to testify before the
Senate Investigating Committee on Education. The main topic of
the hearing was Pauling's objection to loyalty oaths.
Loyalty oaths were special pledges that were being demanded
of workers in many public and private organizations. They re-
quired workers to swear that they were not Communists and did
not support Communist organizations, activities, or ideas. Anyone
who refused to sign a loyalty oath was subject to dismissal.
Pauling's position on this issue was clear. He felt that govern-
mental bodies had no business inquiring into the political beliefs
of individual citizens. He had no intention of cooperating with
legislative committees that wanted to know about his own political
attitudes or those of colleagues. When he was called to testify
before a committee of the U.S. Senate some years later, he made
this position clear. "I believe," he said, "that the Senate Internal
Security Subcommittee has misused its authority in its harassment
of me and other loyal Americans who have not been guilty of any
illegal actionbut have striven to do their duty as citizens. . . .

Senator Dodd is carrying out his attacks on the peace movement

in the United States by suppressing free speech and free discus-
sions."
Pauling was always perfectly willing to express his politi-
Still,

calviewpoints outside of legislative halls. On many occasions, he

made it clear to the public that he was not a Communist, nor did
he endorse a Communist philosophy. Upon receiving the sub-
poena from the California investigating committee, for example,
Pauling tried to make his position clear. In a statement released to
76 Linus Pauling

the press at the time, he announced: "I am not a Communist. I have

never been a Communist. I have never been involved with the
Communist Party."
A decade later, before Senator Dodd's Senate subcommittee, he
was still making the same point. "I have not served Communist
causes and objectives," he said, "and I am indignant that your
Subcommittee should accuse me of doing so."
Pauling's refusal to cooperate wholeheartedly with various leg-
islative committees annoyed colleagues, a few friends, and a
number Tech trustees. The tenor of the time was such that
of Cal
—
anyone who refused to take a loyalty oath for whatever reason
was largely assumed to be a Communist or Communist sympa-
thizer. Little or no effort was made to distinguish between those
who might actually have fit that description and those who had
honest reservations about the propriety of even requiring such an
oath.
The question soon arose at Cal Tech, therefore, as to what should
"be done" about Pauling. Some colleagues thought his presence
on campus brought disgrace to the institution and wanted him to
leave. And a group of trustees made an effort to remove Pauling
from his professorship. In the end, no action was taken, and
Pauling was retained. The long-term effects of this controversy
were another matter. According to biographer Anthony Serafini,
Pauling's prestige was seriously damaged and "he never again held
the exalted position he was used to at Cal Tech."
Pauling was having his problems at the federal level also. His
application for a passport to attend the April 1952 protein confer-
ence in England (see Chapter 1) was denied first by the chief of the
Passport Division of the State Department, Ruth Shipley, and then
again by her immediate superior, S. D. Boykin, director of the
Office of Security and Consular Affairs at the State Department.
The final denial by Boykin came even after Pauling had submitted
statements made under oath that he was not then and had never
been a Communist or Communist sympathizer. The State Depart-
ment said it acted to deny the passport because Pauling's "anti-
Communist statements were not sufficiently strong."
The U.S. government's actions in this affair evoked a nearly
unanimous and vigorous response from scientists around the
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 77

world. Even colleagues with whom Pauling had disagreed in the

past wrote President Truman and Dean Acheson
secretary of state
to express their outrage. Albert Einstein argued that the
government's action was "seriously detrimental to the interest and
reputation of this country." Another letter signed by Enrico Fermi,
Harold Urey, and Edward Teller, among others, said, "We cannot
believe, with the greatest stretch of our imagination, that any
reason can exist which would make the granting of a passport [to
Pauling] of so great harm to this country as its withdrawal"
The barrage of letters apparently had some effect. Pauling ap-
plied one more time for a passport and, in August, received one
good for limited travel. The passport was good for only two
months, instead of the usual five years. Of course, the passport
came much too late to allow him to attend the protein conference.
But, heand Ava Helen went abroad anyway, spending six weeks
in England and Paris during which time Pauling attended the
Second International Congress of Biochemistry in Paris and a
meeting of the Faraday Society on the physical chemistry of
proteins in London.
Pauling continued to have passport problems in 1953 and 1954.
The first occurred when he was asked to lay a cornerstone in honor
of Chaim Weizmann at the Institute of Science in Tel Aviv named
in honor of Israel's famous scientist and first president. Pauling
was granted a passport, but it was good for only the single trip to
Israel and back, and for no other travel. The second event involved
Pauling's request for a passport in July of 1954 that would have
allowed him to attend, at Prime Minister Nehru's special invita-
tion, the dedication of a scientific institution in India. On this
occasion, he was refused even a limited passport.
As disappointing as these rejections and limited victories were,
they were not nearly as serious as was the third case that occurred
a few months later in November of 1954. This time, Pauling
requested a passport so that he would be able to travel to Sweden
and accept his Nobel Prize in chemistry. Although he made his
request as soon as he heard of the award, the passport office did
not respond for over three weeks. It appeared that his unpopular

political views would once more prevent his traveling abroad, this
time for a far more important event than was the case in 1952.
78 Linus Pauling

Passport officials were clearly feeling pressures from conserva-

tive politicians. Senator T. C. Hennings, Jr., of Missouri com-
plained to the State Department, asking whether it was "allowing
some groups of people in some foreign country to determine which
Americans get passports?"
But scientists from around the world were making their views
known too. The embarrassment that would have resulted from
denying Pauling's request yet again eventually became obvious,
and he received his passport on November 27, 1954. That left the
Paulings just enough time to pack and get to Stockholm for the
Nobel ceremonies on December 9.
During the second half of the 1950s, the cold war between the
United States and the Soviet Union heated up . . and so did
.

Pauling's campaign against nuclear weapons. On July 15, 1955, for

example, along with 52 other Nobel Prize winners, he signed the
Mainau Declaration calling for an end to all war, especially nuclear
war. The Mainau Declaration began by acknowledging that nuclear
weapons had thus far been a strong deterrent to warfare. But, the
signers went on to say, "we think it is a delusion if governments
believe that they can avoid war for a long time through the fear of
these weapons. Fear and tension have often engendered wars. . . .

All nations must come to the decision to renounce force as a final

resort of policy. If they are not prepared to do this, they will cease
to exist."
In 1957, Pauling helped establish the Pugwash Movement for
Science and World Affairs, an organization named after its meeting
location, Pugwash, Nova Scotia, and its objective, an effort to
promote the signing of a nuclear test ban treaty.
Pauling also began to talk and write about the biological effects
of radioactive fallout. Beginning in the mid-1950s, the United
States and the Soviet Union tested dozens of nuclear devices by
exploding them in the atmosphere. The purpose of these tests was
to determine the effectiveness of weapons being developed by each
nation. One terrible side-effect of the tests, however, was the
release of large amounts of dangerously radioactive materials in-
to the atmosphere. After a certain period of time —
ranging from a
—
few hours to a few months these materials settled back to Earth
where they contaminated soil, plants, and water supplies. Some
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 79

scientists, Pauling included, became concerned about the possible

health effects of this nuclear fallout on the health of humans. He
tried to calculate the effectson the human body and genes that
might result from increasing levels of radioactive isotopes such as
strontium-90 and carbon-14 in the atmosphere. His first presenta-
tion on this topic, "Health Hazards of Radiation," was presented
before the California Division of the American Cancer Society on
October 3, 1957. He followed that presentation with more articles
in professional journals and, increasingly, in popular publica-
tions. His article, "Why Every Test Kills," in Liberation (February
1958) and his letter, "Genetic Menace of Tests," in the New York
Times (May 1958) are examples of the latter.

Richard S. Lewis, former editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic

Scientists, credits Pauling for being "one of the first to suggest the
long-term dangers of low-level radiation. I recall hearing him at
lectures," Lewis says, "when he projected, with great logic and
persuasiveness, the hazards of this form of radiation."
Not all scientists agreed with Pauling on this point. In fact, the
U.S. government's official position was that nuclear testing and
the fallout it produced posed essentially no harm to human health.
A member of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Dr. Willard
Libby, had announced in 1954 that the amount of fallout "could
be increased 15,000 times without hazard." Libby, a highly re-
spected chemist, had devised the method of radioactive carbon
dating in the mid-1 940s and was to win the 1960 Nobel Prize in
chemistry for this discovery.
More to the point for many observers was the cost of not
testing. If the United States were to fall behind in the arms race,
they felt, war would probably in-
the likelihood of a nuclear
crease. The number of lives that would be lost in such a war,
these people felt, would be far greater than those threatened by
fallout from testing.
As a matter of fact, the scientific evidence then available on this
point was unclear at the time. The effects of high levels of radia-
tion —radiation sickness and death — were already known as a
result of the bomb blasts at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But it was
to be much more difficult to estimate long-term carcinogenic
(cancer-causing) and genetic effects from levels of radiation so low
80 Linus Pauling

that they produced no immediate, observable results. Indeed,

dispute remains today as to how those effects can be reliably
quantified.
But nuclear testing was gradually becoming more of a political
than purely scientific issue for Pauling. In spite of uncertainties
remaining about the biological effects of radiation, he began to
move politically to get the United States and the Soviet Union to
sign aban on the testing of nuclear weapons.
An important event in this evolution occurred in May 1957.
During a speech on "Science in the Modern World" at Washington
University in St. Louis, Pauling recited his vision of a nuclear
holocaust. At one point in his speech, he passionately proclaimed
that "no human being should be sacrificed ... to the project of
perfecting nuclear weapons hundreds of millions
that could kill
of human beings, could devastate this beautiful world in which
we live." The response of his audience was overwhelming. Ac-
cording to Serafini, "the audience cheered him and applauded
wildly."
Immediately after the speech, Pauling met with two of his
colleagues, Barry Commoner and Edward Condon, to talk about
the event. Commoner was a biologist who was to become one of
the most articulate spokesmen for the environment during the
1960s and 1970s. Condon was a nuclear physicist who had long
worked on nuclear fission and weapons research. The trio decided
to initiate an all-out effort to influence U.S. policy on the testing
of nuclear arms by distributing a petition to colleagues throughout
the world. The petition was later to become known as the Pauling
Appeal. Pauling, Commoner, and Condon worked most of the
night writing the petition and began to circulate it immediately.
The petition said, in part, "We have in common with our fellow
men a deep concern for the welfare of all human beings. As
scientists, we have knowledge of the dangers involved and there-
fore a special responsibility to make those dangers known. We
deem it imperative that immediate action be taken to effect an
international agreement to stop the testing of all nuclear weapons.
The petition drive was immediately successful. Within a month,
more than 2,500 American scientists alone had returned signed
copies. Among the original signers were 36 Nobel laureates,
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 81

including eight in physics, 12 in chemistry, 13 in physiology or

medicine, Bertrand Russell (in literature), Albert Schweitzer
(peace), and Lord Boyd Orr (peace).
This response encouraged Pauling to write President Eisen-
hower on June 4, 1957, sending him a copy of the petition and
outlining the potential biological and genetic hazards of continued
testing of nuclear weapons. He concluded by offering to come to
Washington "to answer whatever questions you wish to ask me."
Pauling's letter had little effect. The president's assistant, Sher-
man Adams, responded on June 29, 1957, that "extensive hearings
on the subject before committee of the Congress, by scientists
a
who appeared as witnesses, are reported to have shown little or no
uniformity of opinion."
The fact is that Pauling did not have unanimous support among
scientists, and powerful were aligned against him.
political forces
Typical of scientific doubts were those of Eugene Rabinowitch,
editor of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Rabinowitch wrote
Pauling that he had no reasons to doubt the more conservative
position on fallout taken by Libby and the AEC. He was not able,
therefore, to sign the Pauling Appeal.
Rabinowitch's position was an intriguing one. He was one of the
leading advocates of controls on nuclear weapons. Indeed, The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was and continues to be the
primary journal through which opponents of nuclear weapons
express their views. Rabinowitch's argument was, however, that
nuclear technology was here to stay, and the world would just have
to learn how to live with it. "The effort to end nuclear testing," he
wrote, "is the expression of an unfounded belief in the possibility
of reversing the advancement of military technology which has
occurred since 1945."
Political opposition to Pauling was based largely on supposi-
tions that hewas a Communist or Communist sympathizer. He was
—
never to free himself and especially not during this period of —
charges that his peace efforts were somehow aimed at undermin-
ing the U.S. government.
At the very least, scientists who supported a test ban were often
considered "out of their depths." They might be geniuses in their
own fields of biology, chemistry, or physics, but they just didn't
82 Linus Pauling

understand the workings of politics and international diplomacy.

The columnist Fulton Lewis, Jr., for example, wrote of Pauling and
the petition signers that they were "the naive, unworldly, politi-
cally immature type who refuse to recognize the Machiavellian
nature and machinations of the Communist conspiracy."
Pauling was not dissuaded from his efforts, however, and he
continued to circulate his petition. Finally, on January 15, 1958,
he submitted the petition, signed by 11,021 scientists from 49
nations, to Dag Hammarskjold, secretary general of the United
Nations.
Shortly thereafter, the debate over nuclear weapons testing
found a more personal expression. On February 21, 1958, Pauling
took part in a debate with Edward Teller on San Francisco's public
television station,KQED. Teller, a Hungarian-born refugee from
German oppression, had immigrated to the United States in 1935.
He was, and still is, a brilliant physicist and ardent advocate of
nuclear weapons. His espousal of fusion weapons in the 1940s and
1950s earned him the title "Father of the Hydrogen Bomb."

Debate between Pauling (left) and Edward Teller (right), February 21,
1 948. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #324-1 1 1)
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 83

In the late 1950s, Teller was perhaps the most outspoken oppo-
nent of a nuclear weapons test ban treaty. In articles, speeches, and
testimony before legislative bodies, Teller pleaded for a continua-
tion of weapons development. His argument was that any health
problems associated with the testing of weapons were well worth
the risk compared to the far more serious dangers of falling behind
the Soviet Union in an arms race.
In his debate with Pauling, Teller argued that there was no strong
evidence for carcinogenic and genetic effects of radiation. "This
alleged damage which the small radioactivity from the testing of
—
nuclear weapons is causing supposedly cancer and leukemia
has not been proved, to the best of my knowledge, by any kind of
decent and clear statistics. It is possible that there is damage. It is
even possible, to my mind, that there is no damage; and there is
the possibility, furthermore, that very small amounts of radioac-
tivity are helpful." Teller then went on to make the point that
dangers of radiation from a war would be far worse than any
possible dangers from fallout.
Pauling responded by arguing that "... according to the best
estimates of geneticists, all of whom agree, fifteen thousand children
bomb tested. ..." Pauling then con-
are sacrificed for every large
cluded his argument with the view that "We believe as individuals
that we should obey the commandment Thou Shalt Not Kill.' The
time has come now for nations, too, to accept this commandment."
For some years, Pauling had also been working on a more formal
presentation of his views, a book called No More War! In the book,
published in 1958, Pauling presented an extreme pacifist view,
arguing that virtually no war is morally acceptable. The only
exception, he believed, was wars in which people rose up to
liberate themselves from a tyrannical government.
In the first part of the book, Pauling summarizes all of the reasons
that nuclear war must be prevented at all costs. He then goes on to
outline the methods by which war can be eliminated. He proposes
a World Peace Organization, under the auspices of the United
Nations, through which scholars from around the world could
develop methods for the advancement of peaceful resolution of
conflicts. He also suggests that the United States add a secretary
of peace to the president's cabinet.
84 Linus Pauling

book had relatively little effect on politicians or scien-

Pauling's
tists. Most seemed to feel that, as admirable as its intent may have

been, it was too unrealistic. Pauling's personal appeals to Presi-

dent Eisenhower, colleagues, and personal friends came to naught,
and he returned to other forms of political activism to advance his
ideas.
One most dramatic of these was Pauling's legal action
of the
against the U.S. government. In 1958, he had come to the conclu-
sion that court action might be an effective way to bring about the
end of nuclear weapons testing. He thought that "suits to seek to
enjoin responsible officials in the USSR, Great Britain and the
United States from further detonation of those weapons" [should]
be explored.
As a result, Pauling, a number of peace activists, and a group
of Japanese fishermen filed suit on April 4, 1958, in the District
Court of Washington, D.C., naming Secretary of Defense Neil
McElroy and members of the Atomic Energy Commission as
defendants. The suit said, in part, "The defendants' past and
threatened future acts of exploding nuclear weapons did and
will cause the plaintiffs to be damaged genetically and somati-
cally, will cause their progeny to be deleteriously affected be-
cause of the additional radiation brought about by the acts of the
defendants, and, with high probability, did and will cause the
plaintiffs to suffer various diseases which they would not suffer
but for the additional radiation brought about by the acts of the
defendants."
The suit eventually worked its way to the Supreme Court, which
refused to hear it. Although no decision was reached on the case,

it generated a great deal of publicity in the popular press for the

anti-nuclear — —
and Pauling's case against weapons testing.
—
some respects, Pauling's efforts his United Nations' petition,
In
—
No More War!, and the court action, for example appeared to be
without effect. Yet, the constant barrage of criticism may well have
been having subtle effects on public opinion and on the attitudes
of governments. As one indication, the Soviet Union, the United
States, and Great Britain all decided in 1958, without signing any
formal agreement, to stop the testing of nuclear weapons in the
atmosphere.
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 85

Whatever influence Pauling may have had in bringing about the

cessation of testing, he was still regarded as a pariah by many
American legislative leaders. He was reminded of that fact in stark
terms in June of 1960 when he was subpoenaed to appear before
the Senate Internal Security Committee. The committee was still
trying to flush out Communists and Communist sympathizers,
looking this time for those who might have infiltrated the cam-
paign against nuclear weapons. "The decision to request Dr.
Pauling's testimony," the committee report explained, "was
reached as a result of newly available information, including
evidence of serious Communist infiltration in the various move-
ments urging a nuclear test ban."
In particular, the committee wanted to know more about
Pauling's peace petition. Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut
explained, "Our interest in Dr. Pauling's petition is justified by Dr.
Pauling's own record of service to Communist causes and objec-
tives, many of them related in no way to his special field of
science."
The committee intended to ask Pauling to testify "with respect
toCommunist participation in, or support of, a propaganda cam-
paign against nuclear testing, and other Communists or Com-
munist-front activity with respect to which you may have
knowledge."
Pauling was, not surprisingly, furious at yet another attempt to
stop his anti-war actions. "No one tells me what to do," he said
some years later about the incident. "I make up my own mind."
Pauling tried to go part way in meeting the committee's
demands. He gave committee members the list of petition sign-
ers, his own press releases about the petition, a history of how
the petition developed, a financial accounting, and a list of
people to whom he had written asking for help in the petition.
What he refused to do was to name those individuals who had
actually obtained signatures for the petition. He based this
decision on the fear that anyone he named would, like himself,
be subjected to harassment by the committee. More generally,
he believed that the committee had exceeded its constitutional
bounds and told the members that they had no right to ask for
further information.
86 Linus Pauling

The committee adjourned, instructing Pauling to appear again

on August 9, this time with all the information it had asked for.
Pauling immediately presented his case to the courts, in a suit to
prevent the committee from continuing its investigation of him,
and to the general public, in a series of press releases, speeches,
and articles about the hearings.
Pauling's legal action against the committee was unsuccessful,
but he was able to postpone his next appearance for a number of
months. Most observers thought that his appearance, finally
scheduled for October 11, would "provide a dramatic showdown
and would generate a legal controversy of considerable impor-
tance." In fact, the hearing turned out to be "something of a dud."
Pauling and committee members sparred back and forth for the
better part of the day, but he continued to refuse to give the names
of those who had assisted him. Instead of citing him for contempt,
as it was clearly capable of doing, the committee retreated. Senator
Dodd, chairing the meeting, simply said "very well" to Pauling's
final refusal, and the matter was dropped.
The government's ongoing harassment of Pauling did not slow
his anti-war activities. At the conclusion of the Internal Security
Committee hearings, he began work on another petition, this one
aimed at stopping the spread of nuclear weapons. It said, in part,
We, the men and women whose names are signed below, believe that
stockpiles of nuclear weapons should not be allowed to spread to any
more nations or groups of nations. . . . We accordingly urge that the
present nuclear powers not transfer nuclear weapons to other nations
or groups of nations such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or
the Warsaw Pact group, that all nations not now possessing these
weapons voluntarily refrain from obtaining or developing them, and
that the United Nations and all nations increase their efforts to achieve
total and universal disarmament. . . .

At about the same time, Linus and Ava Helen began to plan for
an international peace conference in Oslo, Norway, to be held May
2, 1961. The aim of the conference, according to Pauling, was to

prevent the United States and the Soviet Union from providing
nuclear weapons to their allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Orga-
nization and the Warsaw Pact, respectively. Such a move, Pauling
noted in his opening address to the conference, "would surely
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 87

Ava Helen speaking at a peace rally in San Francisco. (Courtesy of Pauling

Archives #324-136)

increase the danger of war." Ava Helen was actively involved in

the planning and conduct of the conference. In her address to the
conference, she said that the 60-odd delegates from a dozen na-
tions were "working to save humanity itself."
Ever the master of public relations maneuvers, Pauling was
constantly looking for ways to bring his case before the public. For
example, President John F. Kennedy invited all Nobel Prize laure-
ates from the United States to a dinner at the White House on the
evening of April 29, 1962. Pauling accepted the invitation, but
before going in to dinner, spent some time walking a picket line
that had been set up outside the White House by a group of peace
activists. His sister-in-law later expressed the view "That takes
some guts; but that was Linus; if he felt like doing something he
went ahead and did it."
No one can measure exactly how and to what extent Linus
Pauling's peace efforts eventually influenced the actions of the
United States and other governments. At least one group was
convinced, however, that those efforts had been significant. On
88 Linus Pauling

Mr.Kcnnedy
MrWacmillan y§fy
ft
WE HAVE
RIGM?

Pauling at a White House protest, April 29, 1962. (Courtesy of Mrs. Linda Kamb)

October 10, 1963, the announcement was made that Pauling had
been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Not everyone was thrilled with the Nobel committee's decision.
For example, in a scathing editorial, Life magazine termed the
prize "an extraordinary insult to America." The writer claimed,
"However distinguished as a chemist, the eccentric Dr. Pauling
and his weird politics have never been taken seriously by
American opinion." He or she then went on to ask "Why ... a
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize

Pauling with his Nobel Peace Prize at his home in Big Sur, California.
(Courtesy of Pauling Archives; #325-136)
90 Linus Pauling

committee of five Norwegians [should] be so taken in, or so

rude?"
Pauling was slighted in a number of other ways also. When he
arrived in Stockholm to receive the prize, he was met by the
chairman of the selection committee, but by no one from the U.S.
embassy staff. The chairman commented that it was the first time
in history that the ambassador of a recipient's homeland had not
met the winner upon his or her arrival in Sweden.
To many people, however, Pauling's selection was entirely
reasonable and justified. They were convinced that, without his
constant agitation, the major powers might well have delayed even
longer in agreeing to a test ban. Perhaps the supreme irony of the
announcement of his winning the Peace Prize was that it came on
the very day that the partial nuclear test ban treaty, signed three
months earlier by the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great
Britain, went into effect.

CHAPTER 8 NOTES
p. 73 "It is not necessary ..." Tony Gray, Champions of
Peace (New York: Paddington Press, 1976), p. 267.
p. 74 "have a destructive effect ..." Gray, p. 267.
p. 74 "the question of peace ..." As cited in Anthony
Serafini, Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science (New
York: Paragon House, 1989), p. 139.
p. 75 "not even a theoretical ..." and following. Helen C.
Allison, "Outspoken Scientist," Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists,December 1960, p. 382+.
p. 75 "I ..." Linus Pauling, "My Experiences with
believe
the Internal Security Subcommittee of the United States
Senate" (typed ms), September 1960, p. 7.
p. 76 "he never again. ..." Serafini, p. 143.
p. 77 "We cannot believe ..." As quoted in Serafini, p. 150.
p. 78 "allowing some groups ..." As quoted in Serafini,
p. 167.
p. 78 "We think it is a delusion ..." As quoted in Gray,
p. 267.
 From Nobel Prize to Nobel Prize 91

p. 79 "one of the ..." As quoted in Carol Pogash, "The

first

Great Gadfly," Science Digest, June 1981, p. 110.

p. 80 "the audience cheered ..." Serafini, p. 177.
p. 82 "the naive, ..." The New York Mirror, June 19, 1957,
as cited by Serafini, p. 183.
p. 83 "This alleged damage ..." Falloutand Disarmament:
A Debate (San Francisco: Fearon Publishers [n.d.
1958?]), p. 6.
p. 83 "according to ... " Fallout and Disarmament, p. 8.
p. 83 "We believe ..." Fallout and Disarmament, p. 12.
p. 85 "No one ..." Pogash, p. 110.
p. 86 "provide a dramatic showdown ..." Harry Kalven, Jr.,
"Congressional testing of Linus Pauling," The Bulletin
of the Atomic Scientists, December 1960, p. 383.
p. 87 "That takes some guts ..." Serafini, p. 211.
p. 88 "an extraordinary insult ..." "A Weird Insult from
Norway," Life, October 25, 1963, p. 4.
9
YEARS OF TURMOIL

For much of the 1950s, Pauling had been devoting an increasing

amount of time and energy to issues unrelated to science, anti-war
campaigns in general, and anti-nuclear weapons causes in partic-
ular. Yet, at no time during the decade did he totally abandon
scientific research. During most of the period, the subject that
especially intrigued him was molecular medicine.
The term molecular medicine refers to the study of diseases that
can be explained on the basis of some molecular abnormality.
Pauling's interest in the subject grew out of his collaboration with
Harvey Itano on sickle-cell anemia. When Itano left Pasadena in
1954 to return to Washington, D.C., Pauling made up his mind to
look for another disease that might have a molecular basis. He
considered cancer, but decided that "almost everybody was doing
research on cancer." Instead, he chose to study the less popular
field of mental illness. In 1954, therefore, he requested and re-
ceived from the Ford Foundation a grant to establish a research
team at Cal Tech to study the molecular basis of mental disease.
The direction of this research was strongly affected by Pauling's
discovery of the research of two Canadian doctors, A. Hoffer and
H. Osmond, from the early 1950s. Hoffer and Osmond had found
that very large doses of niacin (vitamin B3) and ascorbic acid
(vitamin C) were helpful in controlling the symptoms of schizo-
phrenia. Pauling later explained that these results "intrigued" him.
"I was fascinated by the idea that these substances, which you
usually take in very small amounts . . could have valuable
.

health-promoting effects when ingested in amounts 100 or 1000

times greater than the usual dietary intake." He went on to tell of

92
 Years of Turmoil 93

his search of the scientific literature, looking for further confirma-

tion of the Hoffer and Osmond findings. What he found was that
"there was a good deal of evidence to support the idea that large
doses of vitamins could be clinically useful."
Pauling eventually formulated these ideas in a 1968 paper in the
journal Science titled "Orthomolecular Psychiatry." The paper
brought together ideas that had been developing over a number of
years. During this time, Pauling had invented the term orthomo-
lecular medicines to refer to substances that are normally present
in the body, such as insulin, that can also be used for therapeutic
(healing) purposes. He has explained that "Concentrations of these
substances can be varied to achieve the best of health as well as
disease prevention and treatment." The expression Pauling used
in his 1968 paper was "the right molecules in the right amount."
In terms of treating a disorder, the principles of orthomolecular
medicine mean "altering the amounts of the naturally occurring
—
substances vitamins, amino acids, and so on in the human—
body until you find what corresponds to the concentration neces-
sary for the best of health."
Pauling emphasizes the distinction between orthomolecular and
toximolecularmedicines. The latter term, he explains, refers to the
more traditional medical approach, the use of toxic substances to
treat disease. These toxic materials are introduced into the body
to kill bacteria, viruses, or other disease-causing organisms, but
they can also have harmful effects on the body itself. He compares
the advantages of orthomolecular medicines that are "so free from
show beneficial effects over a ten thousand-fold
toxicity that they
range of concentrations" in contrast to traditional drugs, such as
aspirin, which can be fatal if taken in even 10 times the normal
dose.
Out of Pauling's research has grown a whole new field of
medicine and at least one major journal, the Journal of Orthomo-
lecular Psychiatry (formed in 1971), renamed the Journal of Ortho-
molecular Medicine in 1986. Pauling's contribution to the field
was acknowledged by a colleague in 1987. Dr. A. Hoffer wrote:

We owe an enormous debt to Linus Pauling for having made such a

major contribution to medicine, for coining the word "orthomolecular,
a word we can all heavily endorse, and for having given us twenty years
94 Linus Pauling

of his life during which he has shown the immense importance of

Vitamin Cin the prevention and treatment of a variety of major diseases
and minor ones including cancer and the common cold, and for fighting
against a solid medical establishment unwilling to concede that he is
once more correct.

Pauling's thoughts about orthomolecular medicine were influ-

enced also by a chance event in March 1966. In his acceptance
speech for receiving the Carl Newberg Medal for contributions to
internal medicine, he off-handedly mentioned that he hoped to
live for another 15 to 20 years to see what would be discovered in
science.
About a month later, he received a letter from Irwin Stone, a
biochemist who had attended the Newberg lecture. If Pauling
reallywanted to live a lot longer, Stone said, he should try the
megavitamin therapy that he (Stone) had developed. The megavi-
tamin therapy involved taking very large doses of vitamin C every
day. People who stayed on the therapy, Stone reported, experi-
enced an improved general sense of well-being and a greatly
increased resistance to colds. (The dramatic impact of this event
on Pauling's life is discussed in more detail in Chapter 10.)
Pauling demonstrated remarkable foresight in working out his
concept of orthomolecular medicine. Much of the research now
being done on brain chemistry follows very much the general
outlines suggested by Pauling more than three decades ago.
Pauling's research interests during the 1960s were, however, by
no means limited to orthomolecular medicine. Another important
—
Pauling discovery concerning the chemical mechanism by
—
which anesthetics work is an example of the process by which
scientific knowledge sometimes advances. As a member of the
scientific advisory board of Massachusetts General Hospital, Pau-
ling was attending a meeting in 1952 on the use of anesthetics at
The speaker, Dr. Henry K. Beecher, described two
the hospital.
which the inert gas xenon was used as an anesthetic.
operations in
Pauling was puzzled by this report. "How can xenon, which is
chemicallyinert, be an anesthetic agent?" he asked.
Although he never conducted experiments on the question, it
remained in the back of his mind for years. Then suddenly, the
answer "popped into his head" one morning in April of 1959. The
 Years of Turmoil

xenon works, he decided, because it first forms tiny crystals to

which water are attached (that is. it becomes hydrated). These
hydrated micro "Jien trap particles that transmit nerve
•:

messages in the central nervous system. The result is a loss of

>s in the patient Pauling spent the next two years

the details of this theory, which he eventually pub-

lish- - j Theory of General Anesthesia"' in Science
: . i_-

for July 7. 1961.

? i er described this event as an example of the
mind can take over the solution of a
dus
problem in the creative process. He explained that one technique
he used in working on a problem was to think about the problem
just before going to sleep.
Beyond his interest in ortho molecular medicine. Pauling ap-
peared to have trouble finding the field of research to which he
would turn next. His biographer Anthony Serafini writes that in
1963 Pauling "was not only unsure of what scientific directions
he might go in. but undecided even as to which branches of
knowledge he would attack next." A grant proposal that he
wrote at the time for the National Science Foundation indicated
that he was interested in studying the molecular basis of biolog-
ical specificity, the relationship of science and civilization, the
molecular basis of anesthesia, the theory of magnetism, the
theory of resonance in chemical bonds, the nature of metallic
bonding, the molecular basis of mental illnr :_;I death. :

evidence for evolution from the structure of biological mole-

cules, the structure of the atomic nucleus, and the nature of

Tne range of these topic is. of cours ; :But even more

-ring.
interesting is the fact that Pauling did pursue most of them to at
least same degree in the coming years. Over the next decade, he
published papers on the structure of atomic nuclei - nole- ( L

cules as documents of evolutionary history (1965)^ the molecular

basis of memorv and consciousness (196 " - _~d the character-
of fission reactions
the same period. Pauling also continued to wrfeev
spralr, and agitate on behalf of international peace. He became
particularly involved in a series of la — i^nst individuals.
96 Linus Pauling

newspapers, and magazines that he thought had libeled him and

damaged his good name.
One of the first of these suits involved the Bellingham (Wash.)
Herald. During late November and early December of 1960, Pau-
ling gave a series of addresses at ceremonies to dedicate Western
Washington University's new Haggard Hall. The Herald published
an editorial and five letters that Pauling believed reflected on his
loyalty. In March 1961, Pauling sued the Heralds parent company,
the Bellingham Publishing Company, for the paper's remarks and
for publishing the letters that he also regarded as libelous. Even-
tually, the paper settled out of court and paid Pauling $16,000 in
damages. As part of the settlement, the Herald also published a
retraction in its edition of May 4, 1962.
Perhaps buoyed by this success, Pauling continued to confront
and to bring suits against other publications that had attacked his
character.Over the next few years, some of the publications to feel
his wrath were the New York Daily News (sued for $500,000), the
St Louis Globe-Democrat (for $300,000), the Hearst Publishing
Company and King Features Syndicate (for $1 million), the Syra-
cuse Herald-Journal and Post-Standard, the Buffalo Evening News
& Courier Express, the Newsletter of the Faculties Association,
State University of New York Colleges of Education, the Arcadia
(Calif.) Tribune and News, the Johns Hopkins Magazine, the Santa
Barbara News-Press, and Nevadans on Guard. In many cases, these
publications placated Pauling by publishing a retraction or an
explanatory letter by him.
Pauling's one great loss was to the magazine National Review
and its editor, William F. Buckley, Jr. The controversy origi-
nated when the July 17, 1962, edition of the National Review
carried a biting attack on those who sympathized with Commu-
nism in general and on Pauling in particular. Writer James
Burnham criticized Pauling for "acting as a megaphone for
Soviet policy" and for giving "his name, energy, voice, and pen
to one after another Soviet-serving enterprise." In referring to
individuals like Pauling, Burnham said that "whether they are
Communists or not in the legal sense, the objective fact is that
these persons have given aid and comfort to the enemies of
. . .

this country."
 Years of Turmoil 97

Pauling was outraged by the article and instructed his lawyer to

begin legal action against the magazine. Given his track record on
earlier libel suits, he probably had reason to be optimistic about
the outcome of this case too.
One difference this time, however, was Buckley refused
that
to back down and, instead, wrote a second article even stronger
than the one that had so upset Pauling. In this article, "Are You
Being Sued by Linus Pauling?" Buckley wrote that Pauling
seemed "to be spending his time equally between pressing for a
collaborationist foreign policy and assailing those who oppose
his views." Buckley warned that he and his magazine would
resist the "brazen attempts at intimidation of the free press by
one of the nation's leading fellow-travelers." After the article
appeared, there was no longer any doubt that Pauling's suit
would be heard in court.
The case dragged on until the spring of 1966 when Judge Samuel
Silverman found in favor of the National Review and Buckley. The
key element in Silverman's decision was that Pauling had become
a public figure, like an elected official, and had to prove that
statements about him were made with a "reckless disregard for the
truth."
In fact, Buckley had argued that many of Pauling's actions in the
past had actually violated the spirit or the letter of federal law. The
Review's attacks did have, therefore, some factual basis and were
not "reckless." In his final comment on the case, Buckley wrote:
"There are those who believe that these conclusions [in the Review
conformity with the known facts that
editorials] are in ruthless —
any other conclusion would indeed be reckless."
The political activities in which Pauling was involved after
World War II increasingly had an effect on his academic affilia-
tions. Of the roughly 85 articles he wrote in the period 1950-55,
only one dealt with a political topic, the case of}. Robert Oppen-
heimer. In the period 1956-60, on the other hand, about 14 of 68
articles concerned political issues, and in the next five-year pe-
riod, that number rose to about 46 out of 98.
Pauling's drift away from scientific research gradually became
a source of some concern to his colleagues at Cal Tech. When he
won the Peace Prize in 1963, he was given a reception by the
98 Linus Pauling

biology department, but the chemistry department did nothing to

honor him. Lee DuBridge, president of Cal Tech at the time, is
reported to have told Pauling, "It's really a remarkable thing that
someone should get a second prize, Professor Pauling; but there is
of course a difference of opinion about the value of the work you
have been doing." Pauling began to realize that his long, 40-year
tenure at the university was becoming too strained, and he decided
to leave.
Reaction to Pauling's anti-war efforts extended beyond the walls
of Cal Tech. In another instance, the American Chemical Society's
journal Chemical &
Engineering News carried an article about
Pauling's Nobel Peace Prize that he thought was offensive. When
the journal refused to publish an apology, Pauling resigned from
the organization, ofwhich he had been a member for many years
and president only a few years earlier.
An opportunity to make a break from Cal Tech presented itself
in 1963 when he was offered a staff position at the Center for the
Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara, California. The
center had been founded in 1946 by the famous educator and
former president of the University of Chicago, Robert Maynard
Hutchins.
In some ways, Pauling's decision to accept this appointment is
understand. The center has no facilities for scientific
difficult to
research and claims not to be involved in political activities. It
does try to formulate a variety of positions on political issues and
to educate citizens on these positions. Neither the lack of labora-
tory space nor the reluctance to engage in political controversy
would seem to be an appealing feature to Pauling. Nonetheless, he
accepted the appointment and formally resigned from his profes-
sorship at Cal Tech on June 30, 1964.
Pauling remained at Santa Barbara for four years, but his time
there was not especially productive. The center was certainly a
congenial place for him to pursue his peace interests, but there was
little motivation for him to follow up on very many of his scientific

ideas. Nonetheless, he did continue to publish about the structure

of minerals, nuclear fission, the structure of atomic nuclei, chem-
ical bondtheory, and other scientific topics, while also pouring
out articles and speeches on war and peace.
 Years of Turmoil 99

Eventually he decided to move on. His biographers Ted, Mil-

dred, and Victor Goertzel report that he "felt that his role was as a
theorist, elder statesman, and scientific gadfly, and he sought a
situation where younger men would carry out his research ideas."
So, in 1967 he accepted an appointment to the chemistry faculty
at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD).
UCSD seemed a more appropriate setting for Pauling's scientific
interests. For one thing, there was a ready supply of graduate
students in chemistry, available to carry out Pauling's research
ideas. Probably more important, however, was the opportunity for
Pauling to renew a friendship with a former Cal Tech student of
his, Arthur Robinson. Robinson had gone on to become a professor
of chemistry himself and was then employed at UCSD. Robinson
shared some of Pauling's ideas about and interest in orthomolec-
ular medicine and agreed to take charge of Pauling's laboratory at
UCSD.
Pauling and Robinson collaborated on a number of studies and
wrote 11 papers together between 1970 and 1975. Although most
of those papers dealt with orthomolecular medicine, others had to
do with such as the structure of atomic
totally unrelated subjects
nuclei. Pauling's association with Robinson was to grow stronger
and stronger for a decade. At one point, Pauling apparently re-
ferred to Robinson as "my principal and most valued collabora-
tor." Then, in 1978, the relationship suddenly collapsed with
bitterness and recriminations (see Chapter 10).
In any case, Pauling's association with UCSD lasted only two
years. Whether he left San Diego because he was bored, as one
group of biographers claim, or because he felt he had been slighted
by the university administration, as another biographer believes,
he resigned his position there in 1969.
His next move was just up the coast to Stanford University. In a
statement to the press, Pauling offered yet another reason for his
move from UCSD to Stanford. The state university system was
beginning to feel severe financial pressures as a result of Governor
Ronald Reagan's austerity measures. Among the factors that
convinced Pauling to leave UCSD, he said, was "the present
uncertainty about continued financial support of the University
of California." He also criticized the governor's efforts to take
100 Linus Pauling

decision-making authority out of the hands of faculties and give it

to theBoard of Regents. Finally, Pauling expressed some unhap-
piness with the pressures brought on him at UCSD by conservative
citizens of San Diego.
When Pauling left UCSD for Stanford, Robinson found himself
in a difficult situation. His career had become closely mingled with
Pauling's. It is hardly surprising, given their ongoing collaboration
and mutual respect, that Pauling was able to convince Robinson
to join himpart-time at Stanford. Since Robinson still held a
full-time appointment at UCSD, the Stanford work with Pauling
could only be done on weekends, during vacations, or while on
academic leave from his regular job. The early 1970s were not an
easy time for Arthur Robinson!
Pauling was to remain at Stanford until 1974 when he reached
mandatory retirement age. Stanford then awarded him the honor-
ary position of emeritus professor. He was by no means ready to
retire, however. Instead, he struck out with Robinson and another

UNUS FfcUUNG IN
OF

» SCIENCE AND MEDICINE

440

Original home of the Pauling Institute at Menlo Park, California. (Courtesy

of Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine/Menlo Park)
 Years of Turmoil 101

Current home of the Pauling Institute in Palo Alto, California. .ourtesy

Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine/Palo Ahto)

colleague.Keene Dimick. to establish a new institution, the Insti-

tute ofOrthomoleculai Medicine, eventually to be renamed the
Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, in Palo Alto.
California.
Finding financial resources to get the institute operating was
difficult,and most of the original money came from Pauling and
Robinson themselves. The doors finally opened in 1975. however.
with Pauling as tenured faculty member for fife and Robinson ten-
ured until age 65. It seemed that Pauling at last had the institution
where he could work exactly as he liked: his own institution! The
future looked bright indeed, and there was little hint of the internal
dissensions that would soon nearly tear the new institution apart.

CHAPTER 9 NOTES
p. 92 "almost everybody ..." "The Plowboy Interview: Dr.
Linus Pauling." Mother Earth News, January/February
1978. p. 18.
702 Linus Pauling

p. 92 "I was fascinated ..." and following quotation. "The

Plowboy Interview," p. 18.

p. 93 "Concentrations ..." Neil.A. Campbell, "Crossing the
Boundaries of Science," BioScience, December 1986,
p. 738.
p. 93 "altering the amounts ..." "The Plowboy Interview,"
p. 18.
p. 93 "so free from ..." Campbell, p. 738.
p. 93 "We owe ..." A. Hoffer, review of The Roots of Molec-
—
ular Medicine A Tribute to Linus Pauling, Richard P.
Huewer, ed., in Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine,
Third Quarter 1987, pp. 196-197.
p. 94 "How can xenon ..." Campbell, p. 739.
p. 95 "was not only unsure ..." Anthony Serafini, Linus
Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York: Paragon
House, 1989), p. 222.
p. 96 "acting as a megaphone ..." "The Collaborators," Na-
tional Review, July 17, 1962, p. 9. Also see James
Burnham, "Treason a la mode," National Review, De-
cember 31, 1960, p. 403.
p. 97 "to be spending ..." "Are You Being Sued by Linus
Pauling?" National Review, September 25, 1962, p. 218.
p. 97 "There are those ..." "National Review Vindicated,"
May 3, 1966, p. 404.
p. 98 "It's really ..." As quoted in Serafini, p. 218.
p. 99 "felt that ..." Ted G. Goertzel, Mildred George
Goertzel, and Victor Goertzel, "Linus Pauling: The Sci-
entist as Crusader," Antioch Review, Summer 1980,
p. 377.
p. 99 "my principal ..." as quoted in Arthur B. Robinson,
"Letter to the Editor," Antioch Review, Summer 1981,
p. 383.
p. 99 "the present uncertainty ..." "Stanford Lures Pau-
ling," Industrial Research, June 1969, p. 38.
 10
LINUS PAULING AND
VITAMIN C
An alien transported to Earth after 1970 might reasonably believe
that the name Linus Pauling is associated with only one subject:
vitamin C. During that period of time, Pauling devoted a majority
of his time and energy to thinking, writing, and speaking about
vitamin C, first as a way of protecting against the common cold,
and later as a possible therapy for cancer. His book Vitamin C and
the Common Cold, written in 1970, has been followed by more
than 125 articles and letters in a half dozen languages on the
benefits of vitamin C therapy.
Irwin Stone's 1966 letter to Pauling about megavitamin theory
did not appear to mark a turning point in Pauling's life at the time.
He and Ava Helen decided to give Stone's ideas a try and began to
notice "an increased feeling of well-being . .and we discovered
.

that we no longer caught colds."

But that discovery did not lead Pauling to begin campaigning for
the virtues of vitamin C (also known as ascorbic acid). It was not
until three years later that that transformation occurred. The
occasion was a short speech that Pauling delivered at the Mount
Sinai Medical School in which he briefly alluded to the value of
vitamin C in preventing colds.
A short time later, Pauling received a strongly worded letter
from a professor, Victor Herbert, who had attended the lecture. "Do
you want to support the vitamin quacks that are bleeding the Amer-
ican public of millions of dollars a year?" he asked. He challenged
Pauling to show him "a single double-blind study that indicates that
vitamin C has any more value than a placebo in fighting colds."

103
704 Linus Pauling

(A double-blind study is one in which neither researchers nor

subjects know which individuals are getting the treatment and
which are getting a harmless, inactive material, the placebo.)
Pauling's immediate response was he did not know of any
that
such studies. But he decided to find out if any existed. Eventually
he located a number of studies that supported the concept of
megavitamin therapy, and he sent one of the most promising, by
a scientist named Ritzel, to Herbert. Herbert's response to Pauling
was "I am not impressed by the work of Ritzel," although he failed
to say why he was not impressed. Pauling wrote back to Herbert,
"I'm not impressed by your saying that you're not impressed by
the work of Ritzel."
The result of this whole exchange with Herbert was that Pauling
"became sufficiently irritated by this fellow" that he decided to
mount an all-out attack on the question of vitamin C therapy. He
read everything he could find on the subject and by July of 1970
was ready to start writing his book on the subject, Vitamin C and
the Common Cold. He finished the manuscript in two months and
the book was published on November 17 of the same year. The
book has since been reprinted a number of times and has been
translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hindi, Japanese,
Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish.
Medical scientists had mixed reactions to Pauling's book. Some
agreed that megavitamin theory for treatment of the common cold
was at least a reasonable idea that deserved to be tested. Others
thought, however, that Pauling had "gone off the deep end" and
was spouting nonsense about a topic that he was not qualified to
write about.
One who was impressed by Pauling's book was a British nutri-
tionist, Reginald Passmore, who called the book "first-class popu-
lar scientific writing." Among Pauling's critics, however, was
Frederick J. Stare of the Harvard School of Public Health. Stare

claimed that Pauling had no training in nutrition and was "lost in

the woods" with the vitamin C theory.
One of the problems with Pauling's position was that the evi-
dence from research on megavitamin therapy was not very clear.
For every study that appeared to support or oppose the theory,
critics could find something to argue about. The correct dose of
 Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 105

vitamin C had not been used, subjects were not properly selected,
inappropriate measurements were taken, researchers misinter-
preted their own findings, and so on. Even today, more than 20
years after Pauling began his studies of vitamin C, scientists cannot
agree as to what effect, if any, the compound has on the common
cold.
As time went on, however, Pauling became more and more
convinced about the value of megavitamin therapy. He eventually
came to the conclusion that all humans are chronically in a
condition of hypoascorbemia, that vitamin C deficiency. Com-
is,

pared to other animals who take in up to five grams of vitamin C

in their normal diets, humans expect to get along with no more
than 45 milligrams of the vitamin. While medical researchers
believe that this is enough to maintain "ordinary good health," it

actually causes humans to be, Pauling believes, in a state of

"ordinary poor health."
If it were possible to dramatically increase the level of vitamin C

in our diets, Pauling has said, we would dramatically increase our

resistance to all of the infectious diseases, including measles, mumps,
pneumonia, meningitis, chicken pox, hepatitis, and influenza. He has
recently written also about the potential value of vitamin C in treating
HTV infection. The reason for the vitamin's success in dealing with
the wide range of disease, Pauling has argued, is its ability to
potentiate (activate) the immune system. By some as-yet-unknown
mechanism, he believes, vitamin C helps natural immune reactions
to combat infectious agents more efficiently.
Pauling's studies of megavitamin therapy took a significant turn
in 1971 when he learned of studies in Scotland in which large
doses of vitamin C were used to treat cancer patients. In those
studies, carried out by Dr. Ewan Cameron, cancer patients were
given up to 10 grams of vitamin C each day. Cameron reported that
the most seriously ill patients experienced improvements that
ranged from decreased pain to temporary remission to apparently
permanent cure of the disease.
These results were, of course, very exciting to Pauling. They
supported his view that vitamin C may be useful, not only in
treating relatively mild conditions like the common cold, but also
far more serious diseases such as cancer. In a public lecture at the
106 Linus Pauling

University of Chicago he predicted that "with the proper uses of

ascorbic acid the mortality from cancer could be reduced by about
ten percent." On another occasion he went even further. He wrote
in 1977 that

In 1971, I published my opinion that a decrease of 10 percent in the

age-specific incidence of and mortality from cancer could be achieved
by use of vitamin C.There is far more information now than was
available in 1971, andmy present estimate is that a decrease of 75
percent can be achieved by use of vitamin C alone, and a further
decrease by use of other nutritional measures.

A number of medical thought that Pauling was exag-

scientists
gerating the effects of vitamin C. They were not convinced that
existing evidence supported such strong statements as a "ten
percent" or "75 percent" rate of cure. Pauling began to experience
significant and sometimes hostile opposition from fellow scien-
tists. Perhaps the most important of these was the May 1972

decision by the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National

Academy of Sciences not to publish Pauling's paper on cancer and
vitamin C. The decision was especially remarkable since members
of the National Academy of Sciences (as Pauling was) have histor-
ically had essentially free access to the Proceedings as an outlet
for their work. That policy had been established in 1914 and had,
until the 1972 decision, never been violated.
Pauling was, understandably, furious. He insisted that the edi-
torial board had no right to prevent publication of a member's
papers. The board's action amounted to censorship, he said, and
"This sort of censorship is pretty dangerous."
The opposition he was experiencing did not deter Pauling from
pursuing his theory further. In 1975, he initiated a second study
with Ewan Cameron of the latter's patients at Vale of Leven
Hospital in Scotland. This study was very carefully designed with
exact matches between control (those not receiving the treatment)
and experimental subjects. The study was especially important
since it was an actual experiment in comparison with Cameron's
original research, which involved no more than the study of
patient records.
The result of this experiment, accepted this time by the Proceed-
ings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that patients
 Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 107

who received vitamin C lived, on the average, 4.2 times as long as

the control patients. Pauling was enthusiastic about these results
and suggested that they might have been even more pronounced
if patients had started taking vitamin C earlier and taken larger

doses of it.
In the midst of these apparently hopeful results from Scotland,
Pauling received disappointing news from another research insti-
tution: his own Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.
Arthur Robinson was conducting a very large, carefully planned
study of cancer in mice that were fed: (1) only raw fruitsand
vegetables, or (2) regular diets combined with large doses of
vitamin C, or (3) raw fruits and vegetables combined with large
doses of vitamin C.
Robinson's research produced apparently conflicting results.
On one hand, mice that were fed a normal diet and vitamin C
developed more cancers than those who got no vitamin C at all.
On the other hand, mice that were given raw fruits and vegeta-
bles and vitamin C got the fewest cancers of any group in the
study. The data could be used to argue that vitamin C prevents
cancer or causes cancer. Obviously, additional studies needed
to be done.
Pauling's view seemed to be, however, that Robinson's results
were potentially damaging to the vitamin C-cancer theory and that
it would be inappropriate for his own institute to publish data

contradicting a concept in which he so totally believed. As a result,

he ordered Robinson to turn his records over to him and to leave
the institute for at least a year. When Robinson refused to do so,
Pauling became "livid," according to a group of his biographers,
and he "threatened to have the mice killed in order to prevent
continuation of the experiment."
The dispute rapidly became more ugly. Trustees of the institute
withheld Robinson's salary, suspended him from his job, and
locked up his files. In response, Robinson filed a series of law suits
against the institute, its trustees, and Pauling totaling more than
$25 million. After years of litigation, those suits were finally
settled out of court in 1983. Robinson was, however, forced to
leave the institute where he had once held a position that gave him
tenure to the age of 65.
108 Linus Pauling

After leaving Palo Alto, Robinson moved to the Oregon Institute

of Science and Medicine where he continued his research on
vitamin C and cancer. That research produced additional results
that seemed to confirm his earlier work at Palo Alto. Eventually
he wrote Pauling suggesting that a "public warning should be
issued" concerning the possible dangers of ingesting large
amounts of vitamin C. Pauling never replied to this letter.
Pauling's own views on vitamin C and cancer were obviously
not affected by Robinson's research or his conclusions on the topic.
In 1981, Pauling finally obtained a grant from the National Cancer
Institute (NCI) to study the effects of vitamin C on breast cancer in
mice. The grant came after four previous applications going back
to 1973 had not been funded. Pauling received the award at least
partly because he lobbied legislators and administration officials
so aggressively. As one NCI official explained, Pauling's activities
were "meant to badger us." Staff at NCI eventually "lent a special
hand" to see that Pauling got his award.
A possible definitive answer to the vitamin C-cancer question
appeared to be on the horizon in 1978. The prestigious Mayo Clinic
in Rochester, Minnesota, decided to do a thorough study of the
issue. The results they reported in late 1979 failed to show any
therapeutic effect of the vitamin. The Mayo researchers suggested
that the case was closed for vitamin C.
It took Pauling relatively little time to find a fundamental flaw
in the Mayo study. Researchers had included in the study patients
who had earlier received large doses of chemotherapy. Such pa-
tientswould have had severely damaged immune systems, Pauling
pointed out, and would not have been able to benefit from vitamin
C therapy. In fact, Pauling had warned Mayo researchers in ad-
vance of this effect.
Pauling's objections apparently had some effect, for Mayo de-
signed a second study on vitamin C and cancer, one that suppos-
edly avoided the methodological problems associated with the
first study. Once found no positive effects from
again, researchers
the use of vitamin C. The case was really closed this time, the Mayo
researchers believed. The report of the second study concluded,
"It is very clear that this study fails to show a benefit for high-dose

vitamin C therapy of advanced cancer."

 Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 109

As might be expected, Pauling was still not satisfied with the

results and found yet new problems with the study's methodology.
He pointed out, for example, that none of the Mayo patients died
while they were taking vitamin C, although they did after the
vitamin therapy was concluded. The study, he suggested, had
simply ended too soon.
In fact, the question about vitamin C and cancer is probably still
not resolved to everyone's satisfaction. Pauling's biographer An-
thony Serafini concludes, even after the carefully planned Mayo
studies, "The objective truth about vitamin C has yet to be re-
vealed. . More work is needed."
. .

Throughout the vitamin C controversies, Pauling continued to

receive awards and honors. Among these were the International
Lenin Peace Prize (1971), the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences (1978), the Priestley Medal of the American
Chemical Society (1984), the American Chemical Society Award
in Chemical Education (1987), and the Vannevar Bush Award of
the National Science Foundation (1989).
In some ways, the most satisfying award may have been the
National Medal of Science, presented to Pauling by President
Gerald Ford on September 18, 1975. Pauling's strong objections to
the Vietnam War, which he had called "as obscene as anything
could be," had made him as unwelcome in the Nixon White House
as it had to the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s. Even his
position as a double Nobel laureate had not been sufficient to
overcome Nixon's suspicions and dislike of him.
Ford's decision to honor Pauling in 1975 was part of the
President's efforts to bring healing to the nation after the fiasco of
the Nixon Watergate years. Science advisor H. Guyford Stever
explained that "the award is part of a mood of conciliation
throughout our nation. We disagree on politics pretty strongly
. . .

at times, but science is science, and what Pauling has done in

science has been of importance to all the people of the world."
Pauling also continued to write, of course. Between his 80th and
90th birthdays, he produced 180 more articles, letters, reviews,
and other publications. In addition to familiar topics such as
crystal structure, megavitamin therapy, and world peace, Pauling
also wrote about the potential health effects of electromagnetic
110 Linus Pauling

radiation, one of the first important scientists to recognize this

potential health issue.
Most prominent among these works was yet another book, How
to Live Longer and Feel Better, published in 1986. The book
attempts to show how principles of orthomolecular medicine and
megavitamin nutrition can be used to attain better health and
longer life. Pauling's promotion of the book was so aggressive that
the great science writer Isaac Asimov worried that a younger
generation might not fully realize the significance of Pauling's
"lesser-known, more serious work."
Even his 90th birthday did not bringany slowdown in his
research or writing. He announced book
in 1992 that his next
would deal with yet another aspect of his megavitamin theory, the
relationship between vitamin C and heart disease.
Tragedy struck Pauling in 1981 when his beloved wife of 58
years died of stomach cancer. Ava Helen Pauling had been diag-
nosed with the disease in 1975 but she scarcely slowed down after
,

receiving the news. She continued to write and speak about causes

Linus and Ava Helen at home, about 1960. (Courtesy of Pauling Archives;
#324-131)
 Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 111

that were important to her and to be at her husband's side during

his battles and honors. In a 1977 interview she explained that since
he would never retire, she couldn't either. "I'd feel guilty," she
said.
In looking back over her life, she reflected that much of her life had
been devoted to her husband and her children. Still, she had managed
to dedicate a considerable amount of time and energy to causes that
were important to her. In recognition of those efforts, San Gabriel
College awarded her an honorary doctorate which, she said, she
thought she deserved. It was for her social and political work. "I took
the lead in our peace efforts," she explained. "I was active in the
ACLU, against the war and against putting Japanese- Americans in
camps." At least as important, her husband pointed out, was her
influence in recruiting Pauling to the peace movement.
The Paulings' children all became successful in their own fields,
a not-insignificant accomplishment when growing up with a father
as famous and as controversial as Linus Pauling. Linus, Jr., became
a psychiatrist and led the Hawaii delegation in the Selma, Ala-
bama, civil rights march. The Paulings related that they were "a
little surprised and very pleased" at this act because, as Ava Helen

said, Linus, Jr., is an M.D. and "they tend to be very conservative."

Peter remained in London after his graduate work there, even-
tually becoming a lecturer in chemistry at University College at
the University of London. In 1975, he coauthored a general chem-
istry textbook with his father. Crellin, the Paulings' youngest son,
became professor of genetics at the University of California at
Riverside, and their daughter, Linda, is married to a professor at
Cal Tech.
Linus Pauling was confronted with yet one more challenge in
1991. His doctors informed him in December that he had cancer
of the prostate. Six months later, however, he reported that he was
fully recovered from the disease. A conventional treatment of the
drug glutamine supplemented, of course, by vitamin C, appeared
to have been successful. "I never contended that you can control
a disease completely forever," he said, "but improved nutrition
can shift the mortality curve." It was obvious that Pauling was
going to be around at least a bit longer to fight the battles that were
important to him.
112 Linus Pauling

CHAPTER 10 NOTES
p. 103 "an increased feeling ..." "The Plowboy Interview: Dr.
Linus Pauling," Mother Earth News, January/February
1978, p. 18.
p. 103 "Do you want ..." "The Plowboy Interview," p. 18.
p. 104 "first-class ..." Rae Goodell, The Visible Scientists
(New York: Paddington Press, 1976), pp. 82-83.
p. 105 "ordinary poor health ..." "The Plowboy Interview,"
p. 20.
p. 106 "with the proper uses Anthony Serafini, Linus
. . .

Pauling: A Man and His Science (New York: Paragon

House, 1989), p. 245.
p. 106 "In 1971 ..." "Vitamin C Research Roadblocked," Pre-
vention, November 1977, p. 173.
p. 106 "This sort ..." Barbara J. Culliton, "Academy Turns
Down a Pauling Paper," Science, August 4, 1972,
p. 409.
p. 107 "threatened to have ..." Ted G. Goertzel, Mildred
George Goertzel, and Victor Goertzel, "Linus Pauling:
The Scientist as Crusader," Antioch Review, Summer
1980, p. 379.
p. 108 "meant to badger ..." Marjorie Sun, "At Long Last,
Linus Pauling Lands NCI Grant," Science, June 5, 1981,
p. 1126.
p. 108 "It isvery clear ..." Charles G. Moertel, et al., "High-
dose Vitamin C versus Placebo in the Treatment of
Patients with Advanced Cancer Who Have Had No Prior
Chemotherapy," New England Journal ofMedicine, Jan-
uary 17, 1985, p. 141.
p. 109 "The objective truth " Serafini, p. 283.
. .

p. 109 "as obscene ..." William F. Fry, Jr., "What's New with
You, Linus Pauling?" The Humanist, November/De-
cember 1974, p. 18.
p. 109 "the award ..." Luther J. Carter, "Pauling Gets Medal of
Science: Thaw Between Scientists and White House,"
Science, October 3, 1975, p. 33.
p. 110 "lesser-known ..." Serafini, p. xx.
 Linus Pauling and Vitamin C 113

p. Ill "I took the lead ..." Mildred Hamilton, "The Unretir-
ing Paulings," San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle,
August 21, 1977, p. 2 Scene,
p. Ill "a little surprised ..." "The Unretiring Paulings," p. 2
Scene.
p. Ill "I never contended ..." Marvine Howe, "Chronicle,"
New York Times, May 15, 1992, p. 4.
 11
LINUS PAULING: THE MAN
AND THE LEGACY
The personal lives of geniuses are at least as complex as those of
ordinary mortals. Intellectual brilliance, afterall, does not neces-

sarily guarantee moral charm, political recti-

integrity, personal
tude, or any other desirable character trait. So one should hardly
be surprised that Linus Pauling's life and personality have been
assessed in a myriad of ways by his contemporaries.
The one point on which no one disagrees is his brilliance as a
scientist.Probably the most prolific and one of the best-known
science writers of all time, Isaac Asimov, has called him "a first-
class genius," "the greatest chemist of the twentieth century."
Pauling's numerous honorary degrees and awards confirm this
judgment. His colleagues have honored him at one time or another
with every high honor in chemistry.
Of special significance has been Pauling's willingness to re-
main active in chemical research late in life. Some Nobel Prize
winners are little known after making the one great discovery
for which they are honored. James Watson, co-discoverer of the
structure of DNA, is an example. After receiving his Nobel Prize
in 1962, Watson became more interested in the administration
of science and essentially abandoned scientific research. In
contrast, Pauling has continued to write on topics such as
nuclear structure, resonance, crystal structure, and quasi-
crystals into his 90th year.
But what of Linus Pauling the man? Much less agreement exists
on this point. To his admirers, Pauling is not only a genius, but a
man of the highest character. Asimov continues his praise of

774
 The Man and the Legacy 115

Pauling in his office at his home in Big Sur, California, 1987. (Courtesy of
Pauling Archives; #325-131)
116 Linus Pauling

Pauling by calling him "a gentleman in the highest sense of the

word. He has character."
Many who know Pauling would agree with Asimov's assess-
ment. His biographers Ted, Mildred, and Victor Goertzel write
about his "radiant smile, brilliant wit, and vigorous enthusiasm
for his work [that] give him great charismatic appeal." His efforts
on behalf of peace have been especially noted. Numerous support-
ers have praised him for his "independence, courage, and fighting
qualities," and called him "an outstanding example of the kind of
scientist who is more needed now one chiefly concerned with
. . .

the humanely useful applications of scientific knowledge." In one

article, he is described as "a stubborn idealist [who] still wears his
well-developed sense of morality, like his jaunty black beret,
wherever he travels."
The same article allows Pauling to describe his own ethical code:
The evidence of my senses tells me that I am a man like other men.
When I cut myself I am hurt,
, I suffer. I cry out. I see that when someone
else cuts himself he cries out. I conclude from his behavior that he is

suffering in the same way that I was . . . I am led to believe that I am a

man like other men.

Iwant to be free of suffering to the greatest extent possible. I should like

happy, useful life, a satisfying life. I want other people to help
to live a
keep my suffering to a minimum. It is my duty, accordingly, to help
them, to strive to prevent suffering for other people.

Yet, there is another side to Linus Pauling's character. The

Goertzels conclude: "Pauling is a classic example of a person who

loves humanity but doesn't care much for people. He is generally

without close friends. Politically, he is a crusader for his vision
. . .

of truth with little tolerance for considering the viewpoints of

others."
Indeed, one cannot understand Linus Pauling the man without
appreciating his own enormous self-confidence. A colleague has
observed that he is "very rarely wrong about anything. For him to
be modest would be hypocrisy." It is hardly surprising, then, to
read so often about Pauling in terms of his "enormous ego," his
"bracing self-regard," or his "mind of his own."
Nor is it surprising, therefore, to hear about the almost constant
battles with individuals and organizations that have characterized
 The Man and the Legacy 117

Pauling's life. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of Anthony

Serafmi's biography of Pauling is the recurring theme of his
personal disputes with professional colleagues and political fig-

ures. Serafini devotes the better part of five chapters to the most
famous of these disputes with British mathematician and biologist
Dorothy Wrinch. Nobel Prize winning biologist Herman J. Miiller.
political columnist William F. Buckley. Jr. and former student and
.

cofounder of the Linus Pauling Institute. Arthur Robinson.

The last of these disputes illustrates how bitter these controver-
sies sometimes became. After his initial reluctance to talk about
his disagreement with Robinson. Pauling eventually began to
make his case in speeches, articles, and letters to editors. In a 1981
Antioch Re\ie\\\ Pauling called the Goertzels' article
letter to the
about his feud with Robinson '"astonishingly incorrect and mis-
leading."
In turn. Robinson offered his own three-page review of the
controversy in the following issue of the Antioch Re\ie\\: In his
own letter. Robinson accuses Pauling of never organizing, direct-
ing, or carrying out any research at the institute that bears his
name. He points out that "Linus has not personally contributed
significant research work on vitamin C and human health, al-
though he has been politically successful in obtaining credit for
Ewan Cameron's work in Scotland." His letter criticizes Pauling
for making false claims, for his "rage" and "virulent outbreak
Robinson personally, and for the "ruthlessness" with which he
conducted some of his scientific research.
The bitterness of Robinson's letter helps explain the Goertzels'
own final thoughts on Pauling's life, namely that "we have been
forced to reconsider our assumption that a great humanitarian
must necessarily be an outstanding human being The same
. . .

egocentricity that makes a man a tyrant in a position of power may

also produce an effective resister of the oppression and orthodox-
ies of others."
So how will Linus Pauling be remembered by historians a
hundred years from now? In some ways. Pauling's most fundamen-
tal claim to fame is based on the fact that he almost single-handedly

reshaped the way practitioners looked at their field. He showed

how mathematical and physical methods, especially quantum
118 Linus Pauling

mechanics, could be brought to bear on topics to which they had

never been applied so thoroughly before.
He eventually went one step further and showed how mathemat-
ics, physics, and chemistry can all be integrated in the study of the

molecules of which all living organisms are composed and how

that study can provide an entirely new insight on the structure and
function of living beings.
Without much question, Pauling's most significant specific ac-
complishment has probably been his work on the nature of the
chemical bond. He began that work at a time when the term
chemical bond had essentially little concrete meaning. Lewis and
Langmuir had just begun to outline the way in which the attraction
between two atoms could be described in terms of electronic
configuration. More than any other single individual, Pauling was
ultimately to refine that concept and express it in a form that is
essentially that used by chemists today.
Another important achievement has been Pauling's emphasis on
the significance of molecular architecture in understanding the
nature of matter. His earliest research at Cal Tech revealed the
structure of hundreds of minerals. But the extension of that re-
search to biological molecules has been even more significant.
Scientists have gradually come to understand that the biological
functions that molecules have is largely dependent on their phys-
ical shape. That understanding, in turn, has become possible
largely through the line of research pioneered by Pauling. In this
regard, he must be considered one of the founders of the modern
science of molecular biology.
Pauling's early concepts of orthomolecular medicine also appear
to have been at least partially confirmed in recent years. Scientists
now have a much better understanding of the way specific chem-
icals behave in the body, especially in the brain. Pauling's notion
that some mental disorders may result from a deficiency of natu-
rally occurring compounds appears to be correct and may well
form the basis for more productive research in the future.
Pauling's research in other areas is perhaps less well known, but
valuable in its own way. During the mid-1960s, he "dabbled" in
the topic of nuclear physics and eventually developed a theory
about nuclear structure. It never had much impact, for a variety of
 The Man and the Legacy 1 19

reasons, but one colleague thought that "had it been done some
forty years earlier . . . physicists might have found it quite useful."
Pauling's accomplishments outside the field of science are more
debatable. The Nobel Peace Prize confirms the view of some that
hiscampaigns against nuclear weapons testing in particular and
war in general had an important impact on the course of
against
human history in the 1950s and 1960s.
His critics disagree. They argue that the fact that Pauling was
outspoken does not mean that he was influential. They suggest that
other factors, such as the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, may have
been even more responsible for the nuclear test ban treaty that the
United States and the Soviet Union eventually signed.
Nor is it clear where Pauling's advocacy of megavitamin therapy
is to lead. Most authorities seem to believe that the scientific
evidence for Pauling's theories not available and may never
is still

be. However, enough questions appear to remain to justify further

research on Pauling's current field of special interest.
Pauling will be remembered also, not for his specific contribu-
tions to knowledge, but for his approach to problem-solving. We
are often taught that the road to scientific knowledge consists of
many individual bricks, specific bits of information collected
painstakingly one piece at a time. Only when these many units of
knowledge have been collected, we are told, can someone assem-
ble them into some grand theory.
And that system does work. But Pauling has reminded us of
another approach. At times, one may see the answer first, and then
go back to look for the evidence needed to support the answer. In
working on molecular structures, for example, he often con-
structed a model early on in his research, then used data to test
the model. It was this approach that led Pauling to his discovery
of the helical structure of the protein molecule and, ironically, to
the discovery of the DNA structure by two competitors, Crick and
Watson.
It seems certain that Pauling, like a handful of the greatest

scientists, will always be remembered not for a single discovery

but as a brilliant, complex, controversial figure. For all his flaws
and weaknesses, an individual like Linus Pauling does not come
along often enough in human history.
720 Linus Pauling

CHAPTER 11 NOTES
p. 114 "a first-class ..." Anthony Serafini, Linus Pauling: A
Man and His Science (New York: Paragon House, 1989),
pp. xii and xvi.
p. 116 "a gentleman ..." Serafini, p. xvi.
p. 116 "radiant smile ..." Ted G. Goertzel, Mildred George
Goertzel, and Victor Goertzel, "Linus Pauling: The
Scientist as Crusader," Antioch Review, Summer 1980,
p. 382.
p. 116 "independence, courage, ..." Helen C. Allison, "Out-
spoken Scientist," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,
December 1960, p. 390; and "an outstanding example
..." Dorris Planz, "The Vitamin C Controversy," The
Nation, April 5, 1971, p. 441.
p. 116 "a stubborn idealist ..." Carol Pogash, "The Great
Gadfly," Science Digest, June 1981, p. 90.
p. 116 "Pauling is ... " "Linus Pauling: The Scientist as Cru-
sader," p. 382.
p. 116 "very rarely wrong ..." "The Great Gadfly," p. 90.
p. 116 "bracing self-regard," George W. Gray, "Pauling and
Beadle," Scientific American, May
1949, p. 16; "mind
of his own," Marjorie Sun, "At Long Last, Linus Pauling
Lands NCI Grant," Science, June 5, 1981, p. 1127.

p. 117 "Linus has not ..." Arthur B. Robinson, "Letter to the

Editor," Antioch Review, Summer 1981, p. 384.
p. 117 "we have been forced ..." "Linus Pauling: The Scien-
tist as Crusader," p. 382.
p. 119 "had it been done ..." As quoted in Serafini, p. 226.
GLOSSARY
amino acid: an organic compound whose characteristic func-
tional groups are an amino group (-NH2) and a carboxyl group
(-COOH); the basic unit of which all proteins are made.
antibody: a protein produced by the body as a defensive response
to the presence of some foreign material in the body, an
antigen.
antigen: any foreign substance that appears in an organism's body
and an antibody response from that organism.
initiates
atom: the smallest particle of an element that displays all the
characteristics of that element.
azimuthal quantum number: A quantum number indicating the
degree of ellipticity of an electron's orbit around an atomic
nucleus.
compound: a substance that consists of two or more elements
combined with each other chemically in some constant pro-
portion.
covalentbond: a force of attraction that exists between two atoms
as a result of their sharing a pair of electrons between them.
electron: one of the fundamental particles of matter, a lepton,
whose mass is approximately 0.511 MeV and whose electrical
charges is -1.

electronegativity: the relative tendency of an atom to attract to

itself the electrons in a bond that it shares with some other
atom.
element: a substance that cannot be broken down into any sim-
pler material by ordinary chemical means.
enzyme: a protein or protein-containing substance that catalyzes
a biochemical reaction.
hybridization: the tendency of two or more atomic orbitals to
combine with each other to form a new orbital.
ionic bond: a force of attraction that exists between two ions with
opposite electrical charges.
molecule: two or more atoms held together by some chemical
force. A molecule is the smallest particle of an element or

727
122 Linus Pauling

compound that displays all the characteristics of that element

or compound.
orbital: an energy state of an electron determined by its specific
location in an atom. Any one eletronic orbital has unique
values of quantum numbers n, 1, and m.
peptide: a term used to describe the combination of amino acids.
For example, the bond joining two amino acids is called a
peptide bond, and the combination of three peptides is re-
ferred to as a tripeptide.
photoelectric effect: the release of electrons from a material as a
result of its being exposed to electromagnetic radiation.
protein: a very large molecule consisting of very long chains of
amino acids joined to each other.
quantum: (plural: quanta) the smallest unit of energy that can
exist.
quantum number: one of a set of numbers that describes the
energy state of an electron or some other particle.
quantum theory: the modern theory of matter and electromag-
netic energy that states that the transfer of energy can occur
only in discrete units called quanta.
resonance: a concept used to describe some composite or average
structure of two or more possible structures.
substrate:any substance that is acted upon by an enzyme.
wavelength: the distance between two crests or two troughs of a
wave.
X-ray crystallography: a technique for determining the structure
of a crystalline material by directing a beam of X rays at a
sample of that substance.
X-ray diffraction photograph: the pattern produced on a photo-
graphic plate as the result of shining X rays on a crystal of some
material.
FURTHER READING
Linus Pauling has written an enormous number of books, articles,
letters to editors, and other works. The majority of these are highly
technical in character and will be of interest only to the reader with
a strong background in chemistry. However, a number of Pauling's
works are easily accessible to the reader withno background in
science at all. His books and articles on peace and vitamin C are
examples. A few items that are particularly recommended are the
following:
Cameron, Ewan, and Linus Pauling. Cancer and Vitamin C. Palo
Alto, CA: Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine,
1979.
"Linus Pauling Talks about Soviet Testing." U.S. News & World
Report, October 2, 1961, 94-95.
Pauling, Linus, "Chemistry and the World of Tomorrow." Chemi-
cal & Engineering News, April 16, 1984, 54-56.
."Early Days of Molecular Biology in the California Institute
of Technology." Annual Review of Biophysical Chemistry,
1986, 1-9.
Years of Physical Chemistry in the California Insti-
."Fifty
tute of Technology." In Annual Review of Physical Chemistry,
vol. 16, H. Eyring, ed., Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.,
1965.
."Fifty Years of Progress in Structural Chemistry and Molec-
ular Biology" Daedalus, Fall 1970, 988-1014.
.How to Live Longer and Feel Better. New York: W. H.
Freeman, 1986.
."Orthomolecular Psychiatry: Varying the Concentrations of
Substances Normally Present in the Human Body May Control
Mental Disease." Science, April 19, 1968, 265-271.
."Pauling on G. N. Lewis." Chemtech, June 1983, 334-337.
."The Social Responsibilities of Scientists and Science."
The Science Teacher, May 1966, 14-18.
.Vitamin C and the Common Cold. San Francisco: W. H.
Freeman, 1970.

123
124 Linus Pauling

.Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and the Flu. San Francisco:

W. H. Freeman, 1976.
— ."What Can We Expect Chemistry forthe Next 100 in
Years?" Chemical Engineering News, April
fr 1976, 33-36. 19,
—."Why Modern Chemistry Quantum Chemistry." New
Is

Scientist, November 7, 1985, 54-55.

The definitive biography of Pauling thus far is the one written

by Anthony Serafini. Although the chronology is sometimes diffi-
cult to follow, the book is a treasure mine of information about
Pauling's life. A second biography, by Florence Meiman White, is
designed for younger readers. It has some interesting information
on Pauling's early life and personal experiences later in life.
Interested readers should also be aware of a new biography on
Pauling by Tom Hager, scheduled for publication by Simon &
Schuster in 1994.
Serafini, Anthony. Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science. New
York: Paragon House, 1989.
White, Florence Meiman. Linus Pauling: Scientist and Crusader
New York: Walker & Co., 1980.
Pauling's and work are also discussed in detail in a number
life

of anthologies,most important of which are:

Goodell, Rae. The Visible Scientists. Boston: Little, Brown, 1977.
Gray, Tony. Champions of Peace. New York: Paddington Press,
1976.
"Linus Pauling." Current Biography 1964. New York: H. W. Wil-
son, 1964, 339-342.
"Linus Pauling." Current Biography 1949. New York: H. W. Wil-
son, 1949, 473-475.

Three important histories of the search for the structure of DNA

discuss Pauling's role in that event and his life and work in general.
They are as follows:
Gribbin, John. In Search of the Double Helix. Aldershot, England:
Wildwood House, 1985.
Judson, Horace Freeland. The Eighth Day of Creation. New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1979.
 Further Reading 125

Olby, Robert. The Path to the Double Helix. Seattle: University of

Washington Press, 1974.

Some insight into Pauling's own thoughts is available in inter-

views that he has given with reporters for the popular media. These
include:
Campbell, Neil A. "Crossing the Boundaries of Science." Bio
Science, December 1986, 737-739.
Fry, William F., Jr. "What's New with You, Linus Pauling?" The
Humanist, November/December 1974, 16-19.
Grosser, Morton. "Linus Pauling: Molecular Artist." Saturday Eve-
ning Post, Fall 1971, 147-149.
Hamilton, Mildred. "The Unretiring Paulings." San Francisco
Examiner & Chronicle, August 21, 1977, 2 Scene.
Hogan, John. "Profile: Linus C. Pauling." Scientific American,
March 1993, 36+.
"Interview: Linus Pauling." Omni, December 1986, 102-110.
"The Plowboy Interview: Dr. Linus Pauling." Mother Earth News,
January/February 1978, 17-22.
Pogash, Carol. "The Great Gadfly." Science Digest, June 1981,
88-91+.
Ridgway David. "Interview with Linus Pauling. " Journal of Chem-
,

ical Education, August 1976, 471-476.

Additional articles that provide further information about

Pauling's personaland professional career include the following:
Allison, Helen C. "Outspoken Scientist." Bulletin of the Atomic
December 1960, 382+.
Scientists,
—
Beadle, George W. "Portrait of a Scientist A Tribute to Linus
Pauling." Enginnering and Science, April 1955, 11-14.
Goertzel, Ted G., Mildred George Goertzel, and Victor Goertzel.
"Linus Pauling: The Scientist as Crusader." Antioch Review,
Summer 1980, 371-382. See also the response to this article
by Pauling in the Spring 1981 issue of this journal and Arthur
Robinson's reply to Pauling in the Summer 1981 issue of the
same journal.
Goodstein, Judith R. "Atoms, Molecules, and Linus Pauling."
Social Research, Autumn 1984, 691-708.
126 Linus Pauling

Pauling has had, of course, an enormous impact on the institu-

tions and fields of science with which he has been involved. The
following reviews describe this impact for specific situations:
Gray, George W. "Pauling and Beadle." Scientific American, May
1949, 16-21.
Kalven, Harry, Jr. "Congressional Testing of Linus Pauling." The
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, December 1960, 383-390.
Servos, John W. Physical Chemistry from Ostwald to Pauling: The
Making of a Science in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
."The Knowledge Corporation: A. A. Noyes and Chemistry
and Cal-Tech, 1915-1930." Ambix, November 1976, 175-186.
INDEX
Illustrations are indicated by italic numbers.
The letter g after a number indicates a word in the glossary.

atomic theory 28,36-37

Atomic Energy Commission
Acheson, Dean 77
(AEC) 79, 81, 84
Adams, Sherman 81
Austria 52
Addis, Thomas 55-57
azimuthal quantum number 28,
alpha helix 2, 01,62-64
29, 121g
alpha keratin. See keratin
American Cancer Society 79
American Chemical Society 42, B
69,98, 109
Baker, George Fisher, Lecture
California Section 69
(Cornell University) 52
Chicago Section 69
Balliol College 61
Northeast Section 69
barite 23
American Chemical Society
Beecher, Henry K. 94
Award in Chemical Education
Bell,I. O. 65
109
American Civil Liberties Union Bellingham (Wash.) Herald 96
(ACLU) 56,111 Bellingham (Wash.) Publishing
American history 11 Company 96
amino acid 1-2, 48, 49, 62-64, benzene, structure of 39-40, 41
69, 121g Berkeley (Calif.) 19, 25, 35

anesthetics, action of 94-95 Bethe, Hans 74

antibody 50-51, 60, 121g Beverton (Ontario) 6
antigen 50-51, 60, 121g biological specificity 50, 95
Antioch Review 117 black-body radiation 27
Arcadia (Calif.) Tribune 96 Board of Regents (University of
"Are You Being Sued by Linus California) 100
Pauling?" (Buckley article) 97 Bohr, Niels 25, 30
ascorbic acid. See vitamin C Bonner, James 21, 67
Asimov, Isaac 110, 114 Boot, Sir Jesse, Foundation 51
Astbury, W. T. 2, 49, 62, 65 Boston (Mass.) 19
atom 1, 22, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 36, Boykin, S. D. 76
38, 58, 121g.See also atomic nu- Bragg, William Henry 23
clei;atomic theory Bragg, William Lawrence 23, 35-
atomic bomb 74 36,62,67
atomic nuclei 95, 98, 118 Bridges, Calvin 44

127
128 Index

Bright's disease. See glomerulone- Chemical Principles (Noyes book)

phritis 21
Brockway, L. O. 36 Chemistry Department (California
Broglie, Louis de 27 Institute of Technology) 21
Buckley, William F. 96-97, 117 Chicago Section of the American
Budenz, Louis 75 Chemical Society. See Ameri-
Buffalo Evening News 96 can Chemical Society
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists "Children of the Dawn" (Pauling
79,81 speech) 16
Burnham, James 96 chromosomes 45
Burrau, O. 30 College Chemistry (Pauling book)
Bush, Vannevar Award (National 70
Science Foundation) 109 Committee on Medical Research
(Office of Scientific Research
and Development) 58
Commoner, Barry 80
C.I.T. See California Institute of Communist Party 4, 74, 75-76, 85
Technology Communists 3-4, 56, 74, 75, 76,
Cal Tech. See California Institute 81-83, 85, 96. See also Pauling,
of Technology Communist, accusations of
California 75 being; Addis, Thomas
California Institute of Technology complimentarity, theory of 50-
17, 19-21, 28, 31, 32, 35, 36, 44, 51, 52,60,68
45, 48, 49, 51, 67, 76, 92, 97, 98, compound 49, 121g
99, 111, 118 Condon, Edward U. 30, 80
California Section of the Ameri- Condon (Ore.) 7
can Chemical Society. See Copenhagen 30
American Chemical Society Corey, Robert 1-2, 49, 50, 60, 62-
Cambridge (England) 62, 66 67, 66
Cambridge (Mass.) 42 Cornell University 52, 72
Cameron, Ewan 105, 106, 117 Corona del Mar (Calif.) 22
Campbell, Dan H. 60 corundum 23
carbon-14 79 Corvallis (Ore.) 13, 16, 20
Carnegie Hall 73 Coryell, Charles 45-46
Cavendish Laboratory (Cam- Courier Express (Buffalo) 96
bridge University) 62, 64, 66 covalent bond 37-39, 121g
Center for the Study of Demo- Crick, Francis 3-4,24,65-67,
cratic Institutions 98 119
Century Club (New York City) 67 "The Crystal Structure of
Chemical 6- Engineering News 98 Pseudobrookite" (Pauling
chemical bond 30,31,34,35,36, paper) 34
37, 38, 45, 46, 49, 118. See also "The Crystal Structure of Topaz"
covalent bond; ionic bond (Pauling paper) 34
 Index 129

cyclol theory 48 electronegativity 38, 39, 40, 121g

electrophoresis 69
element 39, 121g
Emergency Committee of Atomic
Darlings (parents of Belle Pau- Scientists 59
ling) 7 Emmett, Paul 17
Davy Medal (Royal Society) 69 England 3,51,61,65, 77
Debye, Peter 31 enzyme 51, 121g. See also en-
Delta Upsilon 16 zyme action
denaturation 48 enzyme action 51-52, 52
deoxyhemoglobin 45 Europe 3, 25, 59
deoxyribonucleic acid. See DNA evolution 95
Department of Chemistry (Univer-
sity of California at Berkeley) 19
Dickinson, Roscoe Gilkey 22-23
diketopiperazine 49 fallout.See radioactive fallout
Dimick, Keene 101 Faraday Society 77
District Court (District of Colum- Fermi, Enrico 74, 77
bia) 84 Ford, Gerald 109
Division of Chemistry and Chemi- Ford Foundation 92
cal Engineering (California Insti- Fordham University 75
tute of Technology) 51 Franklin, Rosalind 4, 65
DNA 3, 24, 51,65-67, 66 Freeman, W. H. 70
Dobzhansky, Theodosius 44 Fry, D.J. 7
Dodd, Thomas 75-76, 85-86
duality of waves and particles
27-28
DuBridge, Lee 98 Gates Chemical Laboratory (Cali-
fornia Institute of Technology)
20, 23, 51
Geballe, Pauline 10
Earth 78 General Chemistry (Pauling
Ehrenfest, Paul 24 book) 70
Einstein, Albert 27, 59, 74, 77 "Genetic Menace of Tests" (Pau-
"Einstein Committee." See Emer- ling letter)
gency Committee of Atomic Sci- genetics 44-45, 64, 79, 81, 83, 84
entists Germany 6
Eisenhower, Dwight D. 81, 84, Gibbs, J. Medal (Ameri-
Willard,
109 can Chemical Society) 69
electromagnetic effects on human Globe-Democrat (St. Louis) 96
health 109 glomerulonephritis 55
electron 27-28, 29, 37-39, 118, Goertzel, Mildred 99,116,117
121g Goertzel, Ted 99,116, 117
electron diffraction analysis 36 Goertzel, Victor 99,116,117
130 Index

Goudsmit, Samuel 31, 35

Great Britain 84, 90
India 77
Greene, William 10 Institute for Theoretical Physics
Guggenheim fellowship 25 (Copenhagen) 30
Institute of Orthomolecular Medi-
cine 101
Institute of Science (Tel Aviv) 77
HIV infection 105 Institute of Theoretical Physics
Haggard Hall (Western Washing- (Munich) 29
ton University) 96 Internal Security Subcommittee
Hale, George Ellery 20 (U.S. Senate) 75, 85-86
Hammarskjold, Dag 82 International Lenin Peace Prize

Harvard University 19, 42 109

Harvard University School of Pub- ionic bond 37-39, 121g
Health 104 Israel 77
lic
Italy 29
Harvey, Paul 12
Itano, Harvey, 69, 92
Hassett, William D. 3
Ithaca (N.Y.) 52
"Health Hazards of Radiation"
(Pauling speech) 79
Hearst Publishing Company 96 J

Heilbron, John 33 Japanese 38, 70, 104

Heisenberg, Werner 30 Japanese-Americans 111
Heitler, W. 30 Jeffries, Lloyd 10
helix 61 Th e Joh n s Hopkin s Magazin e 9 6
hematite 23 Journal of the American Chemi-
heme 45, 46 cal Society (JACS) 11, 23, 36,
hemoglobin 45-46, 46, 52, 64, 40,42,51,52, 109
68-69, 72 Journal of Orthomolecular Medi-
Hennings.T. C.,Jr. 78 cine 93
Herald-Journal and Post Stan- Journal of Orthomolecular Psychi-
dard (Syracuse) 96 atry. See Journal of Orthomolec-

Herbert, Victor 103-104 ular Medicine

Hiroshima 74, 79
Hitler, Adolf 52, 58
Hoffer, A 92,93 KQED 82
Hoover, Herbert 56 Kekule\ Friedrich 39-40
How to Live Longer and Feel Bet- Kendrew, John 62, 67
ter (Pauling book) 110 Kennedy, John F. 87
Hutchins, Robert Maynard 98 keratin 62
hybridization 38, 38, 39, 40, 121g Key West (Fla.) 3
hydrogen 30 King Features Syndicate 96
hydrogen bomb 74, 82 King's College (London) 65
 Index 131

Massachusetts Institute of Tech-

nology (MIT) 20,42
Landsteiner, Karl 50-51, 52, 60
Mayo Clinic 108-109
Langmuir, Irving 16, 19, 37, 118
McCarthy, Joe 74
Langmuir, A. C, Prize in Pure
McCarthyism 2, 75
Chemistry (American Chemical
McElroy, Neil 84
Society) 42
Medal for Merit. See Presidential
Laue, Max von 22
Medal for Merit
Lewis, Fulton, Jr. 82
megavitamin therapy 94, 103-
Lewis, Gilbert Newton 16, 19,
104
25,35,37,38, 118 Mendel, Gregor 64
Lewis, Gilbert Newton, Award
Menlo Park (Calif.) 100
(American Chemical Society) 69
Miller, Ava Helen. See Pauling,
Lewis, Richard W. 79
Ava Helen
Lewis theory of bonding 37 Miller, "Mrs." (Ava Helen's
Libby, Willard 79
mother) 32
Liberation 79 Millikan, Robert A. 20, 33
Life (magazine) 88 mineralogy 9, 98, 118
Linus Pauling Institute of Science Mirsky, Alfred 48, 49
and Medicine 100, 101, 101, Missouri 6, 78
107, 117
Model T Ford 24
lock-and-key theory (of enzyme molecular biology 34, 44, 95, 118
action) 51, 52
molecular disease 69
Lomonosov Gold Medal (Soviet molecular medicine 92
Academy of Sciences) 109 "A Molecular Theory of General
London, F. 30 Anesthesia" (Pauling paper) 95
London (England) 2,77,111 molecule 1, 30, 31, 39-40, 44, 45,
Los Angeles (Calif.) 55 46,48,49,50,62,118, 121g
loyalty oaths 75 molybdenite 23
Lucretius 36 Morgan, Thomas Hunt 44
Ludwigshafen 36 Mount Sinai Medical School 103
Mount Wilson Observatory 20
M Miiller, Herman J. 117
Munich 29, 30, 36
magnesium stannide 23
Murphy, W. P. 7
magnetism 95
Mainau Declaration 78
Manchester (England) 36 N
Manhattan Project 58, 74 Nagasaki 74, 79
Mark, Herman 36 National Academy of Sciences
Massachusetts Avenue (Boston) 42, 106
19 National Cancer Institute 108
Massachusetts General Hospital National Defense Research Com-
94 mittee 58
132 Index

National Medal of Science 109 nuclear weapons testing 59, 72-

National Research Council 25 74, 78-85
National Review 96-97 nucleic acids 3-4, 64-67
National Science Foundation 95,
109
The Nature of the Chemical
Bond, and the Structure of Mole-
Office of Scientific Research and
cules and Crystals (Pauling
Development 58
book) 6, 38, 40, 52
Office of Security and Consular
Affairs (U.S. Department of
Nehru, Jawaharlal 77
State) 76
Nevadans on Guard 96
Oppenheimer, Robert 58, 73, 97
New York City 48
orbital 38, 39,40, 122g
New York Daily News 96
Oregon (state) 14, 20, 21
New York Times 79
Oregon Agricultural College
Newburg, Carl, Medal 94
(OAC) 12-17,19,20,21,22,24,
Newsletter of the Faculties Associ-
37
ation, State University of New
Oregon City (Ore.) 17
York Colleges of Education 96
Oregon Institute of Science and
News-Press (Santa Barbara) 96
Medicine 108
niacin 92
Oregon Iron and Steel Company
Niemann, Carl 48
10
No More War (Pauling book) 83,
Oregon State University 13, 17,
84
42
Nobel Prize 114
11, 78, 80, 87,
The Oregonian 9
Nobel Prize Peace 5, 88, 89,
for
Orr, Lord Boyd 81
90, 97, 98, 119
orthomolecular medicine 93-94,
Nobel Prize for Biology 50
110, 118
Nobel Prize for Chemistry 5, 6, "Orthomolecular Psychiatry"
32, 72, 74, 77, 79
(Pauling paper) 93
Nobel Prize for Physics 23 Oslo 86
Nobel Prize for Physiology or Osmond, H. 92
Medicine 4, 7, 23 Oswego (Ore.) 6-7, 10
North Atlantic Treaty Organiza- Oxford University 61, 69
tion (NATO) 86
oxygen meter 58-59
Northeast Section of the Ameri- oxyhemoglobin 45
can Chemical Society. See
American Chemical Society,
Northeast Section 69
Norwegians 90 Pacific League 56
Nottingham (England) 51 Palm Springs (Calif.) 22
Noyes, Arthur Amos 20-23, 25, Palo Alto (Calif.) 101, 108
33, 51 Pasadena (Calif.) 17, 20, 21, 25,
nuclear fission 58, 95, 98 44, 55, 92
 Index 133

Paris 77 doctoral degree 24

Passmore, Reginald 104 early interest in science 9
Pauling, Ava Helen Miller 73, Guggenheim fellowship 25
110 hemoglobin research 45-50,
and Pauling children 42, 47 63
as student at Oregon Agricul- illness (glomerulonephritis) 55
tural College 16, 20 interest in atomic and molecu-
death 110-111 lar structure 30-31,36-40
early years 17 interest in biological topics
marriage to Linus Pauling 24 33,44-45
political activities 56-57, 57, "Japanese gardener" incident
74, 86-87, 87 58
travels with Linus Pauling 29, legal actions for libel 96-97
31-32 marriage 24
Pauling, Edward Crellin 24, 111 methods of research 60-61,
Pauling, Frances Lucille 6,11 119
Pauling, Herman Henry William National Research Council fel-
6-9 lowship 25
Pauling, Linda Helen (Kamb) 24, Nobel Prize for Peace 88, 89
42, 47, 53, 111 Nobel Prize in chemistry 72
Pauling, Linus Carl
peace, interest in 72-74, 78
adolescence 10-12 Peace Conference (Oslo) 86-87
at Cal Tech, as a faculty mem-
problems with U.S. Passport
ber 33-35, 34, 51, 53, 76, 97-
Office 1-4, 76-77
98 theory of complimentarity 50,
at Cal Tech, as a student 19-25
60, 68
at Center for the Study of Dem-
vitamin C research 103-109
ocratic Institutions 98-99 wartime activities 58
at Oregon Agricultural College weapons testing suit 84
12-17, 12, 15, 37
White House picketing 87, 88
at Stanford University 99-100 Pauling, Linus Carl, Jr. 24, 32,
at the University of California 42,47, 111
at San Diego 99-100 Pauling, Lucy Isabelle Darling
awards and honors 42, 52, 59, ("Belle") 6-8, 11-12, 30
69, 73, 94, 109, 115 Pauling, Pauline Darling 6, 11
character 116-117 Pauling, Peter Jeffress 24, 42, 47,
childhood 6-9. 8 58, 66, 111
Communist, accusations of Pauling Appeal 80-81
being 81-86 Pauling Archives (Oregon State
contributions to science 117- University) 17
119 Pauling's Principles 35
debate with Edward Teller 82- peace, Pauling on 72-74, 78, 95
83, 82 Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) 53
134 Index

peptide 1,49,62, 122g

pernicious anemia 7, 30 Rabinowitch, Eugene 74, 81
Perutz, Max 62, 67 radar 58
photoelectric effect 27, 122g radioactive fallout 78-79
Planck, Max 27 Reagan, Ronald 99
pleated sheet 64 Research Board for National Secu-
Portland (Ore.) 6 rity 74
Portuguese 70, 104 resonance 38, 40, 41, 60, 95, 122g
Presidential Medal for Merit 3, 59 Rhodes scholarship 17
Pressman, David 60 Richards, Theodore William,
Priestley Medal (American Chem- Medal (American Chemical So-
ical Society) 109 ciety) 69
problem solving (Pauling's meth- "Ritzel" (researcher) 104
ods) 24,60-61, 95, 119 Robinson, Arthur 99-101, 107-
"The Principles Determining the 108, 117
Structure of Complex Ionic Crys- Rochester, (Minn.) 108
tals" (Pauling paper) 35 Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Proceedings of the National Acad- Research (New York City) 48,
emy of Sciences 64, 66, 106 49, 50
Proceedings of the Royal Society Rowland, Floyd 17
30 Royal Society (London) 2
protein 1-2,46,49,62,64,77, Russell, Bertrand 81
122g Russia 73
protein structure 1-2,45-50,60-
64
Pugwash, Nova Scotia 78 Salem (Ore.) 7, 24
Pugwash Movement for Science Salem High School 17
and World Affairs 78 San Diego 99
San Francisco 82
San Gabriel College 111
Santa Barbara (Calif.) 98
quantitative analysis 14 Scabbard and Blade 16
quantum 27, 122g Schrodinger, Erwin 25, 28, 30, 31
quantum mechanics 24, 28-30, Schweitzer, Albert 81
31,49, 117-118 Science 69, 93, 95
"Quantum Mechanics and the "Science in the Modern World"
Chemical Bond" (Pauling paper) (Pauling speech) 80
34 Scotland 105, 106, 107, 117
"Quantum Mechanics of Non-pen- Second International Congress of
etrating Orbits" (Pauling paper) Biochemistry 77
34 Selma (Ala.) Ill
quantum number 28, 29, 31, 122g Senate Investigating Committee
quantum theory 27-29, 38, 122g on Education (Calif.) 75
 Index 135

Serafini, Anthony 9, 11, 13, 17, "The Theoretical Prediction of

19, 31,42, 56, 58, 76,95, 117 the Physical Properties of Many-
Servos, John W. 20, 31 Electron Atoms and Ions" (Pau-
Shipley, Ruth 3, 76 ling paper) 30
sickle-cellanemia 67-68, 68 Throop College of Technology 20
"Sickle-cell Anemia, A Molecular Throop Polytechnic Institute. See
Disease," (Pauling paper) 69 Throop College of Technology
Silliman Lecture (Yale Univer- Throop University. See Throop
sity) 69 College of Technology
Silverman, Samuel 97 Tillamook (Ore.) 14
Singer, S. J. 69 Tiselius,Arne Wilhelm 69
Slater,John 42 Tolman, Richard 22, 28
Sommerfeld, Arnold 24, 25, 28, toximolecular medicine 93
29, 36 Truman, Harry S 2, 59, 60, 77
Soviet Academy of Sciences 109
Soviet Union 78, 80, 84, 86, 90, U
119
Un-American Activities Commit-
Spanish 38, 70
tee (U.S. House of Representa-
The Specificity of Serological Re- tives) 56
actions (Landsteiner book) 50
United Nations 82, 83, 84, 86
St. Louis (Mo.) 80
United States 2, 3, 4, 52, 73, 74,
St. Louis Globe-Democrat 96
78, 80, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 119
Stalin, Joseph 60
University College (London) 111
Stanford University 99-100 University of California 99
Stare, Frederick J. 104 University of California at Berke-
Stephenson, Mervyn 7 ley 19, 25,35
Stever, H. Guyford 109 University of California at River-
Stockholm 78, 90 side 111
Stone, Irwin 94, 103 University of California at San
strontium-90 79 Diego 99-100
The Structure of Line Spectra University of Chicago 20,98
(Pauling/Goudsmit book) 35 University of Leeds 49
Student Army Training Corps 14 University of London 111
Sturdevant, Alfred 44 University of Manchester 35
substrate 51, 52, 122g University of Paris 69
Sunnyside Grammar School 10 University of Texas 10
Sweden 77, 90 University of Zurich 31
Szilard, Leo 59, 73 Urey, Harold 74, 77
U.S. Congress 56
U.S. Passport Office 2„ 76
USSR. See Soviet Union
Tel Aviv 77 U.S. State Department 3, 78
Teller, Edward 77, 82-83, 82 U.S. Supreme Court 84
136 Index

White, Florence Meiman 7, 11

White House 87, 109
Vale of Leven Hospital 106
Vietnam war 109
'Why Every Test Kills" (Pauling
article) 79
vitamin B3. See niacin
Wigner, Eugene 74
vitamin C 92, 94
Wilkins, Maurice 4, 65, 67
and cancer 103, 105-109
Willamette Valley (Ore.) 6
and the common cold 103-105
Women's International League for
Vitamin C and the Common Cold
Peace 56
(Pauling book) 103, 104
World Peace Organization 83
World War I 14
W World War II 55, 58, 70, 97
Warsaw Pact 86 Wrinch, Dorothy 117
Washington (D.C.) 3, 92
Washington (state) 7
Washington High School 10-11
X-ray crystallography 1-2, 4, 22-
Washington University (St.
25, 31, 35, 36, 48-49,62,65,
Louis) 80
122g
Watergate 109
X-ray diffraction patterns. See X-
Watson, James 3-4, 24, 65-67,
ray crystallography
114, 119
xenon 94-95
wavelength 22, 122g
Weizmann, Chaim 77
Western Washington University
96 Yokum, "Mr." 10
 MAKERS sf

MODERN
SCIENCE
Linus Pauling
Scientist and Advocate
Makers of Modern Science, a new biography series for young adults, explores the lives and
achievements of scientists who made significant contributions to human knowledge during
the 19th and 20th centuries. In clear, simple prose free of technical jargon, each scientist's
achievements are discussed, including the scientific principles underlying his or her work.
—
Drawing on primary sources diaries, memoirs, letters, contemporary news stories as well —
as secondary sources, each volume depicts the human drama of scientific work, the excitement
and frustration of research, and the exhilaration and rewards of discovery. A final chapter in
each book summarizes the legacy of the scientist's achievements. Each volume contains an
annotated bibliography and a complete index. The text is illuminated by striking
black-and-white photos as well as diagrams when necessary, making the books useful and
appealing to students and general readers alike.

Linus Pauling: Scientist and Advocate presents the life and work of the first person to win
two unshared Nobel prizes. Pauling is both a brilliant scientist and a passionate champion of
world peace. He combined chemistry and physics in solving various puzzles relating to the
nature of chemical bonds and developed unique model-building techniques that he put to
use in his studies of proteins, amino acids, and DNA. In 1954 he was awarded the Nobel
Prize in chemistry for his work on protein structure. As a result of his scientific research,
Pauling became concerned about the potential role of radioactive fallout in hereditary diseases.
He became a fierce opponent of nuclear testing, gathering the signatures and support of
1 1,000 scientists for his petition in front of the United Nations. Pauling won the 1962 Nobel

Peace Prize for his efforts.

Other volumes in the series include:

NIELS BOHR THE LEAKEY FAMILY

WERNHER VON BRAUN ROBERT OPPENHEIMER
CHARLES DARWIN JONAS SALK
ENRICO FERMI JAMES WATSON AND
ALEXANDER FLEMING FRANCIS CRICK
ROBERT HUTCHINGS GODDARD
David E. Newton is the author of numerous books and articles on science, including An

Introduction Molecular Biology and Science Ethics. He is also the author of James Watson
to
and Francis Crick, in the Makers of Modern Science series. Newton has been a math and
science teacher, a member of the National Science Teachers Association and the National
Association of Science Writers, and the chairperson of the Joint AETS/Peace Corps
Conference on International Science Education. He has a B.S. in chemistry and an M.A. in
education from the University of Michigan, as well as a doctor's degree in science education
from Harvard University.

Jacket design by Catherine Hyman Printed in the United States of America

Cover photo courtesy of the California Institute of Technology ISBN 0-8160-2959-8
9 0000>

9 780816"029594