Visions of Linus Pauling

The following sections are included:

• About the Editor
• Preface
• Biographical Sketch of Linus Pauling
• Contents

Linus Pauling’s The Nature of the Chemical Bond, first published in 1939, was the product of over two decades of diligence, sacrifice, and collaboration that involved a broad range of actors including Pauling’s family, research assistants, professional colleagues and a variety of institutions. Pauling’s prefatory remarks to the book — “For a long time I have been planning to write a book on the structure of molecules and crystals and the nature of the chemical bond” — give an indication of the extent to which it had been a long-term objective for Pauling, despite his being only 38 years old…

On March 7, 1941, Linus Pauling stood before a gathering of colleagues, prepared to deliver an acceptance address for the prestigious William H. Nichols Gold Medal, presented by the New York Chapter of the American Chemical Society. Before beginning his remarks, Pauling spoke candidly to his audience. He thanked the award committee for his selection and expressed gratitude that the ceremony had provided him with an opportunity to reconnect with old friends…

William Hazen Freeman Jr. was born in New York state in March 1905. Though information about his early life is scant, we do know that his father, William Hazen Freeman, was a doctor who specialized in gastrointestinal issues. We also know that the younger Freeman attended Hamilton College in New York and graduated in 1926, a member of the same class as famed behaviorist B.F. Skinner. Macmillan Publishing Company had already hired Freeman by the time of his graduation and, over the next few years, he rose to an editorial position within the company’s textbook department. In the midst of this, Freeman relocated to San Francisco, where he began work at a newly opened satellite branch…

[As an undergraduate] at Pomona…I was serving dinners to some of my classmates, these big trays loaded with plates. They were prepared in the kitchen and carried out and distributed around. So I was pretty good at that. Anyway, in the dining hall — which was the famous Frary Dining Hall at Pomona which has a huge Orozco painting of Prometheus which is famous in art circles — the dining room brought in a beautiful Christmas tree about 20 feet high with delicate pine cones on the branches. A few days before Christmas, the college emptied out of course, as everybody went home. Since I was a member of the dining room staff, I said, “What’s going to happen to the tree?” “We’re gonna throw it out into the dumpster.” So I said, “Can I have it?” “Sure”…

Linus Pauling’s theory of resonance helped to unify the classical roots of organic chemistry with the new field of quantum physics. In so doing, the theory provided a hugely important framework for understanding observed atomic behaviors that did not correlate with the era’s prevailing mathematical models of the atom. The theory would also help to usher in an onslaught of new approaches to organic chemistry, lifting, in Pauling’s words, “the veil of mystery which had shrouded the [chemical] bond during the decades since its existence was first assumed.” It was, in short, one of the most adaptive and applicable postulates ever put forth by Pauling…

Linus Pauling was elected future president of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in December 1947. In that capacity, he served as the society’s president-elect for 1948 — during which time he was living in the U.K. as a visiting professor at Oxford — and officially took up his post as president in 1949. He formally assumed office on January 1, 1949, with Ernest H. Volwiler taking his place as president-elect…

Until the 18th century, anesthetics were typically concocted from the local flora by herbalists and chemists. Opium, for example, is thought to be one of the oldest prepared anesthetics, distilled from poppy flowers farmed by Sumerians as early as 4000 BC. In the late 1760s, the great British scholar Joseph Priestley discovered the anesthetic power of nitrous oxide in its gaseous state, thus deprecating most conventional herbal anesthetics. Following Priestley’s discovery, the international scientific community launched a number of small-scale investigations into potential anesthetics, eventually resulting in the medical use of ether, chloroform, and other gases. And in 1803, Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner distilled morphine from pure opium, creating yet another wave of interest among researchers…

As a child, Linus Pauling had relatively few friends. After moving from Condon, Oregon to Portland, the death of his father and subsequent poverty forced him to work when not in school. The remainder of his time was consumed with studying and household chores, leaving little room for companionship. The young Pauling was also unusually introspective and self-reliant, capable of quietly entertaining himself without supervision. Nevertheless, even the busiest and most independent children need friends…

In 1955 Linus and Ava Helen Pauling headed to Berkeley, California from their home in Pasadena to attend a meeting of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Helen Hay Whitney Foundation. On the drive back from this event, the couple decided to take the scenic route along Highway 1 down the California coast. Passing through the Big Sur area, Pauling noticed a point of land projecting into the ocean with a cabin and barn and a herd of grazing cattle. He suggested to his wife that such a location would be ideal as a country home for rest and relaxation. Ava Helen smiled and directed his attention to a ‘For Sale’ sign on the side of the road…

On the morning of January 30, 1960, a Saturday, Linus Pauling told Ava Helen that he would be out checking the fence lines along the boundaries of their ranch near Big Sur, California. A little before 10:00 A.M., Ava Helen watched as her husband walked towards the coast south of their cabin, but did not notice — as Pauling mistakenly believed she had — as he veered away from the fence line and toward Salmon Cone, a small mountain in the Santa Lucia chain near the Pauling home. Linus was dressed comfortably, wearing slacks, a light jacket, and his signature beret. He and Ava Helen had planned to meet for lunch and thought that a friend would perhaps stop by around noon; all expected Pauling to be back by that time…

As was the standard for him after World War II, Linus Pauling’s time in the 1950s was divided, frenetically, among research, public speaking and social demonstration. As the decade progressed, he remained actively engaged in academia, but was directing more and more attention to nuclear non-proliferation issues. One of Pauling’s main concerns as an activist was the tepid response from public officials and the Atomic Energy Commission to what he viewed to be a major problem: radioactive fallout from atomic bomb tests. After conferring with two scientific colleagues, Barry Commoner and Edward Condon, it was concluded that, because of their insight and technical knowledge of the dangers involved, the nation’s scientists bore a special responsibility to speak out about nuclear testing…

Though both Linus and Ava Helen Pauling were avowed atheists, they did maintain a long and friendly relationship with the Unitarian Church. Key to this relationship was their connection with Stephen Fritchman (1902–1981), a Reverend of the Unitarian Church of Los Angeles and an influential member of several major peace groups. The Paulings first encountered Fritchman in 1945, through their mutual association with the Hollywood Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions. They became more closely associated in 1949, through their participation in a memorial service for Pauling’s trusted physician, Thomas Addis. Fritchman led the respectful and dignified ceremony, one that left the Paulings feeling comforted, hopeful and, as it would happen, interested in the Unitarian Church…

Although Linus Pauling received honorary doctorates from some of the most prestigious universities in the world, it was not until 1962 that he received his 20th degree, a high school diploma, from Washington High School in Portland, Oregon. The 45-year gap between senior year and diploma was due to a regulation that forbade the young Pauling from taking two courses in American history during the same term, ultimately preventing him from graduating in June 1917. At that time however, Oregon Agricultural College accepted students who had not graduated from high school, so off Pauling went to Corvallis and, eventually, a long and storied life in academia…

Like many other Nobel Prize winners, Linus Pauling discovered that he had been awarded the Peace Prize in a dramatic way. The news was announced on October 10, 1963, while Pauling was at his Big Sur ranch — an intentionally secluded space lacking a telephone, to say nothing of a television. He, Ava Helen and some friends had already planned on celebrating that morning, as October 10th would also mark the formal beginning of the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which put an end to above-ground nuclear tests among the world’s major nuclear powers. As he wrote in his research notebook: “Ava Helen and I had come to the ranch with Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Durr. We had bought a bottle of champagne, which we planned to drink to celebrate the treaty. At 8:15 A.M., as we were sitting down to breakfast, the forest ranger, Ralph Haskin, came to the cabin. He said that Linda had telephoned and had asked that Ava Helen and I both come to the ranger station and telephone her. I asked if he knew what was the matter, and he said that he thought that it wasn’t serious. (Linda had told him and asked him not to tell us.) We finished breakfast, drove to the station, and telephoned Linda. She said that I had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962. (She first asked me if I had heard the news. I said no.) I spent most of the day at the station, answering the telephone and giving interviews. We forgot to open the champagne. On 11 October, we drove to Carmel. Ralph Atkinson had champagne at hand. It’s our first celebration.” …

Linus Pauling’s boyhood home of Condon, Oregon is a very small farming town located in dryland wheat country in the north-central portion of the state. According to the 2020 census, the town’s population consisted of only 711 people, about the same number as when the Pauling family lived there in the early 1900s. Despite its size, Condon can boast of an interesting statistic: two of its early 1900s residents would later go on to win Nobel Prizes. Pauling, of course, is one; the other is a physician named William P. Murphy…

Despite Pauling’s dismissal by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee as described in Chapter 11, numerous articles were published in newspapers and magazines around the country that decried Pauling as a Communist supporter and criticized his refusal to release the names of the people who had help to collect signatures for the bomb test petition. One of those articles, titled “Treason à la Mode,” was published by National Review magazine on December 31, 1960. In it, author James Burnham wrote, “Linus Pauling is still at large and unindicted for his contemptuous refusal to give the Internal Security Subcommittee the facts about how thousands of names of scientists — including several thousand from Communist nations — were collected for his petition against H-bombs. While Pauling propagandizes for policies which corrode American morale and promote the interests of the Communist enterprise, he continues to enjoy wide popular esteem, security in his professorial post at Caltech and large audiences on the university circuit… The point is not whether these men are conscious traitors, which in all, or almost all, cases they are not. But the Communists are traitors. These men, by their acts, have condoned the Communist enterprise and advanced its interests. Our society, by condoning the actions of these men, condones also the enterprise”. …

Peter Jeffress Pauling was born on February 10, 1931. His middle name was given in honor of Lloyd Jeffress, his father’s childhood friend, fellow undergraduate at Oregon Agricultural College, and best man on his wedding day (see Chapter 8). Peter was the second of four Pauling children. His older brother, Linus Pauling Jr., was born in 1925; Peter was joined swiftly by his younger sister Linda Helen in 1932 and, finally, by the baby of the bunch, Edward Crellin Pauling, in 1937…

The following sections are included:

• Oxygen Meter
• Rocket Propellants
• Oxypolygelatin
• Cavity-Charge Projectile
• Road Signs
• Superconductors
• Cold Fusion
• Lipoprotein(a)
• Two More from Pauling and Rath

Jack Kevorkian, the medical pathologist famed for his active support and engagement with physician-assisted suicide, achieved international notoriety — and eventually imprisonment — for assisting with the premature deaths of terminally ill individuals. But well before he became widely known for this work, Kevorkian lobbied in favor of a different death-related practice, one that came across Linus Pauling’s desk in the early 1970s…

In 1969 Linus Pauling was given his own laboratory at Stanford University for his work on schizophrenia, where Art Robinson, a colleague and fellow researcher, joined him. By 1972 Pauling and Robinson had decided that their Stanford facility was no longer sufficient for their growing research program, and in May of that year Pauling requested that the university construct a new building to house an expanded lab for him to use…

“…the Sacklers were doing this thing at the Metropolitan Club and I was figuring out who to bring, and I should have brought Dr. Li, I guess, because I wound up sitting with Dr. Linus Pauling, but I brought Paige and she had a really good time. […] So I cabbed to the Metropolitan Club ($5). And there’s Paige sitting downstairs in the hallway. Those horrible doormen there wouldn’t let her in because she didn’t have a fur coat! […]

“And Dr. Pauling took my arm, he was getting an award. Upstairs I was next to Jill Sackler, across from Martha Graham, and Jill said, ‘Martha’s been dying to meet Linus Pauling for years and now she’s next to him and doesn’t know it…

In 2011 Dan Shechtman, a distinguished professor at the Israel Institute of Technology (Technion), was awarded the Nobel Chemistry Prize for his discovery of something called quasicrystals, a collection of atomic structures whose order defies traditional crystallographic understanding. Though eventually recognized with the highest decoration that a chemist can receive, Shechtman’s discovery shocked the condensed matter science community when he and his team published their breakthrough in 1984. The strange qualities that quasicrystals exhibited — including “five-fold symmetry,” which had previously been dismissed as impossible — led to extensive research, debate, and even disbelief…

In 1917, at 16 years of age, Linus Pauling wrote in his personal diary that he was beginning a personal history. “My children and grandchildren will without doubt hear of the events in my life with the same relish with which I read the scattered fragments written by my granddad,” he considered…

The following sections are included:

• Sourcing
• Index