Linus Pauling

Biography

Early life

Pauling was born in Oswego, Oregon^[4] (now known as Lake Oswego) to Herman Henry William Pauling (1876–1910) of Concordia, Missouri and Lucy Isabelle Darling (1881–1926) of Lonerock, Oregon. Herman was an unsuccessful druggist who moved his family to and from a number of different cities in Oregon from 1903 to 1909, finally returning to Oswego that year. Herman died of a perforated ulcer in 1910, and Isabelle was left to care for Linus and two younger siblings, Pauline Pauling (1901-2003) and Lucille Pauling (1904–1973).

Linus was a voracious reader as a child, and at one point his father wrote a letter to a local paper inviting suggestions of additional books to occupy his time. A friend, Lloyd Jeffress, had a small chemistry laboratory in his bedroom when Pauling was in grammar school, and Jeffress' laboratory experiments inspired Pauling to plan to become a chemical engineer.

In high school, Pauling continued to experiment in chemistry, borrowing much of the equipment and materials from an abandoned steel plant near which his grandfather worked as a night watchman. Pauling was not allowed to take a required American history course that would have allowed him to graduate a year early, so he did not qualify for his high school diploma when he left to attend college. His high school, Washington High School in Portland, awarded him the diploma 45 years later, after he had won two Nobel Prizes.^[5]

Higher education

 

In 1917, Pauling entered Oregon State University (then known as Oregon Agricultural College) in Corvallis. Pauling was active in campus life, and founded the school's chapter of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. Because of financial needs, he had to work full-time while attending a full schedule of classes. After his second year, he planned to take a job in Portland to help support his mother, but the college offered him a position teaching quantitative analysis (a course Pauling had just finished taking as a student). This allowed him to continue his studies at the college.

In his last two years at school, Pauling became aware of the work of quantum chemistry.

In 1922, Pauling graduated from Oregon State University with a degree in physical chemistry and mathematical physics, summa cum laude, in 1925.

Family life

During his senior year, Pauling taught a class called Chemistry for Home Economic Majors.^[6] In one of those classes, he met Ava Helen Miller from Beavercreek, Oregon, whom he married on June 17, 1923. They had four children: Linus Carl Jr. (b. 1925); Peter Jeffress (1931-2003, a crystallographer and lecturer in chemistry); Edward Crellin (1937-1997, professor of biology at San Francisco State University and the University of California, Riverside), and Linda Helen, (b. 1932).

Linus Pauling was raised as member of the Lutheran Church and later joined the Unitarian Universalist Church and declared publicly his atheist belief.^[7]

Career

Pauling had first been exposed to the concepts of quantum theory and quantum mechanics while he was studying at Oregon State University. He later traveled to Europe on a Guggenheim Fellowship to study under German physicist Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, Danish physicist Niels Bohr in Copenhagen, and Austrian physicist quantum chemistry and a pioneer in the application of quantum theory to the structure of molecules. He also joined Alpha Chi Sigma, the professional chemistry fraternity.

In 1927, Pauling took a new position as an assistant professor at Caltech in carbon atom.

At Caltech, Pauling struck up a close friendship with theoretical physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who was spending part of his research and teaching schedule away from U.C. Berkeley at Caltech every year. The two men planned to mount a joint attack on the nature of the chemical bond: apparently Oppenheimer would supply the mathematics and Pauling would interpret the results. However, their relationship soured when Pauling began to suspect that Oppenheimer was becoming too close to Pauling's wife, Ava Helen. Once, when Pauling was at work, Oppenheimer had come to their place and blurted out an invitation to Ava Helen to join him on a tryst in Mexico. Although she flatly refused, she reported the incident to Pauling. That, and her apparent nonchalance about the incident, disquieted him, and he immediately cut off his relationship with Oppenheimer, resulting in a coolness between them that would last their lives. Although Oppenheimer later invited Pauling to be the head of the Chemistry Division of the atomic bomb project, Pauling refused, saying that he was a pacifist.

In the summer of 1930, Pauling made another European trip, during which he learned about the use of molecular structure of a large number of chemical substances.

Pauling introduced the concept of dipole moments of molecules, he established a scale and an associated numerical value for most of the elements — the Pauling Electronegativity Scale — which is useful in predicting the nature of bonds between atoms in molecules.

Nature of the chemical bond

In the 1930s he began publishing papers on the nature of the chemical bond, leading to his famous textbook on the subject published in 1939. It is based primarily on his work in this area that he received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances". Pauling summarized his work on the chemical bond in The Nature of the Chemical Bond, one of the most influential chemistry books ever published. In the 30 years after its first edition was published in 1939, the book was cited more than 16,000 times. Even today, many modern scientific papers and articles in important journals cite this work, more than half a century after first publication.

Part of Pauling's work on the nature of the chemical bond led to his introduction of the concept of unsaturated carbon compounds such as ethylene. Other hybridization schemes are also found in other types of molecules.

Another area which he explored was the relationship between electronegativity concept was particularly useful; the electronegativity difference between a pair of atoms will be the surest predictor of the degree of ionicity of the bond.

The third of the topics that Pauling attacked under the overall heading of "the nature of the chemical bond" was the accounting of the structure of resonance" was later applied to this phenomenon. In a sense, this phenomenon resembles that of hybridization, described earlier, because it involves combining more than one electronic structure to achieve an intermediate result.

Structure of the atomic nucleus

On September 16, 1952, Linus Pauling opened a new research notebook with these words "I have decided to attack the problem of the structure of nuclei."^[8] On October 15, 1965, Pauling published his Close-Packed Spheron Model of the atomic nucleus in two well respected journals, Science, and Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.^[9] For nearly three decades, until his death in 1994, Pauling published numerous papers on his spheron cluster model. ^{[10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]}

Few modern text books on nuclear physics discuss the Pauling Spheron Model of the Atomic Nucleus, yet it provides a unique perspective, well published in the leading journals of science, on how fundamental "clusters of nucleons" can form shell structure in agreement with recognized theory of quantum mechanics. Pauling was well versed in quantum mechanics; he co-authored one of the first textbooks on the subject, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry. In a 2006 review of models of atomic nuclei, Norman D. Cook said of the Pauling Spheron Model: "…the model leads to a rather common-sense molecular build-up of nuclei and has an internal logic that is hard to deny…however…nuclear theorists have not elaborated on the idea of nucleon spherons, and Pauling's model has not entered mainstream nuclear theory."^[16] The 1965 Pauling Spheron Model of the atomic nucleus has not been replaced by a better model, but has simply been ignored.^{[citation needed]}

The Pauling spheron nucleon clusters include the alpha particles, as has often been done for light nuclei. He made an effort to derive the shell structure of nuclei from the Platonic solids rather than starting from an independent particle model as in the usual shell model. It was sometimes said at that time that this work received more attention than it would have if it had been done by a less famous person, but more likely Pauling was taking a unique approach to understanding the relatively new discovery in the late 1940s of Maria Goeppert-Mayer of structure within the nucleus. In an interview Pauling commented on his model:^{[citation needed]}

“

Now recently, I have been trying to determine detailed structures of atomic nuclei by analyzing the ground state and excited state vibrational bends, as observed experimentally. From reading the physics literature, Physical Review Letters and other journals, I know that many physicists are interested in atomic nuclei, but none of them, so far as I have been able to discover, has been attacking the problem in the same way that I attack it. So I just move along at my own speed, making calculations…

”

Biological molecules

Discovery
William Astbury
Oswald Avery
Francis Crick
Erwin Chargaff
Max Delbrück
Jerry Donohue
Rosalind Franklin
Raymond Gosling
Phoebus Levene
Linus Pauling
Sir John Randall
Erwin Schrödinger
Alec Stokes
James Watson
Maurice Wilkins
Herbert Wilson

In the mid-1930s, Pauling decided to strike out into new areas of interest. Early in his career, he was uninterested in studying molecules of biological importance. But as Caltech was developing a new strength in biology, and Pauling interacted with such great biologists as Thomas Hunt Morgan, Theodosius Dobzhanski, Calvin Bridges, and Alfred Sturtevant, he changed his mind and switched to the study of biomolecules. His first work in this area involved the structure of crystallographer William Astbury, but when Pauling tried, in 1937, to account for Astbury's observations quantum mechanically, he could not.

It took eleven years for Pauling to explain the problem: his mathematical analysis was correct, but Astbury's pictures were taken in such a way that the protein molecules were tilted from their expected positions. Pauling had formulated a model for the structure of hemoglobin in which atoms were arranged in a helical pattern, and applied this idea to proteins in general.

In 1951, based on the structures of secondary structure. This work exemplified his ability to think unconventionally; central to the structure was the unorthodox assumption that one turn of the helix may well contain a non-integral number of amino acid residues.

Pauling then suggested a helical structure for Rosalind Franklin, which Watson and Crick had seen. He planned to attend a conference in England, where he might have been shown the photos, but he could not do so because his passport was withheld in 1952 by the State Department, on suspicions that he had Communist sympathies. This was at the start of the McCarthy period in the United States^[18].

Pauling also studied transition state of the reaction, a view which is central to understanding their mechanism of action. He was also among the first scientists to postulate that the binding of antibodies to antigens would be due to a complementarity between their structures. Along the same lines, with the physicist turned biologist Max Delbruck, he wrote an early paper arguing that DNA replication was likely to be due to complementarity, rather than similarity, as suggested by a few researchers. This was made clear in the model of the structure of DNA that Watson and Crick discovered.

Molecular genetics

In November 1949, Linus Pauling, Harvey Itano, S. J. Singer and Ibert Wells published in the journal Science the first proof of a human disease caused by an abnormal hemoglobin in their red blood cells, and that individuals with sickle cell trait had both the normal and abnormal forms of hemoglobin. This was also the first demonstration that Mendelian inheritance determined the specific physical properties of proteins, not simply their presence or absence — the dawn of molecular genetics.

Activism

Pauling had been practically apolitical until World War II, but the aftermath of the war and his wife's pacifism changed his life profoundly, and he became a peace activist. During the beginning of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer invited him to be in charge of the Chemistry division of the project, but he declined, not wanting to uproot his family. He did work on other projects that had military applications such as explosives, rocket propellants, an oxygen meter for submarines and patented an armor piercing shell and was awarded a Presidential Medal of Merit.^[2][3] In 1946, he joined the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, chaired by Albert Einstein.^[20] Its mission was to warn the public of the dangers associated with the development of nuclear weapons. His political activism prompted the U.S. State Department to deny him a passport in 1952, when he was invited to speak at a scientific conference in London.^[21] His passport was restored in 1954, shortly before the ceremony in Stockholm where he received his first Nobel Prize. Joining Einstein, Bertrand Russell and eight other leading scientists and intellectuals, he signed the Russell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955.^[22]

In 1958, Pauling began a petition drive in cooperation with biologist Barry Commoner, who had studied radioactive radioactive fallout. ^{[23] [24]} He also participated in a public debate with the atomic physicist Edward Teller about the actual probability of fallout causing mutations.^[25] In 1958, Pauling and his wife presented the United Nations with a petition signed by more than 11,000 scientists calling for an end to nuclear-weapon testing. Public pressure subsequently led to a moratorium on above-ground nuclear weapons testing, followed by the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev. On the day that the treaty went into force^[26], the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Pauling the Nobel Peace Prize, describing him as "Linus Carl Pauling, who ever since 1946 has campaigned ceaselessly, not only against nuclear weapons tests, not only against the spread of these armaments, not only against their very use, but against all warfare as a means of solving international conflicts." Interestingly, the Caltech Chemistry Department, wary of his political views, did not even formally congratulate him. However, the Biology Department did throw him a small party, showing they were more appreciative and sympathetic toward his work on radiation mutation. At Caltech he founded Sigma Xi's (The Scientific Research Society) chapter at the school, as he had previously been a member of that organisation. He continued his peace activism in the following years co-founding the International League of Humanists in 1974. He was also one of the signers of the Dubrovnik-Philadelphia Statement.

Many of Pauling's critics, including scientists who appreciated the contributions that he had made in chemistry, disagreed with his political positions and saw him as a naïve spokesman for Soviet communism. He was ordered to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which termed him "the number one scientific name in virtually every major activity of the Communist peace offensive in this country." An extraordinary headline in Life magazine characterized his 1962 Nobel Prize as "A Weird Insult from Norway". Pauling was awarded the International Lenin Peace Prize by the USSR in 1970.

Development of the electric car

  In the late 1950s, Pauling became concerned with the problem of lead-acid batteries would not provide the power necessary to give electric cars the performance necessary to rival traditional gasoline powered cars. Pauling accurately predicted that the low top speed and the short range of the Henney Kilowatt would make them impractical and unpopular. Pauling insisted on making the car more practical before releasing it to the public, and recommended that the project be discontinued until the appropriate battery was available commercially.^{[citation needed]} Unfortunately, the Eureka Williams Company insisted that production plans for the car proceed; as Pauling predicted, the model experienced dismal sales.

Molecular medicine and medical research

  In 1941, at age 40, Pauling was diagnosed with a serious form of Bright’s disease, a fatal renal disease. Experts believed then that Bright's disease was untreatable. With the help of Dr. Thomas Addis at Stanford, Pauling was able to control the disease with Addis' then unusual, low protein, salt-free diet. Addis also prescribed vitamins and minerals for all his patients.

In 1951, Pauling gave a lecture entitled, "Molecular Medicine".^[27] In the late 1950s, Pauling worked on the role of enzymes in brain function, believing that mental illness may be partly caused by enzyme dysfunction. It wasn't until he read "megavitamin therapy movement of the 1970s. Pauling coined the term "orthomolecular" to refer to the practice of varying the concentration of substances normally present in the body to prevent and treat disease. His ideas formed the basis of orthomolecular medicine, which is not generally practiced by conventional medical professionals and is strongly criticized by some.^[28][29]

Pauling's work on vitamin C in his later years generated controversy and was originally regarded by some adversaries in the field of medicine as outright quackery.^[30] He was first introduced to the concept of high-dose vitamin C by biochemist Irwin Stone in 1966. After becoming convinced of its worth, Linus Pauling took 10 grams of vitamin C every day to prevent colds.^[31] Excited by the results, he researched the clinical literature and published "Vitamin C and the Common Cold" in 1970. He began a long clinical collaboration with the British cancer surgeon, Ewan Cameron,^[32] in 1971 on the use of intravenous and oral vitamin C as cancer therapy for terminal patients. Cameron and Pauling wrote many technical papers and a popular book, "Cancer and Vitamin C", that discussed their observations. Three prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled trials were conducted by Moertel et al. at the Mayo Clinic; all three failed to prove a benefit for megadoses of vitamin C in cancer patients.^[33] Pauling denounced Charles Moertel's conclusions and handling of the final study as "fraud and deliberate misrepresentation."^[34][35] Pauling then published critiques of the second Mayo-Moertel cancer trial's flaws over several years as he was able to slowly unearth some of the trial's undisclosed details.^[36] However, the wave of adverse publicity generated by Moertel and the media effectively undercut Pauling's credibility and his vitamin C work for a generation,^[37] the oncological mainstream continued with other avenues of treatment.^[38] Always precariously perched since his molecular biologically inspired crusade to stop atmospheric nuclear testing in the 1950s,^[39] the 1985 Mayo-Moertel confrontation left Pauling isolated from his institutional funding sources, academic support and a bemused public. He later collaborated with the Canadian physician, Abram Hoffer,^[40] on a micronutrient regimen, including high-dose vitamin C, as adjunctive cancer therapy.   As of 2006, new evidence of high-dose Vitamin C efficacy was proposed by a Canadian group of researchers. These researchers observed longer-than expected survival times in three patients treated with high doses of intravenous Vitamin C.^[41] The researchers are reportedly planning a new Phase I clinical trial ^[42] The selective toxicity of vitamin C for cancer cells has been demonstrated in-vitro (i.e., in a cell culture vitamin C killing of cancer cells in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2006^[44].

With two colleagues, Pauling founded the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine in Menlo Park, California, in 1973, which was soon renamed the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling directed research on vitamin C, but also continued his theoretical work in chemistry and physics until his death. In his last years, he became especially interested in the possible role of vitamin C in preventing atherosclerosis and published three case reports on the use of phytochemicals (chemicals from plants), and other constituents of the diet in preventing and treating disease. Several of the employees that had previously worked at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto moved on to form the Genetic Information Research Institute.

Pauling's legacy

Pauling died of prostate cancer on August 19, 1994, at 7:20 PM at home in Big Sur, California. He was 93 years old.^[45][46] A gravemarker for him is in Oswego Pioneer Cemetery in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where he was born.^[46][47]

Pauling's contribution to science is held by many in the utmost regard. He was included in a list of the 20 greatest scientists of all time by the British magazine New Scientist, with Albert Einstein being the only other scientist from the twentieth century on the list. Gautam R. Desiraju, the author of the Millennium Essay in Nature,^[48] claimed that Pauling was one of the greatest thinkers and visionaries of the millennium, along with Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Pauling is also notable for the diversity of his interests: quantum mechanics, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, protein structure, molecular biology, and medicine. In all these fields, and especially on the boundaries between them, he made decisive contributions. His work on chemical bonding marks the beginning of modern protein structure.

In his time, Pauling was frequently honored with the sobriquet "Father of molecular biology", a contribution acknowledged by Francis Crick. His discovery of sickle cell anemia as a 'molecular disease' opened the way toward examining genetically acquired mutations at a molecular level.

Though the scientific community at large did not agree with Pauling's conclusions in his vitamin-related medical research and writing, his entry into the fray gave a larger voice in the public mind to nutrients such as vitamins and minerals for disease prevention. Specifically, his protege Dr Mathias Rath, MD, continued his early works into Cellular Medicine, expanding the volumes of data about natural substances related in disease prevention and alleviation. Pauling's stand also led these subjects to be much more actively investigated by other researchers, including those at the Linus Pauling Institute which lists a dozen principal investigators and faculty who explore the role of micronutrients, plus phytochemicals, in health and disease.

Items named after Pauling include Linus Pauling Middle School in Corvallis, Oregon, and Pauling Field a small airfield located in Condon, Oregon. Dr. Pauling spent his youth in Condon. Additionally, Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, is named after Pauling. ^[50]

Honors and awards

Pauling received several awards and honors during his career. The following are the awards and honors received by him.

Works by Linus Pauling

• Pauling, L. The Nature of the Chemical Bond (Cornell University Press) ISBN 0-8014-0333-2
  • Manuscript notes and typescripts (clear images)
• Pauling, L., and Wilson, E. B. Introduction to Quantum Mechanics with Applications to Chemistry (Dover Publications) ISBN 0-486-64871-0
• Cameron E. and Pauling, L. Cancer and Vitamin C: A Discussion of the Nature, Causes, Prevention, and Treatment of Cancer With Special Reference to the Value of Vitamin C (Camino Books) ISBN 0-940159-21-X
• Pauling, L. How to Live Longer and Feel Better (Avon Books) ISBN 0-380-70289-4
• Pauling, L. Linus Pauling On Peace - A Scientist Speaks Out on Humanism and World Survival (Rising Star Press) ISBN 0-933670-03-6
• Pauling, L. General Chemistry (Dover Publications) ISBN 0-486-65622-5
• A Lifelong Quest for Peace with Daisaku Ikeda
• Pauling, L. The Architecture of Molecules
• Pauling, L. No More War!

Quotes

• "A couple of days after my talk, there was a man in my office from the FBI saying, 'Who told you how much plutonium there is in an atomic bomb?' And I said 'Nobody told me, I figured it out.'"
• "I have always liked working in some scientific direction that nobody else is working in."
• "Perhaps as one of the older generation, I should preach a little sermon to you, but I do not propose to do so. I shall, instead, give you a word of advice about how to behave toward your elders. When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect – but do not believe him. Never put your trust in anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel Laureate, may be wrong... So you must always be skeptical – always think for yourself."
• "Well, you just have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones. You aren't going to have good ideas, unless you have lots of ideas and some principle of selection."
• When asked what he felt his most important discovery was, Mr. Pauling would answer "My wife."

See also

• Alpha helix
• Megavitamin therapy
• Orthomolecular medicine
• Pauling's rules
• Vitamin C
• 1920 US Census with Pauling in Portland, Oregon

Further reading

References

Preceded by Dwight Eisenhower

Time's Men of the Year(Alongside Isidor Rabi, Edward Teller, Joshua Lederberg, Donald A. Glaser, Emilio Segrè, John Enders, Charles Townes, George Beadle, James Van Allen and Edward Purcell representing U.S. Scientists) 1960

Succeeded by John F. Kennedy

v • d • e Nobel Peace Prize Laureates
Léon Jouhaux (1951) • Albert Schweitzer (1952) • George Marshall (1953) • United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (1954) • Lester B. Pearson (1957) • Georges Pire (1958) • Philip Noel-Baker (1959) • Albert Lutuli (1960) • Dag Hammarskjöld (1961) • Linus Pauling (1962) • International Red Cross and Red Crescent (1963) • Martin Luther King, Jr. (1964) • UNICEF (1965) • René Cassin (1968) • International Labour Organization (1969) • Norman Borlaug (1970) • Willy Brandt (1971) • Henry Kissinger / Le Duc Tho (1973) • Seán MacBride / Eisaku Satō (1974) • Andrei Sakharov (1975)
Complete roster | (1901-1925) | (1926-1950) | (1951-1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001-2025)

v • d • e Nobel Laureates in Chemistry
Edwin McMillan / Glenn T. Seaborg (1951) • Richard Synge (1952) • Hermann Staudinger (1953) • Linus Pauling (1954) • Vincent du Vigneaud (1955) • Nikolay Semyonov (1956) • Alexander Todd (1957) • Frederick Sanger (1958) • Jaroslav Heyrovský (1959) • Willard Libby (1960) • Melvin Calvin (1961) • John Kendrew (1962) • Karl Ziegler / Giulio Natta (1963) • Dorothy Hodgkin (1964) • Robert Woodward (1965) • Robert S. Mulliken (1966) • Manfred Eigen / Norrish / George Porter (1967) • Lars Onsager (1968) • Derek Barton / Odd Hassel (1969) • Luis Federico Leloir (1970) • Gerhard Herzberg (1971) • Christian B. Anfinsen / Stanford Moore / William Stein (1972) • Geoffrey Wilkinson (1973) • Paul Flory (1974) • Vladimir Prelog (1975)
Complete roster | (1901-1925) | (1926-1950) | (1951-1975) | (1976-2000) | (2001-2025)

Persondata
NAME	Pauling, Linus Carl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American biochemist and theoretical chemist, anti-nuclear testing campaigner, Nobel laureate
DATE OF BIRTH	February 28, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH	Portland, Oregon
DATE OF DEATH	August 19, 1994
PLACE OF DEATH	Big Sur, California