Background
Linus Pauling was born in 1901 in Portland, Oregon. The first of three children, his family was quite poor, especially after his father's death in 1910. Linus was still able to attend school, however, and made a good friend in high school who would introduce him to the world of chemistry. This was a very important moment in Pauling’s life, as he fell in love with chemistry and would stay fascinated with it his entire life.
In 1917, despite never having obtained his official high school diploma, Pauling entered the Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University), where he studied how atoms give substances their chemical and physical properties. After graduating, Pauling spent several years traveling Europe, exploring the new and emerging field of Quantum Mechanics. Upon his return to the US, in 1927, he was appointed to the post of Assistant Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology. He was later made a full Professor and would stay at Cal Tech until 1963. Pauling researched many topics during his life as a scientist, making discoveries related to the chemical bond, molecular structures, and molecular diseases such as Sickle Cell Anemia. As a result of this work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954. Pauling was also a prominent anti-nuclear peace activist, and served on Albert Einstein’s Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. He was one of the few scientists involved in the peace movement who was able to talk about atomic weapons without violating government regulations because unlike many US nuclear scientists, Pauling was never involved in any work on nuclear weapons. Pauling receiving the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize
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Linus Pauling as a young man
Pauling traveled the world and gave anti-war and anti-nuclear weapons speeches, despite the fact that he was repeatedly investigated by the US government on anti-American and pro-communist suspicions. In fact, Pauling’s passport was revoked when he tried to travel to the United Kingdom for a scientific conference. At this conference, Rosalind Franklin and Maurice Wilkins presented their x-ray crystallographs of DNA, which were used by James Watson and Francis Crick to determine the structure of DNA. Pauling was very much interested in this, and, had he been allowed to attend the conference, he may now be remembered as the person who discovered the double helix structure instead of Watson and Crick.
For his extensive anti-nuclear weapon activism, Pauling was awarded the 1963 Nobel Peace Prize, making him the only person to have won two undivided Nobel Prizes in different fields (Chemistry and Peace). Pauling also explored the field of orthomolecular medicine, which focuses on using materials already in the body, such as vitamins, to fight diseases. He believed that many vitamins, such as vitamin C, can be taken to reduce the risk of disease and improve general health, leading to the widespread use of vitamin supplements today Pauling died of cancer in 1994, but his discoveries changed the world forever and he left behind an amazing legacy. |