Linus Pauling: A Lifetime of Science

The self-taught chemist. Linus Pauling's lifelong fascination with chemistry was ignited during childhood by a friend's chemistry set. He was born on February 28, 1901, in Portland, Oregon, to a family that lacked the resources to buy him a chemistry set, so Pauling created his own using chemicals he found in an abandoned iron smelter. He quickly taught himself more about chemistry than he could learn in his local high school.

The education. Pauling enrolled in college at age 16, and he was teaching the course he had taken the year before by age 18. He was a charismatic public speaker who was able to make the most advanced chemistry concepts interesting, even to those who knew nothing about chemistry. His students loved him, especially a young woman named Ava Helen, who later became his wife and the mother of his four children. Pauling finished his education at the California Institute of Technology, where he would spend most of his career researching and teaching.

The work. The genius of Pauling's work rests not in a single discovery; it lies in its scope. Indeed, he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for his entire body of work, not just a single accomplishment. Pauling is probably best known for working out the nature of the chemical bond, yet he also discovered (among many other accomplishments) the cause of sickle cell anemia, developed an accurate oxygen meter for submarines, helped create synthetic plasma, and determined the structure of proteins.

The activism. During WWII, Pauling's laser-like focus on his work shifted for the first time since his childhood. He took a public stance against war and the use of nuclear weapons while advocating for international diplomacy through the United Nations. He was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his crusade against nuclear-weapons testing. In his later years, Pauling became a champion for Vitamin C. He believed that taking very high doses of this vitamin would ward off infection, and perhaps even prevent or treat cancer.

The price. In the early 1950s, many scientists were racing to discover the structure of DNA. Pauling proposed a triple helix structure with the bases on the outside, but James Watson and Francis Crick ultimately disproved his idea with their famous double helix model. They had succeeded largely because they had access to X-ray crystallography data from scientists at King's College in London. If Pauling had been able to collaborate with these scientists, he may have been able to correct the errors in his model and claim the prize. However, his political activism brought on suspicion that he was a communist. Due to irrational distrust of liberalism among US political leaders at the time, he was blacklisted, and was not allowed to leave the country. His belief in pacifism may have cost him what could have been the crowning achievement of his career.

Always a scientist. Pauling spent his last years directing research at the Linus Pauling Institute and writing about subjects that interested him, such as the structure of atomic nuclei. He died of cancer at age 93 on August 19, 1994.