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In 1901 Linus Pauling
was born in Portland, Oregon, to a druggist, Herman Henry William Pauling,
who, though born in Missouri, was of German descent, and his wife, Lucy
Isabelle Darling, born in Oregon of English-Scottish ancestry.
Linus Pauling attended the public elementary and high schools in the
town of Condon and the city of Portland, Oregon, and entered the Oregon
State College in 1917, receiving the degree of B.Sc. in chemical engineering
in 1922. During the years 1919-1920 he served as a full-time teacher of
quantitative analysis in the State College, after which he was appointed a
Teaching Fellow in Chemistry in the California Institute of Technology and
was a graduate student there from 1922 to 1925, working under Professor
Roscoe G. Dickinson and Richard C. Tolman. In 1925 he was awarded the Ph.D.
(summa cum laude) in chemistry, with minors in physics and
mathematics. |
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Since 1919 his interest lay in the field of molecular structure and the
nature of the chemical bond, inspired by papers by Irving Langmuir on the
application of the Lewis theory of the sharing of pairs of electrons between
atoms to many substances. In 1921 he suggested, and attempted to carry out,
an experiment on the orientation of iron atoms by a magnetic field, through
the electrolytic deposition of a layer of iron in a strong magnetic field
and the determination of the orientation of the iron crystallizes by
polishing and etching the deposit, and microscopic examination of the etch
figures. With Professor Dickinson, he began in 1922 the experimental
determination of the structures of some crystals, and also started
theoretical work on the nature of the chemical bond. |
Since his appointment to the Staff of California Institute of Technology,
Professor Pauling was elected Research Associate in 1925; National Research
Fellow in Chemistry, 1925-1926; Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial
Foundation, 1926-1927 (through this last he worked in European Universities
with Sommerfeld, Schrödinger, and Bohr); Assistant Professor of Chemistry,
1927-1929; Associate Professor, 1929-1931; Professor, 1931, when he was the
first recipient of the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry -
the Langmuir Prize - and Chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical
Engineering, and Director of the Gates and Crellin laboratories of
Chemistry, 1936-1958. In 1963, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Linus Pauling is a member of numerous professional societies in the
U.S.A. as well as in many European countries, India, Japan and Chile.
Awards, medals, and honorary degrees were showered upon him in America and
Europe, and in addition he was elected Rationalist of the Year for 1960 and
Humanist of the Year for 1961. Several books have come from his pen, ranging
from his most famous one The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and the
Structure of Molecules and Crystals (1939, 1949, 1960) via General
Chemistry (1947, 1953), which was translated into nine languages, to
No More War! (1958, 1959,1962).
The subjects of the papers Linus Pauling published reflect his great
scientific versatility: about 350 publications in the fields of experimental
determination of the structure of crystals by the diffraction of X-rays and
the interpretation of these structures in terms of the radii and other
properties of atoms; the application of quantum mechanics to physical and
chemical problems, including dielectric constants, X-ray doublets, momentum
distribution of electrons in atoms, rotational motion of molecules in
crystals, Van der Waals forces, etc.; the structure of metals and
intermetallic compounds, the theory of ferromagnetism; the nature of the
chemical bond, including the resonance phenomenon in chemistry; the
experimental determination of the structure of gas molecules by the
diffraction of electrons; the structure of proteins; the structure of
antibodies and the nature of serological reactions; the structure and
properties of hemoglobin and related substances; abnormal hemoglobin
molecules in relation to the hereditary hemolytic anemias; the molecular
theory of general anesthesia; an instrument for determining the partial
pressure of oxygen in a gas; and other subjects.
Linus Pauling married Ava Helen Miller of Beaver Creek, Oregon, in
1923. She is of English-Scottish and German descent. They have four
children, Linus (Carl) Jr. (1925), Peter Jeffress (1931), Linda Helen (1932)
and Edward Crellin (1937), and thirteen grandchildren.
From Nobel Lectures, Chemistry 1942-1962,
Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, 1964
This autobiography/biography
was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series
Les Prix Nobel/Nobel
Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an
addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the
source as shown above.
Linus Pauling died on
August 19, 1994.
For more information on
Linus Pauling and Linus Pauling books visit
lpi.oregonstate.edu.
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