60 Fun Facts About Linus Pauling

Pauling's second Nobel Prize, awarded for 1962, was in which category?

He is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes.

Pauling is one of only two people to win Nobel Prizes in two different fields. Who is the other?

Sanger and Bardeen each won twice, but in the same field.

In which city was Pauling born in 1901?

February 28, his birthday, is Linus Pauling Day in Oregon.

What kind of business did Pauling's father Herman open in Lake Oswego, Oregon?

He died of a perforated ulcer in 1910, when Linus was nine.

As teenagers Pauling and a friend set up 'Palmon Laboratories' offering local dairies what service?

The dairymen would not trust two boys with the job and the business failed.

Pauling left high school without a diploma because he lacked two required courses in what?

The school gave him an honorary diploma 45 years later, after his two Nobel Prizes.

Pauling entered which college at 15, then known as an agricultural college?

He founded its chapter of the Delta Upsilon fraternity and taught a course he had only just passed himself.

Pauling met his future wife, Ava Helen Miller, while teaching a course for students of what?

They married in 1923 and stayed together until her death in 1981.

Pauling's 1922 bachelor's degree from Oregon was in what subject?

He then went to Caltech to study crystal structures by X-ray diffraction.

Pauling's Caltech PhD research used X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of what?

He published seven papers on mineral crystal structures and graduated summa cum laude in 1925.

On his 1926 Guggenheim Fellowship Pauling studied under Sommerfeld, Bohr and whom in Zurich?

In Zurich he also learned of the Heitler-London quantum treatment of the hydrogen molecule.

Which concept, with its numerical scale for the elements, did Pauling introduce in 1932?

The scale predicts how ionic or covalent a bond between two atoms will be.

Which idea about mixing s and p orbitals did Pauling lay out in the 1932 paper he considered his most important?

It explained the four equivalent bonds of carbon in methane.

Pauling's five rules of 1929 help predict the crystal structures of what kind of compounds?

The fifth is the 'rule of parsimony'.

Why did Pauling abruptly end his friendship with Robert Oppenheimer?

Ava Helen refused the invitation to a tryst in Mexico and told her husband at once.

Pauling wrote most of his famous 1939 textbook while lecturing in 1937-38 at which university?

The 1939 book was cited more than 16,000 times in its first thirty years.

Pauling's first Nobel Prize, in 1954, was for research into the nature of what?

The citation added 'its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances'.

Pauling showed benzene was a superposition of Kekule's two structures, not a flip between them. What was this named?

Like hybridization and polar bonding, it combines several electronic structures into one intermediate result.

Pauling's 1951 alpha helix had an unorthodox non-integer number of residues per turn. How many?

The insight rested on the planar nature of the peptide bond, which Bragg's Cambridge team had missed.

Pauling's mistaken 1953 model of DNA had how many strands?

It also had neutral phosphate groups, which conflicted with DNA being an acid.

How did Pauling describe losing the race for the structure of DNA?

He blamed misleading density data and the lack of good X-ray photographs.

Why did the State Department withhold Pauling's passport in 1952?

The legend that this cost him the DNA structure is false: he got the passport back within weeks and toured English labs anyway.

Which Pauling assistant, standing in for his boss, saw Rosalind Franklin's DNA images at a 1952 conference?

Pauling himself, once his passport was restored, chose not to visit Franklin's lab.

Pauling's 1949 paper showed sickle cell anaemia was caused by an abnormal what?

Electrophoresis showed a modified haemoglobin in patients' red blood cells.

Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl proposed which idea about mutations accumulating at a steady rate?

It grew out of his interest in the mutations caused by nuclear fallout.

Pauling's 'close-packed spheron model' of 1965 was a theory of what?

He built nuclei from clusters such as deuterons and alpha particles and kept at it until his death.

Oppenheimer invited Pauling to head which division of the Manhattan Project, an offer he declined?

He did not want to uproot his family, but worked on 14 wartime research contracts anyway.

Pauling's wartime oxygen meter, designed for submarines and aircraft, was later adapted by Beckman for what?

The National Defense Research Committee had asked for a reliable instrument in October 1940.

Pauling's wartime group developed 'oxypolygelatin' as a substitute for what?

The 1942 proposal was titled 'The Chemical Treatment of Protein Solutions in the Attempt to Find a Substitute for Human Serum for Transfusions'.

How many scientists signed the anti-testing petition Pauling gave the UN in January 1958?

They came from fifty countries; Barry Commoner helped circulate it.

To which UN Secretary-General did Pauling and his wife present their 1958 anti-testing petition?

The petition called for an end to all nuclear weapons testing.

With which physicist did Pauling hold a televised 1958 debate about fallout and mutations?

Later that year he published No More War!, calling for an end not just to testing but to war itself.

What was the title of Pauling's 1958 book calling for an end to nuclear testing and to war?

He proposed a World Peace Research Organization within the United Nations.

The 'Baby Tooth Survey' that Pauling supported measured which radioactive isotope in children's teeth?

It proved that fallout was reaching children through milk from cows grazing contaminated grass.

Pauling's Nobel Peace Prize was announced on the day which agreement came into force, 10 October 1963?

No peace prize had been awarded for 1962, so it was given belatedly.

Life magazine's headline called Pauling's Nobel Peace Prize 'A Weird Insult from' where?

A Senate subcommittee had branded him the top scientific name in the 'Communist peace offensive'.

Which magazine did Pauling sue for $1 million in 1963 after it called him a 'fellow traveler'?

He lost, because the Sullivan ruling now required public figures to prove actual malice.

From 1969 to 1974 Pauling held a professorship at which university?

He had left Caltech after receiving the peace prize money and briefly tried UC San Diego.

Which honour did the Soviet Union award Pauling in 1970?

He and Ava Helen went on to help found the International League of Humanists in 1974.

What visible mark did Pauling suggest for carriers of defective genes?

The idea was aimed at reducing births with diseases such as sickle cell anaemia.

At 40 Pauling was diagnosed with which kidney condition, treated with a low-protein diet?

The positive experience shaped his lifelong faith in vitamin supplements.

Which term did Pauling coin in 1968 for therapy adjusting the body's natural substances?

It gave a name to the megavitamin therapy movement of the 1970s.

How much ascorbic acid did Pauling take every day to ward off colds?

The biochemist Irwin Stone had introduced him to high-dose vitamin C in 1966.

What was the title of Pauling's 1970 bestseller on ascorbic acid?

A revised edition later added the flu.

Pauling's collaborator on vitamin C for terminal patients, Ewan Cameron, was a British what?

Their claim that vitamin C quadrupled survival collapsed when the patient groups proved not comparable.

Trials at which institution concluded that high-dose vitamin C was no better than placebo against cancer?

Pauling denounced the studies as 'fraud and deliberate misrepresentation'.

Pauling's 1990s plan for treating heart disease combined vitamin C with which amino acid?

Advocates of 'Pauling Therapy' claim it can cure heart disease without drugs or surgery.

In 1960 Pauling spent a night stranded on a cliff after getting lost on a coastal trail near which California town?

He was found after almost 24 hours on an overhanging rock 300 feet above the ocean.

Pauling died at his home in Big Sur in 1994 of what?

He was 93; his ashes were not buried in Oregon until 2005.

Two years before his death, Pauling declared his atheism in a dialogue with which Buddhist philosopher?

Raised Lutheran, he had joined the Unitarian Universalist Church.

Which creator of an operating-system kernel was named after Pauling?

The YouTuber Linus Sebastian of Linus Tech Tips is also named after him.

Francis Crick called Pauling the father of what?

His sickle cell work opened the way to studying mutations at the molecular level.

In 1905 Pauling's family moved to which small Oregon town that has an airfield named after him?

Pauling Field is a small airfield in Condon; a middle school in Corvallis also bears his name.

Under which two Caltech scientists did Pauling do his doctoral work, completed in 1925?

He received his PhD in physical chemistry and mathematical physics summa cum laude.

In 1948 Pauling spent a year at Oxford as George Eastman Visiting Professor and a Fellow of which college?

He later received honorary degrees from both Oxford and Cambridge, around 47 in all by his death.

On July 9, 1955, Pauling was one of eleven signatories of which anti-nuclear document?

Einstein and Bertrand Russell headed the list of signatories.

After leaving Caltech in 1963, Pauling spent three years at which think tank?

He resigned from Caltech, despite tenure, after receiving his Nobel Peace Prize money.

Pauling left the University of California at San Diego in 1969 partly over tensions with whom?

He then took a chemistry professorship at Stanford from 1969 to 1974.

Pauling was raised Lutheran but later joined which church?

Late in life he declared himself an atheist in a dialogue with Buddhist philosopher Daisaku Ikeda.

Pauling's daughter Linda married Barclay Kamb, a noted Caltech expert in what field?

Of his four children, Peter became a crystallographer and Edward Crellin a biologist.