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LINUS CARL PAULING
Linus Carl Pauling was born in Portland,
Oregon, on 28th February, 1901, the son of 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 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.
Since
1919 his interest lay in the field of molecular structure and the
nature o 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
crystallises 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.
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 he 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 resonancc 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.
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.
Linus Carl Pauling died in 1994. |
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