Checking in on Condon

Over time we have written with some frequency about Condon, Oregon, the small farming community where Linus Pauling spent much of his youth.  And though we have come know a fair amount about the history of this little town in Gilliam County, it was not until recently that the Blog had an opportunity to actually [...]

Pauline Pauling (1902-2003)

My name is Pauline Darling Pauling Stockton Ney Dunbar Emmett, and you can see I’ve had an interesting life…
-Pauline Pauling Emmett, 1994.
The sister of one distinguished scientist and later the wife of another, Pauline Darling Pauling, the second oldest of the Herman and Belle Pauling’s children, led a long and eventful life. Once a [...]

Pauling’s Best Friend: Lloyd Jeffress

As a child, Linus Pauling had relatively few friends. After moving from Condon, Oregon to Portland, the death of his father and subsequent poverty forced him to work when not in school. The remainder of his time was consumed with studying and household chores, leaving little room for companionship. Pauling, even as [...]

A Prominent High School Dropout

Interviewer: Where did you go to high school at in Portland?
Pauling: I went to Washington High School for 3 ½ years, so that my whole high school career was there. It was on the east side of Portland.
Interviewer: How come they wouldn’t give you a diploma?
Pauling: Well, I didn’t finish the requirements. I started in [...]

William P. Murphy: Condon’s Other Nobel Prize Winner

Condon – as you are undoubtedly already aware if you are a regular reader of this blog – is a very small town in Gilliam County in North-Central Oregon. According to the 2000 census, the town’s population consisted of only 759 people, and in the early 1900s, when the Pauling family lived in Condon, the [...]

Herman Pauling’s Condon Pharmacy

Linus Pauling harbored many fond memories of his short time in the small town of Condon, Oregon. Of these memories, a number of them involve his father Herman and his drugstore.
Herman Pauling, born in 1876, began his career in pharmacy as the apprentice of an Oswego druggist. Before long, he was working his way through [...]

Snapshots of Pauling’s Childhood in Condon

[Ed Note: The Pauling Blog wears a black armband today for the Oregon Historical Society Library and the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, both of which have been forced to close due to budget considerations.  The state of Oregon is little more than two weeks removed from its sesquicentennial celebration and it is [...]

Happy (Almost) Birthday Linus Pauling!

Cross-posted at Ether Wave Propaganda
Linus Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon on February 28, 1901, meaning that this coming Saturday will mark the 108th anniversary of his birth. (He died on August 19, 1994 at the age of 93)
Over the years, one of our annual habits around here has been to reflect back upon [...]

Condon, Oregon: Pauling’s Wild West

“Is the small town a place, truly, of the world, or is it no more than something out of a boy’s dreaming? Out of his love of all things not of death made? All things somewhere beyond the dust, rust, and decay, beyond the top, beyond all sides, beyond bottom: outside, around, over, under, within?”
- [...]

Herman Pauling’s Letter to The Oregonian

“We cannot imagine what it is but I feel that either ourselves or our children will someday stand before the world as a specimen of a high standard of intelligence.”
-Herman Pauling, letter to Belle Pauling, 1905.
The documentary record of Linus Pauling’s early years is, unfortunately, rather thin.  Much of what we know about Pauling’s life [...]