Pauling’s First Hemoglobin Publications: Understanding Oxygen Binding

“You know, hemoglobin is a wonderful substance. I like it. It’s a red substance that brings color into the cheeks of girls, and in the course of my hemoglobin investigation I look about a good bit to appreciate it.” – Linus Pauling, March 30, 1966 Seventy-five years ago, in 1935, Linus Pauling began publishing his [...]

The Theory of the Molecular Evolutionary Clock

“It thus appears possible that there would be no evolution without molecular disease.” -Linus Pauling. “Molecular Disease, Evolution and Genic Heterogeneity,” 1962. In the early 1960s, Linus Pauling and Emile Zuckerkandl, a French postdoctoral fellow who had arrived at Caltech in 1959, began researching the characteristics of hemoglobin extracted from a number of different species [...]

Mutations and Malaria: Pauling’s Adventure in Genetics

During the 1940s, Pauling had established sickle-cell anemia as a molecular disease, a pioneering concept that synthesized biology and chemistry in a revolutionary manner. Other interests had pulled him away from this important work, however, for the better part of a decade. Then, in the early 1960s, he was introduced to research suggesting that rates [...]

The Importance of the Concept of Molecular Disease

“The idea of Dr. Linus Pauling that an abnormal hemoglobin molecule might be responsible for the sickling process initiated the study of the hemoglobin molecule in hereditary anemias.“ – Harvey Itano. “Clinical States Associated with Alterations of the Hemoglobin Molecule.” Archives of Internal Medicine, 96: 287-97, 295. 1955. During his lengthy career, Linus Pauling maintained [...]

Pauling’s Theory of Sickle Cell Anemia

“We owe to Pauling and his collaborators the realization that sickle cell anaemia is an example of an inherited ‘molecular disease’ and that it is due to an alteration in the structure of a large protein molecule, an alteration leading to a protein which is by all criteria still a haemoglobin.“ – Vernon M. Ingram, [...]

Pauling and the Rockefeller Foundation

“We are … particularly gratified that the Institute has found it possible to make a substantial contribution which will enable you to direct a larger proportion of our aid to the study of the substances of fundamental biological importance.” – Warren Weaver to Linus Pauling, December 27, 1934. It is obvious from much of his [...]

Linus Pauling, Vitamin C and the AIDS Crisis

“Many orthomolecular substances are so free from toxicity that they show beneficial effects over a 10,000-fold range of concentrations. Yet if you take even ten times the amount of aspirin that many patients take, for example, you’d be dead; hundreds of people do die every year from aspirin poisoning. And all of the other major [...]

Pauling’s Methodology: X-ray Crystallography

“I was very fortunate in having A.A. Noyes suggest to me, or tell me, that I was to work with Roscoe Dickinson on x-ray crystallography, determination of the structure of crystals by x-ray diffraction. This technique gave for the first time detailed information about how atoms are related to other atoms in a crystal and [...]

Thinking Between Disciplines: Immunological Interests and Beyond

“I believe that chemistry will play a very important part in the golden age of biology that is now beginning.” – Linus Pauling, “Molecular Structure and Biological Specificity,” July 17, 1947. One of the reasons why Linus Pauling enjoyed such a prolific and diverse scientific career was his ability to combine and draw inspiration from [...]

Thinking Structurally: The Roots of Pauling’s Hemoglobin Work

“Linus Pauling is one of that select group of individuals whose lives have made a discernible impact on the contemporary world. His contributions to molecular chemistry have been substantial and fully deserving of the recognition that he received in the form of a Nobel Prize in chemistry….Pauling continued to do productive scientific work throughout his [...]