Life in the Cold War 1980s

Three new additions to our archive of Pauling Peace Lectureship presentations have been added recently to the Events and Videos page of the OSU Libraries Special Collections website.  Dating to the mid-1980s, each is a reflection of the major, and mounting, concerns that peace activists and critics of U.S. foreign policy harbored during the eight [...]

The Pauling Centenary Conference

The date February 28, 2001 is meaningful to many residents of the Pacific Northwest.  At 10:54 AM that morning, the Nisqually earthquake, a magnitude 6.8 temblor located northwest of Olympia, Washington, shook the earth beneath the greater Seattle-Tacoma area and ultimately caused over $1 billion in damage.
Some 200 miles south in Corvallis, faint signs of [...]

Fred Allen’s Notebook

During his time at Oregon Agricultural College, Linus Pauling quickly built a reputation as being the smartest man on campus. This reputation would eventually evolve into international considerations of Pauling as one of the top scientists in all of history. Understandably, because of his abilities in the classroom and the laboratory, he made significant impressions [...]

Extracts from the Messenger Lectures

(Part 4 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)
For our final post on Linus Pauling’s 1959 Messenger Lecture series, we have compiled a number of quotations from the talks themselves and from his own personal preparatory notes.  These excerpts highlight the most significant elements of Pauling’s [...]

The Molecular Theory of Civilization

(Part 3 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)
At the heart of Pauling’s Messenger Lectures was his newly established theory which he referred to simply as the “molecular basis of civilization.”  Through his work as a chemist, Pauling had developed a belief that the seeming randomness [...]

Science and Philosophy

(Part 2 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)
Above all else, Linus Pauling considered himself to be a man of rational thought. The Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers are filled notebooks and manuscripts detailing Pauling’s ideas on practical manners (such as reflective road signs), [...]

The Messenger Lectures

[Ed note: October 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Linus Pauling's delivery of the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. This is part one of a four post series discussing participation in the Messenger series.]
The Messenger Lectures on the Evolution of Civilization, better know simply as the Messenger Lectures, is a prestigious lectureship hosted by [...]

Redesigning our Web Presence

In September 2007, we decided that the time had come to redesign our home page and department web presence.  Last month, three graphic designers, dozens of mock-ups, hundreds of work hours and almost exactly two years later, we released our new look, complete with scads of fresh content.  For those interested in many of the [...]

The Linus Pauling Science Center

Last Friday, September 25th, Oregon State University formally launched the construction of what will be the largest academic building on the OSU campus – the Linus Pauling Science Center.  Scheduled for completion in Spring 2011, the Pauling Science Center is a centerpiece of the on-going Campaign for OSU.
Linus Pauling’s extraordinary career was defined in large [...]

Fraternity Life

“I was one of the founding members of the Oregon State Chapter of Delta Upsilon, and was present at the installation – in fact, I had prepared the petition that was submitted to the fraternity, and was successful in getting the fraternity to set up the Oregon State Chapter.”
- Linus Pauling, 1988
Linus Pauling’s undergraduate career [...]