Mina Carson Interview, Part 2

Dr. Mina Carson. Photo taken by her daughter, Lyn.

[Part 2 of 2 of our exclusive interview with Dr. Mina Carson, author of Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary.]

Pauling Blog: How would you describe Ava Helen’s style of activism? I know that Linda Richards used the word “swirled” in reference to it.

Mina Carson: Yeah, I think that’s right. Ava Helen really loved to have a big important correspondence and she was quite honest – I mean she was a good correspondent, she was quite honest in her letters and that’s where you get a lot of her personality, her style. She didn’t suffer fools – what she took to be fools – gladly and she didn’t mince words. At the same time, she was difficult with her kids and she was difficult with some people because she was pretty forceful, but she also liked to flirt and she liked to be nice and she liked to be considerate. So many, many people liked her very much and a number of young women took her as a mentor and model and really worshiped her and I think that’s fascinating.

But her style, she did do committee work for a while – actually off and on for her whole adult life – but it wasn’t her favorite thing to do. I think she liked to give speeches, I mean she developed that – she deprecated her own ability but I think that was just “oh I’m not so good at that…if you think I have something of worth to offer then I’m happy to make a speech.” But that’s really what she liked to do. And she loved to travel with Linus and she loved to travel period. She loved to be made much of – I mean who doesn’t? But she loved to be made much of, so that style of being able to travel around the world and connect her Australian friends with her Canadian friends and with her South American friends, that was her all the way through.

And when she was disgusted with the red baiting she saw in some American chapters of WILPF and the Women’s International League and some of the European chapters as well, and when Women Strike for Peace came along in the early ’60s, she didn’t jump ship, she was loyal to WILPF, she didn’t jump ship. But she immediately joined WSP as a number of her WILPF colleagues did, and that really suited her because it was a no holds barred “let’s do this action here, let’s kind of shock them a little, let’s show them that women in hats can really live on the dangerous side.” And she loved that. So she was very much a maker of connections rather than a person behind the scenes who liked to work on committees and start a project that would go on for years. Yeah, I really think that’s right.

PB: How about her style of feminism? It seems to have evolved over time.

MC: It did. And at the same time she ended up in the camp of liberal feminism really about the time that Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique. And of course she had a very strong critique of Betty Friedan, which was interesting. She felt that Friedan put down homemakers and homemaking, and of course Ava Helen had so much ego tied up in that identity that she rejected it. But at the same time she was what we call “liberal feminist” and she, for the most part, believed that women should be offered the same, or earn the same opportunities as men. And that she really didn’t like to look out into the world and see young women not taking opportunities – you know, not finishing college as she had not and not creating opportunities for themselves to have independence, financial independence and professional independence. From time to time, she loved to go back into the history of women through the world – not very carefully, but in broad strokes.

It’s interesting to try to figure out if she was an essentialist, believing that women are essentially different from men. She kind of skirted that. She was more of a functionalist in that she believed that women had filled certain roles because their societies has pressured them into doing that because they did it well, not because they were born to certain fates as people. It’s hard to sort out. She’s not a deep thinker – she’s an eager thinker, she’s a smart person – but she’s not really a philosopher. It’s fun to go through her papers. It’s fun to follow the threads of argument. I do not put her down. She makes better speeches than I do. But what I’m saying is that it doesn’t repay, really probing her philosophy, because that wasn’t her thing. She was more of a political activist, political thinker, than a philosopher.

Ava Helen in the 1950s.

PB: The title of the book is Ava Helen Pauling: Activist, Partner, Visionary. We’ve touched on the activist and partner piece of it, but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about the visionary piece.

MC: She really could see, as did Linus. And I think she saw without the deep scientific insight that he had. She saw immediately that if we continued down the road, for example of atmospheric testing, that we would destroy the next generation’s Earth and, in many cases, lives. She felt passionately about the public health risks and the ecological risks of atmospheric testing and the nuclear race in general. She was infuriated by our dedication of such a huge percentage of public funds to the military. I’ve made the point – and it’s not a very profound point – that she and Linus were not pacifists per se. They certainly were interventionists in World War II, but they did not see another conflict that they believed that the United States should enter over the rest of their lives. And they were internationalists and they believed that human energies and human resources would go a lot more usefully into maintaining peace and building education and so on.

She left part of her money in her will to Sempervirens, a California Redwoods Foundation, and was very much involved as she had the energy to be in her last few years as she was ill, but very much involved in saving the wilds. It was a natural trajectory for her interests to move toward ecology and environmentalism and so she really was, in that sense, a visionary. And I think that, again, she had many allies. And it’s not that she had really a number of original thoughts, it’s that she could see the interconnections of all these issues and it was clear to her and it made her very impatient and very angry. And of course, a number of us can certainly understand that passion.

PB: Where do you think she was happiest? Do you think it was the ranch?

MC: I wonder. She loved the ranch and she loved the times that she and Linus – she remarked at one point that “I can’t believe we haven’t seen a single soul in a week, two weeks, and that has not happened since we were married.” But she thrived on human contact, so I think that she saw the ranch as he did, as a kind of blessed relief from the relentless social and political round that they had. But I suspect that she was happiest in the middle of an adoring crowd. I just suspect that in some cases, at least, that the celebratory moments were the times when she was happiest.

But it could well have been too, as she got older – and this is really important – that her grandkids remember her, Cheryl Pauling for example, remembers her as a wonderful grandmother. And Linda’s and Barclay’s kids too, sensitive to their uniqueness, sensitive to their needs, their desires, their needs as children. It’s so interesting. And Stephanie makes the same comment about her kids with Linus Jr. So I think that she did like the large family gatherings. There was often friction, because she had raised a bunch of strong-willed kids. So it can be difficult. At the same time, she wasn’t one to wilt under difficulty and conflict. She didn’t have a thin skin. So I think she liked being in a lot of different places, but probably not home alone with young children when she was a young woman.

Thanksgiving with Linda Pauling Kamb and her family, 1968.

PB: What were some surprises for you as you went through this process?

MC: I was really surprised about how active and open their sex life was in the 1920s. I mean, I was really just flabbergasted and really enjoyed Linus’ letters to her and really was taken aback. And that led me to search the secondary literature on college students’ sexuality in the 1920s. And I found that there is not a whole lot of literature. I tried a whole bunch of search terms and I really need to follow that up because I think that’s fascinating – you’d think that there would be much more research on that. And I’ve a couple of scholarly friends that I want to follow up on after the fact just because it’s fascinating. So that was a big surprise.

I think that I wasn’t surprised but I was interested to see how Linus matured as a parent. When his kids hit their 20s, all of a sudden he was very involved as a parent. And I think it was fun to see – it’s not surprising when you think about who he was. He was pretty laissez faire when the kids were small, but at the same time he didn’t really know what to do with them and he was pretty uninvolved with their day to day raising. Whereas when they became young adults he could talk with them. He had things to write to them about and he had money that they wanted and he had ways to control their lives in that way. So that was also interesting to watch the trajectory of his parenting over time.

And again, I wasn’t surprised but I was really deeply touched by his devotion to her and by his massive – I mean, he was shocked when she died. He was shocked at his own response. And he writes about his response and that was really interesting, that he writes some pieces for his kids about how he is doing. And he did this off and on throughout his life as if he were his own research subject. And he shocked himself “Oh my gosh, I have emotions and these are what they seem to be!”

Linus and Ava Helen at Deer Flat Ranch, 1977.

PB: Is there something, a cache of materials or a specific document that you couldn’t find or that doesn’t exist that you really wish did exist or that you had found?

MC: Yes, several. I’m really sad that we do not have her love letters. I’m deeply sad about that because her personality kind of has to be reconstructed from the few letters that survived the mowing down of her correspondence by family members. And I so understand what they were doing, I so understand it, I just wish I had them. I wish we could have talked with Linda [Pauling Kamb]. She was so understandably tied up with Barclay’s recent death. And I was able to use the wonderful interviews that she did with Tom Hager, so I don’t feel like I was completely in the dark about her retrospective ideas about her family. To have those materials that Hager gathered was just really valuable. Yeah I wish I had more of her. We have so much of her personal correspondence as an adult and I just wish I had a little more.

…If I could go back in – I mean I’m very glad to have this project done and launched but if I could go back in, I did love casting it as a family history but I think in that sense I slighted some of the important points about women’s committee work that I could have made in the book. And I would be interested to see if reviewers find that a weak point. I think one of the strong points of the book is the history of the marriage and my attempt to connect that with some notion of 20th century marriages. But we’ll see about that too. But I think one weak point is not having done more with the importance of reinterpreting women’s committee work in the 20th century. So that’s a flaw.

PB: Well, the last question is what’s next up for you?

MC: I have no idea! I have like fourteen different interests. I really love the history of photography and I have a history of photography blog, so to beef that up is really, I have time for that now. And as I mentioned, I am really interested in what seems to be Lacanian in terms of this lack of research on college students lives in the 1920s and I’m really interested in that. I’m fascinated by the history of psychotherapy and haven’t yet written my grand book on that. So I think the short answer is I’m not sure. I need to decide really soon but I don’t know what I’m doing!

Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary is available for purchase from the Oregon State University Press.

An Interview with the Author of “Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary.”

[Part 1 of 2]

We’re dedicating the entirety of this month to celebrating the release of the new book, Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary, the first biography of Ava Helen Pauling, now available from the OSU Press.  In the coming weeks, readers can anticipate lengthy excerpts from this exciting new publication, but for today and next week we offer an exclusive interview with the book’s author, Dr. Mina Carson.  Dr. Carson is an Associate Professor of History at Oregon State University and an alum of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center’s Resident Scholar Program.  Transcribed video of her 2009 Resident Scholar presentation, “Hidden in Plain Sight: The Life of Ava Helen Pauling,” is available here.

Pauling Blog: What was the genesis of this book?

Mina Carson: Really and truly the genesis was that I ran into a graduate student, Linda Richards, in Milam Hall in the upstairs hall and she said “did you know that nobody has worked on the Ava Helen Pauling papers and that the [OSU] Press may be interested in publishing a biography?” And I thought, “that’s very interesting.” And she knew that I was interested in peace studies and she knew that I was interested in women’s history and we had worked together on a course before. So I came over and looked at the papers and chatted with the Press and that was that.

PB: Had you any concept of Ava Helen before then?

MC: No and in fact I looked up Trevor [Sandgathe]‘s Wikipedia article and that’s all that was out there. I had worked as a faculty member when I first came here in the early ’90s – I came in ’89 – but in the early ’90s I was appointed to what was then the Ava Helen Pauling Peace Lectureship when Linus was still with us. And for a year I was actually chair of that and so I knew about Ava Helen from that experience. But nothing, I didn’t know anything, I had no concept of her personality or activities or anything like that.

PB: Can you talk about your research process once you started in on this project?

MC: Yes, it was actually very funny. The process itself began in a very, in retrospect, humorous way because the summer that I started doing research I broke my wrist. And it was, fortunately for me, the left hand which I don’t use but I started with her general correspondence, not the very personal family stuff but the general alphabetized correspondence and I started by trying to read the letters into a dictation program. And I came up with some very funny wordings and so I quickly figured out that that was not going to work and fortunately I quickly got my typing hands back again. But I started with the general correspondence and that was not a bad idea because it really gave me a sense of the overall list of her correspondence and it also plunged me into her adult life. So I really did get a pretty quick exposure to the range of her correspondence in her 40s, 50s, and 60s and maybe even 70s actually.

Dr. Mina Carson, Spring 2013.

And then I went back and read the love letters which are, of course, largely from Linus to Ava Helen. But that also was just a complete eye-opener, it was so much fun because I could picture where they had been here on the campus. And then I just dropped into various places, filling in the blanks. I did this in a very non-linear way, which is sort of my way when I research, and I finally figured out that I needed to look at the family financial stuff. And that was wonderful and filled in a lot of blanks and also gave me a sense of how the Paulings lived, because your priorities come popping right out in your financial records.

And finally I went beyond – so as I said, extremely non-linear – finally I went beyond the wonderful collection of photos that are accessible on the web and went into the physical boxes of photographs and, wow, that filled in a ton of blanks for me. What I learned from that, that I hope to keep in my mind, is that the photographs create a narrative; they’re not just a sub-narrative and in some cases they’re a parallel narrative. But they really are a narrative in and of themselves partly because they were so well cataloged and also partly because you see people, faces, and you make connections that you didn’t have before. You know where people were in particular years, for example, or what schools the kids went to. That was very helpful.

PB: And one of the interesting and somewhat unique aspects of the book is that it does intersperse a lot of photographs throughout the text rather than just having a couple sections of photos. It’s kind of dedicated all throughout.

MC: Yeah I really wanted that. When I’m reading a book, I keep the photos section for a special treat, you know, and I was tempted to do what I do myself. But then I decided that definitely was not the way to go because there are so many parts of her life that are not really accessible in the papers but that the photographs do fill in. So having the photographs available all the way along was really helpful; I thought they’d helped the reader to picture people.

Ava Helen Miller, 1922.

PB: You gave a talk in 2009 where you asked the question “how does the biographer write the life of a wife? Especially one so infused with the work of her husband?” How did you go about trying to answer that question?

MC: It’s a question that honestly I’m still working on. And in fact, one of the early manuscript reviewers said that – say she – could just see me all the way through the manuscript saying “oh wait no, it’s not a biography of Linus! Oh wait no, it’s a biography of Ava Helen, I have to focus on Ava Helen!” And that reviewer actually wanted more information about Linus to get the whole tapestry in there. One of the things I tried to do – and this really is kind of my thing, it’s what fascinates me – is I tried to knit together her external interests, her public interests with her private interests. And since she never held elected office, although she was an officer of a major peace organization for a brief time, she never was a public figure in particular. It wasn’t challenging to tell her public story but it was really easier to tell her story as a private person who developed a public side as her passions for various causes became more pronounced through her life, and as she became clearer about who she was in relation to her marriage. So her public persona became more pronounced as she got older. She hadn’t started as a public person and then buried it, rather the reverse.

But the challenge was how do you tell the story of a wife? And the story was she was a wife, first and foremost, and in a sense fortunately. Although she had a very strong personality, she married a guy who really did want her to be front and center if she wanted to be. At least that’s who he was by the 1950s. That doesn’t really answer the question very well, but it was a struggle. It was a struggle to try and balance Linus’ huge personality and public presence with the real sparseness of records for Ava Helen. And fortunately her personality emerges so strongly through the records that I could at least sketch in a little bit of who she was and reconstruct her record from there.

PB: You talked a little bit about a shift in Linus’ perspective towards his wife’s public persona – maybe that’s not characterizing it quite right – but do you see evidence that there was some sort of a mutual agreement beforehand where she would keep a lower profile? That the two of them had agreed that she was going to stay in the house and raise the kids and there was a shift at some point?

MC: Linus seems to go in different directions on that. I mean there was one point in their early correspondence, their courtship correspondence, where he actually says “so are you going to study science and take a Ph.D.?” And I don’t know that he was just fooling around. He always believed – and bless his heart, because it’s not particularly true – but he always believed that she was brighter than he was. And I think in his heart he knew that he had the kind of mind that was a world changing mind. And that she had a really quick intelligence, without the kind of major suppleness of his.

And so she could have, I think, done any number of things. And later in her life she decided that she maybe should have, or at least had dismissed her possibilities too fast. And I think that’s right. I think that’s particularly correct because mothering is not the thing – I mean she made a job of it but not always a good job, it wasn’t really her thing. But I think that Linus, had she said “you know what, I need us to devote some of the family resources to my finishing college and I need to be a teacher or I need to be a lab assistant or I need to be a professor,” he would have probably said “okay then, let’s go in that direction.” That’s my guess. I think it was her set of priorities that she had, in a sense, hammered into herself and had hammered into her by the culture that a woman’s duty was to her husband and to raise beautiful, healthy children, that she kind of went in that direction. And led him to assume that she was going to do that.

Pauling family portrait, 1926.

And also I think it’s clear that she made it her job to push his career and that fit the culture for women at the time. I mean, to be ambitious for your husband was a fit with American culture at that time. So she kind of settled for that but, you know, you just watch her with these toddlers, you watch her with Linus Jr. in the early years, and she just doesn’t know what to do with this kid. And then you watch her with toddlers and she is overwhelmed at one point by three toddlers basically, three little kids, and it’s like, that’s not her thing. It’s just not her thing. She does it with energy and resolutely but it’s not her thing.

PB: Yeah. And then when Crellin came around it was really not her thing.

MC: No, exactly. And that really was unexpected and not particularly welcomed by her.

PB: Well this leads into the next question. The book is in part a family biography and that’s one of its strengths; could you talk a little bit about the family dynamics?

MC: Oh wow, yeah. I think, like most biographers, I didn’t look for the places where I connected with my own experiences but you feel them as they come along. And one of the places is – and a minister at the Unitarian church here in town helped me understand this in the context of the Pauling history, which was that they joined the Unitarian Fellowship in Los Angeles in the early ’60s but they connected up with that church in the ’50s. And they really, interestingly, represented a very strong cultural strand of humanism in the middle of the 20th century.

And part of that was an emotional style and a family style. It was rationalist: the kids will emerge as good citizens if we just give them good educations and launch them out on their own. And so a lot of the lack of warm fuzziness in that family jibed with the kind of ideology that they had absorbed or were comfortable with in terms of raising children. So the kids are really left very much on their own. The parents worry about them, they’re proud of them, they have concerns – are they really going to use their capabilities to the fullest extent? They worried about Linus because at one point Linus Jr. had – what was it, it was hilarious – I think it was an accordion for heaven’s sake and he wouldn’t practice. Well who of us had not had a kid who wouldn’t practice the accordion? I mean who would? But this was a serious concern for them.

The Pauling family, 1946.

And so Linus Jr. – and he’s told us this time and time again – Linus Jr. grew up with the assumption that he had to be a scientist. That was what he was expected to be, and of course it wasn’t his thing. He remembers actually reading psychology very early on and finding it fascinating but he was also interested in history and social science, he was a literature guy and none of that was really rewarded in this family. Plus his education was interrupted by World War II and all the confusion around that, so he never was allowed to, in a sense, put down roots in one place. And I think the longest he probably spent anywhere after Polytechnic in the early years in Pasadena was Harvard Medical School. So Linus Jr., the oldest child, had to emerge as his own person pretty late in life, and with a lot of kind of discouragement, both subtle and overt, from his parents. A lot of worry over who he was and who he was going to be.

And actually, I have to admit, this was very much my parents’ approach to life too and it’s a cautionary tale for me as the parent of teenagers. I watch Linus and Ava Helen raising Linus Jr. and the other kids and think “oh boy, I’ve got to start doing things differently at home.” Because all three of the boys came out with really kind of low self-esteem shall we say, wondering how they could ever fulfill the Pauling expectations. And part of it was Linus and part of it was Ava Helen, a big part was Ava Helen. And when her kids did not perform to specs she was tough, she was scornful, she had expectations. A lot of parents think that’s what we’re supposed to do as parents but having become very familiar with that family I have my doubts.

PB: Well there is a sense that Ava Helen may have come from a somewhat difficult background herself. It’s not as well documented.

MC: It’s not well documented at all. She was eight or nine when her father left the household so she was very young. Her sisters reported quite late in life that she was the favorite of the father who vanished but she never tracked him down. She met him, I think, maybe once more when she was a young woman and had just married Linus but there is no track record of her trying to reconnect with him, even though she apparently ends up with his politics, which is interesting.

Nora Gard Miller in front of the house that she maintained for her children on S. 15th Street, Corvallis, 1924.

I think her mom was a huge influence on her but I also think her mom was a heck of a lot more easy going in many ways than Ava Helen. But what her mom apparently instilled in her dozen children was a respect for education. I don’t know where that family got its resources but most of the kids went through OAC. Granted, Oregon Agricultural College was, relatively speaking, a lot cheaper than Oregon State University is today. But still, her mom came to Corvallis and rented a house here, while four or five of her kids went through school including Ava Helen. And she discouraged Ava Helen from an early marriage, wanting her to finish her undergraduate career.

The family history on her side is really sketchy. I think her sisters, particularly after she married Linus, kind of wanted her to stay in touch; there were polite sisterly relations among them. But Ava Helen also, I think, was a bit snobbish about the rest of her family and that was a point of difficulty. That really was.

Ava Helen Pauling: Partner, Activist, Visionary is available for purchase from the Oregon State University Press.

The Legacy of the Crellin Laboratory

Linus Pauling in his office, Crellin Labs, 1955.

[Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the Crellin Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.  Part 3 of 3]

By the late 1940s, the Gates and Crellin Chemistry Laboratories had emerged as a major center of research globally; all of this accomplished despite the fact that the Crellin labs only opened in 1938.  With the conclusion of World War II, the labs were able to transfer their research back to their original pre-war queue. In the case of the Crellin Lab, this meant a resumption of work on projects deemed important to the Rockefeller Foundation’s Science of Man agenda.

In January 1947, after the conclusion of the very productive war years and almost a decade after a massive explosion and ensuing fire which caused about $14,000 in damages, the Gates and Crellin Laboratories were inspected for safety. The review showed a marked improvement in conditions since the inspection that followed the August 10, 1939 fire. Indeed, the building had seen scarcely any lab injuries since 1946.

Nonetheless, safety inspectors remained concerned, mostly because the facility was lacking in chemical showers – first response equipment crucial in the event of human contact with acid. The inspectors likewise found that too many laboratory doors were kept locked, that the workshop lacked adequate guards on its machines, and that the library’s ladders were too flimsy. On the plus side, the housekeeping was rated as “excellent.”

The Crellin Laboratory, ca. 1938.

Within a few months of the inspection, a Barnstead purification system was installed on Crellin’s third floor to provide the chemistry labs with distilled water. The project wasn’t cheap – it was initially bid at just over $1,300 and Linus Pauling was infuriated when the contractor abruptly, and without explanation, increased this bill to $1,900. Regardless, the new addition was important, and helped the lab’s chemists to continue to improve upon their research.

In 1948 Pauling and his family moved to England for a two-term stay at Oxford University. Once everyone had settled in, Pauling took the time to write a friendly letter to Edward W. Crellin, the benefactor after whom the Crellin Laboratory is named.  ”Now that spring has come here,” he wrote, “and the weather is more like that in Pasadena, I myself find that I think about you more and more often, and wish that I could just come up the street in order to have a talk with you.”

Alas, this opportunity would never present itself as, in mid-May, Pauling received a telegram from back home informing him that E.W. Crellin had died. Shortly afterward, Pauling received another note saying that E.W. Crellin had left $5,000 in his will for Crellin Pauling, at eleven the youngest Pauling child.

By the 1960s, Caltech had fulfilled a prediction made by Max Delbrück in 1947:  it had become to biology what Manchester was to physics in the 1910s. A major reason for this was the capacity for work provided for by the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry. Their labs in organic chemistry and physical chemistry were used to help solve biological matters and had proven invaluable to science, especially to the Science of Man agenda.

In the roughly twenty years that Linus Pauling ran the labs, he increased the size of the departments using the space and boldly directed their activities as he saw fit. As with most periods of change, this era of progress was not without its discontents: some people felt that Pauling enjoyed being in the spotlight a little too much, and that this hindered collaboration. But few would even attempt to deny his effectiveness. That his tenure in Pasadena coincided with the flourishing of Caltech’s reputation is not a coincidence.

The Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry continue to stand as a globally renowned research center to this day. On the same token, Gates and Crellin also comprise the oldest facility still in use on the Caltech campus. The Gates portion of the structure was damaged in the 1971 San Fernando earthquake, but was rebuilt and revamped, and now remains a major component of Caltech’s research infrastructure. The Crellin wing currently houses laboratories in organic and bio-organic chemical synthesis, in addition to key departmental apparatus, specifically the nuclear magnetic resonance, electron paramagnetic resonance, and mass spectrometry facilities. While physical chemistry labs remain important in the space, now under the direction of Dennis Dougherty, organic chemistry research has taken on preeminence in the Crellin lab generally.

Jonas Peters, the Executive Officer of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech, (who was kind enough to answer our questions as we researched this piece) says that the future of the lab is dynamic and hard to determine, with projects and plans changing depending on the interests of its staff. Recently of note, a new biochemistry project was initiated in the Crellin Lab by Douglass Rees, one “dedicated to unlocking the mysteries of nitrogen fixation by the enzyme nitrogenase.”

Though the specifics are uncertain, it is apparent that the Crellin laboratory, now seventy-five years old, is thriving and will continue to provide useful and exciting research for many years to come.

Building the Crellin Lab (and keeping it standing)

Image of the Crellin Laboratory taken around the time of its dedication in 1938.

[Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the Crellin Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.  Part 2 of 3]

During the 1930s, the Biology and Chemistry departments of the California Institute of Technology grew substantially, in part because of major support received from the Rockefeller Foundation. One of the most visible and dramatic examples of this growth spurt was the new Crellin Laboratory of Chemistry, an addition to the older Gates Laboratory of Chemistry. The new Crellin lab was under construction by 1937, set to be finished in 1938.

Indeed, 1938 was a big year for Caltech. Largely because of the efforts of Linus Pauling, the Rockefeller Foundation donated the huge sum of $800,000 to support research. Of that substantial amount, $250,000 was set aside to fund work in the new Crellin and Gates labs for the following five to seven years. The entire effort was in support of the Foundation’s “Science of Man” agenda, a cultural and scientific enterprise which has since proven to be somewhat controversial, due to the fact that a guiding principle of the project was eugenics.

Support for the study of eugenics largely lost credibility in the United States (and globally), after World War II and the widespread practice of eugenics by the Nazis. Specific to the U.S. concern, Nazi leadership testifying at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials cited American eugenics programs as being an inspiration and justification for their own programs, a declaration that horrified many Americans. Despite this sudden and dramatic distaste for eugenics – as historian Lily Kay and others have pointed out – the Science of Man agenda remained intact well after World War II had ended.

But in the Depression years of the late 1930s, funding from the Rockefeller Foundation continued to be instrumental and Caltech continued to hold a privileged position. From 1930-1955, Caltech was one of six schools that received the lion’s share of the Foundation’s research money allocations. In that time, Caltech and the University of Chicago received $5 million, Stanford and Columbia University received $1 million, and Harvard and the University of Wisconsin received $500,000.

By early 1938, construction of the Crellin laboratory was complete. The new building was three stories tall with two basements and contained over fifty rooms. The second and third floors were entirely dedicated to organic chemistry, a major passion of A. A. Noyes’, while the first floor and basements were set aside for physical chemistry. The lab was dedicated on May 16, 1938, and immediately began working productively. The years 1938 and 1939 both proved to be very fruitful, with substantial amounts of useful research conducted. But this otherwise excellent record was marred in the summer of 1939 by a very scary incident.

Pauling’s notes on the 1939 explosion. Note the final sentence: “Koepfli heard the explosion at his home, nearly a mile away.”

On August 10, 1939, two Caltech researchers, Leo Brewer and Thurston Skei, were conducting an experiment in room 351 of the Crellin Laboratory. In the midst of their work the bottom of a container fell off, spilling six liters of liquid ether all over the floor. Brewer and Skei quickly cleaned the spill up, and checked to make sure the room was safe, which it appeared to be.

At that point, Skei left the room to attend to matters elsewhere, leaving Brewer alone. Five minutes later, a spark from a motor running in the building’s ventilation ducts ignited ether fumes, which had been sucked into the ventilation system. The air in room 351 quickly ignited, severely burning Brewer, who immediately, and fortunately, ran from the room. Three seconds later, the lockers, desks, and storage containers in room 351, filled with flammable gasses and liquids, exploded, destroying all the windows on that half of the floor and blowing apart the room’s main entry door as well as part of a wall. Additionally, five other rooms sustained damage from the explosion.

Leo Brewer, 1950.

As if that weren’t enough, the ventilation fans in the fume hoods in Crellin 351 sucked the flames upward into the hoods, which ignited another set of drums containing ten gallons of liquid ether, in turn starting a massive fire which spread to two adjacent rooms. The force of the explosion had also shattered almost every piece of glass on the entire floor and knocked over numerous storage shelves. As a result, various chemicals began to mix, and the entire third floor began to flood with poisonous gasses.

In quick response, graduate students and staff alike grabbed gas masks and fire extinguishers, and charged up to the third floor. Amazingly, they succeeded in containing the fire and prevented it from spreading into even more adjacent rooms, including the building’s library. They also managed to extinguish the burning walls in the main hallway. Not long after, the Pasadena Fire Department arrived, and firemen ran into room 351, which was furiously ablaze due to the drums containing the ten gallons of ether. The firefighters ripped 351′s fume hoods out of the wall with axes and eventually extinguished the last of the fire.

In the aftermath, Pauling passed along word of the explosion to several of his colleagues, though did his best to downplay it when communicating the news, seven days after the fact, to his main contact at the New York-based Rockefeller Foundation, Warren Weaver.

Perhaps you read in the papers that we had a fire in the Crellin Laboratory. Fortunately no one was injured and the damage was restricted almost entirely to the undergraduate organic laboratory, with very little research lost. We had complete insurance coverage and shall have the laboratory in shape for the students when the Institute opens next month.

In reality, the explosion and ensuing fire had destroyed almost $3,300 worth of equipment, and by the time the rather extensive repairs were done, the accident had cost about $14,000. Fortunately nobody was killed – Brewer was the only injury, and he made a full recovery. It is worth noting that lab fires were common enough at the time that the emergency procedures for the lab only required personnel to call the fire department if the staff and graduate students on hand couldn’t contain the fire themselves.

Regardless, Caltech quickly regained its footing. After the repairs were done, the labs continued with their research, and made major contributions during World War II and after.

The Origins of the Crellin Laboratory

Architectural schematic for the third floor of the Crellin Laboratory.

[Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the dedication of the Crellin Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.  Part 1 of 3]

By the early 1920s, the California Institute of Technology had become, in the minds of some, “the hub of America’s scientific establishments.” This point of prestige was especially notable because Caltech was so new and very geographically distant from other major scientific research enterprises, which were predominantly located on the east coast or around the Great Lakes region. Part of this success was due to the construction of the Gates Chemistry Laboratories, built in 1917 and expanded in 1927.

The prestige and skill exhibited by Caltech caught the attention of the very influential and wealthy Rockefeller Foundation, which began supporting certain of the Institute’s operations in the early 1930s.  This support was crucial for many reasons, one of them being that, by 1930, the Gates Laboratory had reached capacity. A.A. Noyes, chair of the Chemistry department at the time, commented that there was “literally no space for another research man,” and that greatly expanded facilities were exactly what the department needed to fulfill its vast potential. Linus Pauling, working in the Gates Lab, opined that the Institute was home to “the most forward looking Department of Chemistry with respect to physical chemistry in the world.” This was in no small part due to the superior leadership of Noyes, who had dramatically expanded the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering departments during his legendary tenure.

X-ray apparatus assembled on Linus Pauling’s desk in the basement of the Gates Laboratory, 1925. Pauling’s hat is seen in the rear of the photo.

The Rockefeller Foundation apparently agreed with Pauling’s assessment of Caltech’s capabilities, and in the early 1930s began to grant substantial funds to the Institute to further its leading positions in the fields of biology and chemistry. Specifically, the Institute held a key position in the development of a new field being pushed by the Foundation – a field described in 1938 as “molecular biology” by Rockefeller staffer Warren Weaver. Considering that the Great Depression was still in full swing, these additional funds were a godsend as research money was understandably difficult to come by.

In 1936, after some debate and controversy, Pauling was appointed the Chairman and Director of Caltech’s Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and also the Director of the Gates Laboratory of Chemistry, a position he held until 1958. Pauling was pleased with his increased responsibility and control, and decided that he wanted to revamp the department, and the labs in general, to better suit his vision for Caltech.

The Rockefeller Foundation agreed to provide Caltech with more money for purposes of expanding the Chemistry department and the Gates Lab. To this end, the Foundation also courted Edward W. Crellin, a retired steel magnate who lived in Pasadena. Fairly quickly, still in 1936, Crellin agreed to donate $350,000 – about $5.7 million in today’s dollars – in support of the construction of an expansion to the Gates lab, which was to be renamed the Gates and Crellin Chemical Laboratories. A year later, Crellin donated an additional $5,000 to provide floor coverings for the lab.

Edward W. Crellin.

Pauling was so pleased by Crellin’s contributions that he named his son, born June 4, 1937, Edward Crellin Pauling. Even though Edward Crellin and Crellin Pauling never got to know each other – Edward Crellin died when Crellin Pauling was only 11 – he was still flattered by Linus Pauling’s gesture, and left $5,000 in his will for Crellin Pauling.

The architects for the building initiative were Francis Mayers, Oscar Murray, and Hardie Phillip, and the project was expensive. In March 1937, Pauling received a memo from the Chemistry department that suggested cuts to the building, in order to reduce costs. The memo listed 29 suggested reductions that would lower the total cost by $47,039. The list also included three suggested additions, which would add $965 to the bill. His eyes firmly set on a world-class facility, Pauling agreed to consider only a few minor possibilities: “omit some ceiling inserts” ($240), “simplify water proofing on vertical walls” ($450), “omit birch strips on exterior walls” ($158), and “use skim coat plaster” ($200).

In addition to the building itself, outfitting costs for the new space were also high. The equipment required for the lab to function ran to $36,000 – $51,000, depending on the contractor. In addition, basic chemicals were an extra $1,200. The Chemistry department rejected Pauling’s request for more specialized analytical machines, as they would tack on an extra $4,500.

The process of bartering for and ultimately purchasing the materials that the new lab would need was slowed down in July 1937 by over three weeks, when Carl Niemann, a colleague that Pauling had entrusted to do much of the purchasing, was hospitalized. Niemann wrote in a letter to Pauling that he had gone to see a doctor because he had a chunk of rust embedded in the cornea of his left eye, “and the first attempt to remove it was not particularly successful.” He was then hospitalized and had to “have the disturbing element removed and the seat of the injury cauterized.” Despite the potential severity of the injury, Niemann made a full recovery, and the quest to secure the necessary chemicals resumed.

Once the needed equipment and chemicals had been secured, more attention was paid to the new laboratory’s décor, and Caltech had a bronze tablet cast. The tablet, which was eventually installed at the entrance of the lab, read simply: “Crellin Laboratory of Chemistry. The Gift of Edward W. and Amy H. Crellin. 1937.”

Out of Ashes, the Phoenix Rose

Linus Pauling Jr., October 14, 2011.

[Coda to our history of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine]

Linus Pauling Science Center grand opening Keynote Address, by Linus Pauling Jr., MD. October 14, 2011.

This is a very personal account of the background that has miraculously led to this wonderful, beautiful and exciting building, I title it: OUT OF ASHES THE PHOENIX ROSE.

It was back in the spring of 1991, just over 20 years ago now, that I sat down to talk with my father at his Big Sur ranch on the rugged California coast. For many years, in fact since my mother died a decade earlier, my wife and I had made a pilgrimage to the ranch to be with my father and celebrate our three birthdays, which fortuitously fell within a two-week period.

I had been on the Board since the Palo Alto Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine’s inception in 1973, so at our 1991 meeting I knew the situation had become desperate. My father, who for all his earlier life had been full of remarkable energy and ambition, now at 90 had lost that energy and was making mistakes in judgment. He was ill with the cancer that would kill him three years later.

LPISM was failing: half a million dollars of debt, laboratory research had vanished for lack of incentive and direction, donor income was being diverted to non-nutritional investigations, there were no research grants and morale was in the basement.

As his oldest son, I could not just stand by and watch this great man’s efforts of the past quarter century go down the drain, along with his reputation. If the Institute failed, all the naysayers would crow and describe him as a senile crackpot in spite of his astonishing lifetime achievements. Additionally, the thousands of donors over the years and the makers of future bequests would feel betrayed. It was obvious he needed help. As his son, I felt it was necessary to provide that help and it felt good to me to try.

So we had to talk. Early in my life I realized that my father was a very special person with talents I could never hope to emulate. That was emphasized by this story which I enjoy telling. When I was about 15, my father was writing an introductory chemistry textbook for Caltech freshmen, the best and brightest college freshmen, the cream of the crop. At the end of each chapter were questions. He asked me to read a chapter and answer the questions. I tried, valiantly, but I did not understand the text and could not answer a single question. When my mother heard about this, she hurried down to the Pasadena City Hall to have my name officially changed from Linus Carl Pauling to Linus Carl Pauling Jr. so no one could possibly mistake me for him.

At least I had sense enough to follow a very different track from my father, one that eventually gave me skills that now could be used to help him as my thanks to him for bringing me into the world.

It was now or never, so I boldly waded in. He and I discussed the future, starting with the past. I talked about his amazing life with his multiple triumphs in so many and so very diverse arenas.

His fame was world-wide, originating with the scientific community. I pointed out that he was arguably the first, and certainly the most successful, bridge-builder between chemistry, mathematics, physics, medicine and biology, linking these disciplines to create what is now the most popular science of all, molecular biology. One result of his creativity, hard work and dedication to science, as you all know, was the Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

It was during this time period that his interest in nutrition originated, spurred by his own life-threatening kidney disease. Thanks to a rigid diet prescribed by Stanford Medical School nephrologist Dr. Thomas Addis at a time long before renal dialysis, and carefully supervised by my mother, my father not only survived a usually fatal disease but recovered completely.

After World War II, prompted by my politically-liberal mother whom he certainly loved deeply and wanted to please, he embarked on a spectacularly successful two decades of humanitarian effort, educating the governments of the world and, necessarily, their peoples, about the evils of war and the dangers associated with unrestricted exposure to radiation, especially that produced by the hundreds of nuclear bomb tests being conducted. He suffered vilification by many from all parts of the world. He was hounded by the FBI and the United States government.

His crowning moment of glory, at least in my estimation, was his indomitable courage in confronting those nasty witch hunters, the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, when facing imprisonment when he refused to disclose the names of his ban-the-bomb United Nations petition assistants. He knew that these conscientious people, most of them scientists, would be less able than he was to defend themselves from accusations and loss of employment. The Subcommittee, when faced by my father’s public popularity, courage, remarkable memory and command of facts, then backed off, their collective tail between their legs. His world-wide influence was so extensive and the result so positive that he was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

So what was next for him? His old interest in nutrition as a factor in health and well-being resurfaced. Starting with vitamin C, he promoted nutrient research and encountered resistance from university, medical and government bureaucracies. He turned to the public, writing article after article and giving hundreds of talks, with the result of an explosion in popular food supplement usage. But research remained a fundamental necessity, so the private nonprofit Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine was founded in 1973 and initially showed promise.

By the time of our talk in 1991, LPISM’s outlook was dismal.

At age 90, my father was tired and dispirited. Being fully occupied with his own illness, he was unwilling to devote energy to coping with his Institute’s problems. I said to him that I could not in good conscience stand by and see his eponymous Institute go down in ignominious defeat. With his incredibly illustrious past, I felt strongly that he deserved more than that. And maybe, just maybe, I could do something about it.

We decided, together, that if the Institute, and also his reputation, were to survive, the best course of action was for the Institute to affiliate with a reputable university. That would ensure the rigorous scientific attitude and protocol necessary to legitimize micronutrient research in the future. And, most important of all, we had to be ethically responsible to the thousands of past, present and future donors who believed in my father and supported the Institute. We could not let them down.

I had just retired from 35 years of the practice of psychiatry, so I had the time and energy to devote to other endeavors. After discussion with my wife, I decided to offer to take over management of the Institute. I had to have my wife’s agreement, because I was planning to spend considerable time in Palo Alto, a long way from my home in Honolulu.

To his credit and with an audible sigh of relief, my father agreed. We discussed affiliation possibilities, Stanford and Caltech among them. He seemed, however, to favor Oregon State University, his undergraduate alma mater, to which he had already committed his scientific papers. If you haven’t already, you should check out the Pauling Papers at the OSU Valley Library Special Collections website. You will be impressed.

During the next years, I became President and Chairman of the Board of LPISM. We reorganized radically and survived many trials and tribulations. My essential second in command Steve Lawson and I visited many universities.

OSU, thanks to then President John Byrne, Development Director John Evey and Dean of Research Dick Scanlan, was our clear and undisputed choice.

And what a great choice it was! Here now, before us, 15 years later, is the Linus Pauling Science Center, dedicated to highest-quality research in scientific areas that would surely be of interest to my father. I’m sure, if he were here, he would have tears of joy in his eyes just as I do.

I want to thank OSU President Ed Ray, Dean Sherman Bloomer, LPI Director Balz Frei, architect Joe Collins, the many others in the system who have participated in making this possible, all the donors and the people of the great state of Oregon. I specifically thank the key major donors, Tammy Valley and Pat Reser, for allowing Linus Pauling’s name to be on this beautiful building. That is a very unusual act of generosity.

It will be a great future. Thank you all with my whole heart.

The End of One Era and the Beginning of Another

Welcome message from then OSU President Paul Risser, 1996.

[A history of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Part 6 of 8]

The beginning of the 1990s proved to be a typically chaotic time for the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Those early years saw the spectacularly fast rise and fall of the collaboration between Matthias Rath and Linus Pauling, ever increasing levels of debt and, in the nick of time, a major bequest which quite possibly saved the Institute from financial oblivion. As tumultuous as the situation had been, it was about to become more so.

In 1993 Steve Lawson’s title was changed from Executive Officer to Chief Executive Officer, though his duties effectively remained the same. At the request of Pauling, one of Lawson’s first actions as was to legally dissolve the Linus Pauling Heart Foundation. He dismissed all of the Heart Foundation’s employees and transferred the entity’s assets to LPISM. At the same time, the Palo Alto zoning law changes of which the Institute had been warned went through – the Institute finally needed to devise a solid idea of where they were going to move.

In the meantime, Lawson, looking to alleviate LPISM’s perpetual financial problems, began negotiating with the Elizabeth Arden beauty company on a deal that he hoped would greatly enhance the Institute’s well-being. Arden and its parent company, Unilever, were seeking research support and eventual endorsement from LPISM for an upcoming line of skin care products, which were infused with vitamin C.  Lawson was interested in both the financial and advertising benefit that might come from this deal, as the Institute badly needed to increase its exposure to a younger and wealthier audience.

The conversation was proceeding smoothly until Arden installed a new president, under whose watch the launch of the new products was mismanaged. This person only remained president for a short period, but the damage had been done. As a result, the deal between LPISM and Elizabeth Arden proved dramatically less prosperous than Lawson had originally hoped.

The Arden deal scrapped, the Institute’s administration encountered more bad news when they received notice that Matthias Rath was suing LPISM, alleging interference with his business practices. Following his departure from the Institute, Rath had encountered difficulty finding financial support for his vitamin C work, as some people assumed that he was trying to claim credit for Pauling’s research. One magazine in particular had published an extensive article on Pauling’s interest in vitamin C and cardiovascular disease and hadn’t even mentioned Rath.  LPISM asserted that Pauling had acknowledged Rath’s contributions in his interviews and that the Institute had no control over what various media outlets published. The lawsuit proceeded nonetheless.

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The year 1994 got off to a very bad start. Pauling’s health began to deteriorate markedly and he was forced to undergo treatment for his resurgent cancer, which had spread to his liver. At the same time, the lawsuit with Rath began to intensify while Pauling spent more and more time away from the office, choosing instead the tranquility of his ranch at Big Sur. By the summer, Rath’s lawyers were visiting Pauling’s bedside to try and hash out an agreement. For the Institute, most of the year was spent dealing with these two major issues, though it did arrange to host a conference in September.

Finally, on August 19, 1994, Pauling died at his ranch. The institute that he created and which bore his name instantly felt an intense drain on its morale. Lawson recalled employees sobbing in their work spaces and noted that many staffers felt directionless, unsure what would become of LPISM without its namesake. Ironically, the organization’s financial problems were a bit relieved by this turn of events, as a flood of memorial donations soon came in.

From this moment of darkness, the situation pretty quickly started to improve. The Institute went through with the scheduled September conference, titled “The Therapeutic Potential of Biological Antioxidants.” Many people attended – more than were expected – and the audience was thrilled with the content presented, responding very enthusiastically. In turn, more donations and support began to flow into the Institute’s coffers.

Steve Harakeh, Aleksandra Niedzwiecki and Steve Lawson at LPI’s September 1994 conference.

At the same time, the Institute received notification that another estate of consequence – the Finney estate – had been left to LPISM. This new revenue source, combined with the Swadener gift, allowed LPISM to effectively pay off its debts and even establish a small endowment to support moving the Institute. Coincidentally and almost simultaneously, a large number of bequeaths and other donations began pouring in, largely from donors cultivated years before by Richard Hicks.

The financial situation suddenly and vastly improved, Lawson and Linus Pauling Jr. began seriously hunting for a new location for LPISM. They began contacting universities all over the U.S., with decidedly mixed results. Frustrated, the Institute’s board even briefly considered closing down LPISM in favor of establishing a memorial chair at Caltech or Stanford.

However, Oregon State University eventually came forward and requested that LPISM relocate to Corvallis. In stating its case, the university stressed its historical connection with Pauling, as OSU was his alma mater and home to his papers, which were housed in the university library’s Special Collections. OSU’s argument also pointed out that its existing chemistry, health, and biomedical programs perfectly complemented LPISM and its research. Linus Jr. and Lawson agreed, and decided to move the Institute to the heart of the mid-Willamette Valley.

In retrospect, the death of Pauling and the decision to move to OSU might now be viewed as equivalent to the death and rebirth of the Institute itself. By the mid-1990s, a new home established and its finances in better shape, the Institute’s future looked brighter than it had in quite some time, despite the passing of its beloved founder.

A Tough Start to a New Decade

LPISM staff assembled for a group photo. To Pauling’s right are Emile Zuckerkandl, Ewan Cameron and Richard Hicks. By 1992, none of these three crucial staff members would remain affiliated with the Institute.

[A history of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Part 5 of 8]

For the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, the difficult decade of the 1980s was one plagued by lawsuits, dramatic monetary problems, and the death of Ava Helen Pauling. Yet for all of its struggles, LPISM soldiered on as best as it could.

One who would help define the decade to come, Dr. Matthias Rath, was a charismatic, intelligent, young German physician who had a passion for vitamin C and cardiovascular health. He had met Linus Pauling on numerous occasions, and in 1989 Pauling invited him to join the LPISM staff. Rath was charming and popular with many of his colleagues. However Pauling’s oldest son, Linus Jr. – a long-time Institute board member – took caution, noting in a 2012 interview his concern that Pauling would offer a position of importance to somebody that he felt was very inexperienced.

Two other major events occurred in 1990: Pauling and Zelek Herman developed a new method to analyze clinical trial data, and the National Cancer Institute installed a new president by the name of Samuel Broder. Pauling immediately began corresponding with Broder, and eventually convinced him to reopen the case for vitamin C as a treatment and prevention for cancer. This resulted in an international conference held in Washington D.C. in 1991 and sponsored by the NCI. It was titled “Ascorbic Acid: Biological Functions in Relations to Cancer.” Pauling was the obvious candidate for keynote speaker and he later said of the conference, “It was great! A great affair! Very exciting!”

Participants in the NCI symposium on Vitamin C and Cancer, Bethesda, Maryland, September 1991

At this same time, Pauling created a new position at LPISM for Rath, who was named the first Director of Cardiovascular Research. With this, Linus Jr. became even more concerned. Increasingly, he began to question his father’s administrative acumen and began taking steps to assume a more active role in the management of Institute, despite the fact that he lived in Hawaii.

Another big change was on the horizon as well. The city of Palo Alto was planning to change their zoning laws in an effort to increase residency, and informed LPISM that they had three years to find a new home. The Institute realized that the time allotted them was insufficient, and they began a campaign to delay the eviction.  Staff set up card tables in front of businesses, disbursing flyers and circulating a petition to keep LPISM where it was.

The positive response that they received from the locals was staggering and gave the Institute some measure of leverage in their conversations with the city. At one point, Steve Lawson was called before the city council, and one member said that she didn’t want to read in the New York Times that Palo Alto had kicked LPISM out of town. Eventually the council informed LPISM that the zoning law changes were still going to go through, but that the Institute would be granted more time to plan and relocate.

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On the research front, after almost two years of marketing Pauling’s superconductor domestically with no leads, Rick Hicks decided to look abroad for a buyer. He contacted parties all over Europe and Asia, and one day a man showed up at the office to inquire about superconductor sales. He identified himself as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had taken an interest as to why LPISM was trying to sell this research internationally, especially in Japan, instead of on the U.S. market.

Hicks was away from the office at the time, but other employees were able to explain how he had tried unsuccessfully to sell it domestically first. Steve Lawson later recalled the experience as having been a jarring one. Unfortunately for LPISM, they also failed to sell the superconductor abroad and, due to an oversight, misplaced the paperwork required to pay the royalty fee needed to maintain the patent, which they lost as a result.

While this was going on, Pauling and Rath published a paper defining vitamin C deficiency as the major cause of cardiovascular disease. It immediately caused controversy, but the authors stood behind their work and continued on. Once again, concerns about Pauling’s infatuation with vitamin C began to resurge in the scientific community.

Another blow to the Institute’s fortunes was delivered on March 21, 1991, when Ewan Cameron died. His passing rocked the staff and morale plummeted. Shortly afterward, Pauling was diagnosed with prostate cancer and had to undergo surgery. On top of all of this, the fiscal report for the end of 1991 showed that LPISM was hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Workers remained loyal however, and numerous employees volunteered to suspend retirement contributions or work at reduced pay to keep the Institute afloat. Despite this, LPISM was still forced to cut their staff in half by early 1992.

Meanwhile, Pauling and Rath continued to promote vitamin C for cardiovascular disease prevention and treatment, and despite continuing doubts about their individual claims, they began to see more support as the medical community gradually realized that it had been underestimating the value of vitamin C for decades. As their work progressed, Rath’s connection to Pauling continued to grow.

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In the spring of 1992, more change was clearly afoot when Emile Zuckerkandl’s contract with LPISM was not renewed. This was a controversial move, as Zuckerkandl was well-liked and respected by the staff. After his departure from LPISM, he founded his own institute, the Institute of Medical Molecular Sciences. He asked the Board of LPISM if he could lease space within LPISM for his new IMMS, a request that was granted.

Additionally, Zuckerkandl invited many of the LPISM staff who had been laid off to join IMMS. When he received news that Zuckerkandl was leaving, Rick Hicks, who by now was the Vice President for Financial Affairs, submitted his resignation as well. He had worked very closely with Zuckerkandl and wanted to follow him to other business ventures. The Board was surprised by Hicks’ resignation and the Institute didn’t want to lose its affiliation with him completely, so they elected him to the Board to keep him at least tangentially involved in LPISM. Happily, Hicks’ last act as an employee was to inform the Board that the estate of Carl L. Swadener had been bequeathed to the Institute and that it was valued at $2-3 million.

Linus Pauling Jr. was elected as the next Institute President, replacing Zuckerkandl. The organization that he took over was in grim shape, despite the windfall from the Swadener estate. As he assumed his new office, one of his top priorities was Matthias Rath. Amidst the recent shuffle, Linus Pauling had appointed Rath as Hicks’ replacement and at the same time the two had founded the Linus Pauling Heart Foundation, a separate and parallel organization to LPISM designed to focus on the Pauling-Rath cardiovascular disease research. These decisions were a source of concern to the Board and much of the staff, who were unsure if the Heart Foundation would be a competitor to the Institute, an arm of the Institute or a supporting organization to the Institute.

Overwhelmed by work, facing a serious illness and feeling his age, Linus Pauling officially retired from his leadership role at LPISM on July 23, 1992. In the wake of this announcement, the Board elected Steve Lawson as Executive Officer of the Institute, named Pauling its Research Director and Linus Pauling Jr. the Chairman of the Board. Linus Jr. immediately assumed a strong leadership role and, working closely with Lawson, aggressively pursued actions to solve the Institute’s numerous problems.

The two quickly decided that attaching LPISM to a university offered the best chance for its survival. At the same time, they realized that LPISM had become bloated and that they needed to pare back on the organization’s non-orthomolecular research, which had largely been created and expanded under Zuckerkandl’s leadership. While Linus Jr. and Lawson both agreed that the research was worthwhile, they also realized that the Institute simply lacked the funds to maintain it. Zuckerkandl had remained close to LPISM, and when almost all of his research programs were cut, he asked the researchers overseeing these programs to resign from LPISM and join IMMS, which many did.

While this was happening, tensions were mounting between Pauling, Linus Jr. and Matthias Rath. Pauling was informed that Rath had created an office for the Heart Foundation that was separate from LPISM, and that he had done so without permission and without even telling Pauling. He criticized Rath aloud for this decision, which only inflamed the situation.  From there, the speed with which the Pauling-Rath relationship soured was dramatic. In July, Rath was spending great amounts of time at Pauling’s home, and they frequently exchanged letters expressing a close friendship. By August they were hardly on speaking terms, and Rath was ultimately expelled from the Institute, asked to resign over a dispute involving intellectual property rights.

For all of the troubles of the 1980s, the ’90s were getting off to a rough start. The roller coaster ride would continue on in the time ahead, containing both the Institute’s darkest hours and its greatest triumphs.

LPISM in the 1980s

Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine staff portrait, 1989.

[A history of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Part 4 of 8]

In the spring of 1980, amidst a swirl of funding difficulties and legal actions, Emile Zuckerkandl was named President and Director of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. He quickly began working to expand LPISM into a more wide-ranging organization with a particular focus on cellular research. His leadership style was very different from the Institute’s previous presidents, but the staff liked him and generally supported his initiatives.

By this point, born of need, Linus Pauling’s relationship with the Institute began to assume a somewhat Faustian character. Pauling was contacted by, and began regularly meeting with, a man named Ryoichi Sasakawa to discuss future collaboration plans and possible donations. Sasakawa was a world-renowned philanthropist and famous businessman who had single handedly introduced and popularized motorboat racing in Japan. Sasakawa was also very controversial. An avowed fascist, he was an admirer of Benito Mussolini and a political strongman who had been charged with war crimes for his activities in support of the Japanese government during World War II.  He was also very wealthy and Pauling’s connection to Sasakawa would grow over time.

The summer and early fall of 1980 were largely preoccupied with the Art Robinson suits and fundraising. In August LPISM finally received some good news: the National Science Foundation had awarded the Institute a grant of $40,000 a year for two years to support research on the structure of molecules and complex ions containing transition metals. This provided a much needed financial boost, as finances were suffering greatly from the Mayo trials and the ongoing legal wrangling with Robinson.

The year ended somewhat stressfully when, in December, LPISM was forced to move from Menlo Park to 440 Page Mill Rd. in Palo Alto. The landlord of their building in Menlo Park had evicted all of his tenants while he was making structural repairs to the facility. Once completed, he decided not to welcome LPISM back, instead inviting more profitable companies to take their spot. The new building in Palo Alto was dramatically bigger and less expensive; it was also quite a bit shabbier, in part because it was made out of cinderblocks.  Employee Alan Sheets was able to help save the Institute a lot of money during the transition, as his father was a professional mover. As such, the Sheets family helped LPISM move itself instead of hiring the process out to a company.

Extracted from the LPISM Newsletter, Winter 1980.

The dawn of 1981 brought with it major financial relief for LPISM. After eight failed tries over eight long years, the National Cancer Institute finally agreed to fund a component of LPISM’s program – a two-year grant for $204,000 to research the effects of vitamin C on breast cancer in mice. At about the same time, Sasakawa’s company, the Japanese Shipbuilding Foundation, pledged $5 million to the Institute over the following ten years. As part of the deal, LPISM began working with Sasakawa to create the Sasakawa Aging Research Center, which was set up as a satellite facility on Porter Drive. Later in the 1980s, the building at Porter Drive suffered a major roof leak which destroyed thousands of pages of research and documentation. Thomas Hager, one of Pauling’s biographers, notes that LPISM successfully sued the landlord for neglecting to maintain the building.

Despite this influx of new cash, the close of 1981 proved to be an awful time for Linus Pauling and LPISM. In August, Ava Helen Pauling’s recurrent stomach cancer was declared inoperable and on December 7, after struggling with cancer for five years and three months, Ava Helen died. Linus Pauling was absolutely devastated, and the LPISM staff was greatly saddened by the loss as well. Pauling understandably did not cope well with the passing of the woman who was his wife for nearly 60 years, and he effectively ceased to be involved in LPISM except in the most cursory of ways, choosing instead to spend much of his time alone at his ranch in Big Sur, California.

The year that followed was, unsurprisingly, a tough one. Pauling remained in mourning and didn’t really contribute to LPISM, the Robinson suits dragged on, and the Institute’s fundraisers still struggled to cope with the fallout from the Mayo Trials. The NCI and Sasakawa donations helped to keep operations running, as did some of the revenue from Pauling and Cameron’s book, Cancer and Vitamin C. In the summer of 1982, Pauling took a trip throughout the Pacific Northwest where he visited many of his and Ava Helen’s favorite spots, as well as the cemetery where his maternal grandfather Linus Wilson Darling rested. The trip brought him closure and by the fall he became active at the Institute again.

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In February 1983, the lawsuits with Arthur Robinson finally ended, with LPISM paying an out of court settlement of $575,000. The Institute adamantly maintained no wrong doing, instead acknowledging the fiscal prudence of settling as opposed to prolonging the court battle, which was nearly five years old by that point.

Their legal problems resolved, LPISM fundraisers redoubled their efforts to regain their financial momentum, as the lawsuits had drained them of resources. Past fundraising techniques were unable to generate much steam, so Rick Hicks began cultivating relationships with individual, extremely wealthy donors, notably Armand Hammer, Ryoichi Sasakawa and Danny Kaye. As a part of this strategy, LPISM began annually awarding individuals – typically major donors – the Linus Pauling Medal for Humanitarianism. Sasakawa was its first recipient.

In November 1983, LPISM researchers announced that they had discovered a new type of chemical bond that mimicked the bond believed to exist between bulk metals. This was a fairly important discovery, and also helped restore some measure of favorable public opinion as people saw the good work that LPISM was doing. The announcement also reminded folks that LPISM wasn’t just about vitamin C research. The next year, in 1984, Pauling received the extremely prestigious Joseph Priestley Medal from the American Chemical Society for his lifetime of work and dedication in the field of chemistry.

However, the controversy over vitamin C was never far from the Institute and more arrived in a hurry when, on January 2, 1985, the Mayo Clinic released the results of its second set of trials. The Institute was given no warning of the release or chance to read the results in advance. This infuriated Pauling who saw it as an obvious insult levied by the study’s principal investigator, Charles Moertel.

Pauling Note to Self, January 14, 1985.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Moertel announced that the study had reaffirmed his earlier assertion that vitamin C was useless in cancer treatment. Upon reading the report though, Pauling deduced that Moertel hadn’t actually examined Ewan Cameron’s papers, the very studies he was supposed to be replicating. Among other deviations, the amount of vitamin C used in the Mayo trials was lower than in Cameron’s studies, the amount of time that patients had been given vitamin C was shorter and patients were given vitamin C orally instead of intravenously. Both Pauling and Cameron publicly branded the Mayo report as “fraudulent” and angrily decried the false assertion that Moertel had closely replicated their work.

Many journals and newspapers refused to publish Pauling and Cameron’s rebuttals, or published them months after they were submitted such that the responses were no longer relevant. As a result, LPISM suffered still more financial hardships as public opinion once again swung away from the Institute and many people stopped donating. The direct-mail appeals that had been so successful in years past were only bringing in 25% of what they had a few months previously.

By 1986 LPISM was struggling with funding and also public awareness – the second Mayo Clinic trial seemed to have largely sealed public opinion on vitamin C research. But Pauling was still convinced that vitamin C had more merit than was being considered, and in support of this cause he published How to Live Longer and Feel Better. The book was well-received by critics and sold well.

For the Institute, its successes were manifold, as it provided a morale boost to LPISM staff, brought in sorely needed funds and dramatically raised awareness of the organization and its activities. Shortly afterward, Cameron and fellow LPISM employee Fred Stitt found themselves swamped with phone calls and letters to the Institute about health questions and recommendations. They quickly developed a standardized health information packet which they would mail out to people making more generic inquiries.

Nonetheless, as always, controversy was hovering over the Institute like a thunderhead. In 1987 Institute staffer Raxit Jariwalla began to research the effect of vitamin C on HIV/AIDS treatment. After a short period of time, Pauling became interested in the research and eventually Cameron did as well. Pauling began advocating increased usage of vitamin C in treating what seemed to be an incurable disease; the response was immediate and dramatic. Local donations increased, as the Bay Area was particularly sensitive to the hazards posed by HIV/AIDS. However, at the very same time, other sources of funding dropped as numerous groups and individuals pulled their support, stating that HIV/AIDS was a “moral disease.”

Through it all, the Institute continued to follow Zuckerkandl’s lead in expanding its research into areas outside the realm of orthomolecular medicine. In 1987 researchers began extensive work on protein profiling and the effect of phytic acid in cancer prevention, a program that was more or less entirely supported by a philanthropist based in New York.

The Institute also began working on superconductivity in 1988.  In particular, Pauling hoped to develop a room-temperature superconductor which he could then market as a stable revenue source for the Institute. Zuckerkandl, Steve Lawson, Pauling and even Cameron began working on this project, which utilized a material made out of borosilicate glass and tin. The process involved using a blowtorch and an inverted bicycle with its tires taken off the wheels. Pauling would often come down to the labs and help with the physical research and experimentation – it was the last research project he actively participated in. The process worked and the material was developed according to Pauling’s specifications. He received a patent for it early in 1989, and immediately began trying to market it, though ultimately without success.

The decade of the 1980s drew to a close on a mixed note for LPISM. The organization was, as always, struggling with controversy and financial problems. However, research was progressing well, popular support was increasing, and Pauling had come to terms with the death of his wife. The decade had seen its ups and downs, and what lay ahead would be no different.

The Departure of Art Robinson and Fallout from the First Mayo Clinic Study

Art Robinson, 1974.

[A history of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Part 3 of 8]

By late 1978, the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine had reformed its fundraising strategy, an action which proved to be quite successful. As a result, for the first time in its five years of existence, LPISM was not struggling to keep its head above water.

This wave of good fortune carried with it unforeseen negative consequences. In particular, Rick Hicks and Art Robinson began to come into conflict over the best way to invest this sudden surplus. Robinson suggested that LPISM move to Oregon – which had recently announced “Linus Pauling Day” in honor of its native son – and build a campus of its own. The idea was not popular with many staff, most of whom did not want to leave the Bay Area.

At the same time, Robinson began cultivating ties with the Orthomolecular Research Institute in Santa Cruz, California, which was headed by Arnold Hunsberger. Linus Pauling was not pleased with this idea, as he felt Hunsberger’s research hypotheses to be off the mark. Pauling had also met Hunsberger and had said that his impression was “not a very favorable one.”

Robinson continued to press for closer ties between LPISM and ORI, a source of growing tension between him and Pauling. In particular, Pauling was angered when he learned that Robinson had begun to tailor experiments in accordance with Hunsberger’s ideas without first consulting Pauling. When confronted, Robinson defended his decision and redoubled his arguments for collaboration. Their relationship continued to sour and morale at LPISM plummeted as the tension between Pauling and Robinson mounted.

In June 1978, Pauling issued a memorandum to Robinson, ordering him to consult the Executive Committee - comprised of Pauling, Robinson, and Hicks – before making “any important decisions.” Robinson responded by immediately firing Hicks. Pauling responded in turn by overruling the termination and demanding Robinson’s resignation within thirty days. He then proceeded to issue a memorandum informing Institute staff that he had stripped Robinson of his position, and that the staff was to disregard all further instructions from Robinson. The next day, the staff arrived at work to find a second memorandum from Robinson, declaring that he was still the president, that neither Pauling nor Hicks had the authority to relieve him of his duties, and that he would not resign.

Pauling memorandum of July 10, 1978.

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The Board of Trustees met in mid-July to try and settle the dispute. They decided to place Robinson on a thirty day leave of absence, empowered Pauling with all executive authority and told him to resolve the issue. On August 15, with Robinson’s leave expired, Pauling was elected President and Director of LPISM. On August 16, Pauling promptly informed Robinson that he was taking over all of Robinson’s research, Emile Zuckerkandl was being appointed Vice-Director, and that Robinson was fired.

Now that Robinson was gone, LPISM attempted to consolidate and return to normal. Pauling asked Steve Lawson to assume a portion of Robinson’s research agenda, a request to which Lawson consented. Over the course of 1978, Lawson had steadily become less involved with the financial arm of LPISM and more involved with its scientific work. Zuckerkandl also tasked Lawson with setting up a cell culture facility where the two would conduct research on the differences between primary and metastic cancer cells, as revealed by protein profiling. Lawson worked closely with UC-San Diego, University of Colorado, and SRI International. He was later joined on that project by Stewart McGuire, Eddy Metz, and Mark Peck, all fellow employees at LPISM.

Robinson, however, did not take his firing lightly and on August 25, LPISM was informed that Robinson was suing the organization for $25.5 million, alleging a breach of contract and unlawful termination among other charges. LPISM’s lawyers began gearing up for a serious legal battle, standing firm in their conviction that the Institute had done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, the Institute’s vitamin C research continued on despite the added burden of the Robinson lawsuit. In early October 1978, Pauling convinced Ewan Cameron to accept a one-year appointment to LPISM while the two worked on a book about vitamin C and cancer. Additionally, Pauling, Cameron, Lawson, and their coworker Alan Sheets began an experiment to determine the effects of vitamin C on chemotherapeutic drugs. The research took the form of a toxicology experiment in which multiple groups of fish were subjected to chemotherapeutic agents in their water, after which various groups were given different amounts of vitamin C while the research team observed the results.

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The year 1979 started with good news. LPISM was informed by Hoffmann-LaRoche, the world’s largest producer of vitamin C, that they had seen sales more than double during the 1970s, and they fully recognized that Pauling was the cause. As a thank you, they had decided to donate $100,000 a year to the Institute.

The happy days were not to last long. In April, LPISM received an advanced release of the results of the major Mayo Clinic study on the treatment of cancer with ascorbic acid. Its primary investigator, Charles Moertel, had concluded that vitamin C did absolutely nothing to help cancer patients. Pauling was stunned and immediately began writing to Moertel to discuss the study in detail.

Then, over the summer, Art Robinson filed six more charges against LPISM and Pauling, bringing the total number of suits to eight and the total requested damages to $67.4 million. The year-long and highly publicized suit was greatly hurting LPISM’s reputation, and the Institute noticed a subsequent decrease in the donor funds flowing their way.

“Vitamin C Fails as a Cancer Cure,” New York Times, September 30, 1979.

Things then went from bad to worse when, on September 27, the New York Times published the Mayo Clinic study, definitively stating its conclusion that vitamin C was useless in treating cancer. Pauling immediately responded by pointing out that the patients involved in the test were undergoing cytotoxic chemotherapy, which he felt crippled their immune system. He also asserted that the trial was not conducted for long enough to develop accurate results.

Pauling’s response to the New York Times article, October 24, 1979.

Charles Moertel returned fire, defending his results and questioning Pauling, implying that he was fanatical in his zeal for vitamin C and refused to acknowledge the truth. Pauling and Moertel began exchanging volleys in public, writing articles and giving interviews that attacked the research and competence of the other. Unfortunately for Pauling, he took the worst of it, as many people began to agree with Moertel, thinking Pauling to be too enamored with vitamin C to see any negatives. Funding plummeted as donations shrank and LPISM began finding large numbers of grants rejected outright with no chance for an appeal.

Pauling refused to give up. Shortly after the New York Times article was released, he and Cameron published their book, Cancer and Vitamin C. Pauling personally bought 16,000 copies of the publication and mailed them to every member of Congress and to countless other physicians and researchers. This action helped Pauling’s cause significantly as many of the recipients read the book, or at least glanced through it. And even those recipients who didn’t read the text were made more aware of Pauling and his research. Likewise, in the marketplace the book sold well despite the bad reception it received from professional reviewers – the public seemed interested in Pauling and Cameron’s ideas.

In light of this, National Cancer Institute head Vincent DeVita agreed to a second round of trials. However, in doing so DeVita once again chose the Mayo Clinic to host the trials and chose Moertel to lead them. Pauling was furious with these decisions, an understandable point of view considering that he and Moertel had spent the past few months publicly accusing one other of being incompetent.  Pauling was also now without his co-author: their book completed, Ewan Cameron returned to Scotland to fulfill his duties at Vale of Leven Hospital. Before leaving, he was appointed a Research Professor at LPISM for a period of five years.

With a new decade approaching, the easier times of the mid-1970s were clearly gone and by early 1980 the future was once again uncertain. While the tensions evident during the Art Robinson era were now history, his lawsuits and the Mayo Clinic trials severely detracted from the future prospects of LPISM. Unfortunately for the Institute and Linus Pauling, their immediate future was not going to be a happy one.