Pauling and the Nobel Prize Trip

“I doubt that many Nobel Prizes have been so popular with the masses in science…. [A]lmost all are delighted that the Nobel Prize embarrasses the State Department.”
- Charles Coryell in a letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer, as referenced in Force of Nature, by Tom Hager, p. 451. November 2, 1954.
In 1954, Linus Pauling was awarded [...]

The Road to Stockholm: The Appalling Life of Linus Pauling

“Dr. Linus Pauling is the man for me / He makes violent changes in my chemistry / Oh, fie, when he rolls his eyes / All my atoms ionize.”
- Chemistry-Biology Stock Company, C.I.T.. Song lyrics from “The Road to Stockholm.” 1954.
Since Linus Pauling’s revolutionary work in chemistry in the early 1930s and the subsequent publication [...]

Linus Pauling and the Birth of Quantum Mechanics

“My year in Munich was very productive. I not only got a very good grasp of quantum mechanics — by attending Sommerfeld’s lectures on the subject, as well as other lectures by him and other people in the University, and also by my own study of published papers — but in addition I was able [...]

Featured Website: Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond

“I consider that the field of work in which Dr. Pauling is engaged, namely the study of the chemical bond and of valence from the standpoint of modern physics, is the most important line of research in theoretical chemistry today; and I venture to believe that there is no one in the world who in [...]

Tax Day, Linus Pauling-style

“I have become rather like King Midas except that everything turns not into gold but into a circus.” -Albert Einstein.
In honor of April 15 – the dreaded Tax Day – we here at the PaulingBlog would like to share a brief anecdote regarding Linus Pauling’s own experiences with the Internal Revenue Service. In [...]