The Guggenheim Trip, Part III: Unexpected Colleagues

“The paper of Heitler and London on H2 for the first time seemed to provide a basic understanding, which could be extended to other molecules. Linus Pauling at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena soon used the valence bond method. . . . As a master salesman and showman, Linus persuaded chemists all over [...]

The Guggenheim Trip, Part II: The Growth of a Scientist

“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 [...]

Our Newest Addition: Pauling-Goudsmit Letters

“Goudsmit and I were never together, I think, during the period when [The Structure of Line Spectra] was written. He would write a draft of some material that he thought ought to go in the book and then using that as a basis I wrote the corresponding sections of the book.”
- Linus Pauling. AHQP (Archive [...]

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

“I learned mathematics from Born and physics from Bohr, and from Sommerfeld I learned optimism.”
- Werner Heisenberg
While the Bohr-Sommerfeld atom had proved revolutionary in the mid-1910s, a decade later the model was considered disordered and highly paradoxical. For years, researchers had tried to rebuild mathematics to fit the atomic model of the day.
Instead of [...]

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 [...]

A Classic of Twentieth-Century Science: The Nature of the Chemical Bond

“I have just returned from a short vacation for which the only books I took were a half-dozen detective stories and your ‘Chemical Bond’. I found yours the most exciting of the lot.”
- G.N. Lewis. Letter to Linus Pauling. August 25, 1939.
In the fall of 1930, Pauling began work on a determination of the structure [...]

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 [...]