Symposia and the Peace Ship: Pauling in Latin America, 1980s.

[Part 5 of 5] The 1980s were a very busy decade for Linus Pauling with regards to trips to Latin America. Over the course of the decade, he attended various scientific symposia in Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela, and also participated in a variety of peace activities – delivering a peace talk in Colombia, meeting with [...]

Women’s Liberation, a Cruise to Acapulco and a Visit to Cuba: The 1970s

[Part 4 of 5] After visiting Chile for the Technical University’s Summer School in 1970, Linus and Ava Helen Pauling traveled to Latin America several more times throughout the decade.  In July 1970, Ava Helen visited Bogotá, Colombia on a rare solo trip, to participate in the Third Congress of Women of America. The Congress [...]

John Yudkin, Linus Pauling and the Sugar Question

“In my book I say you shouldn’t eat sweet desserts, but I also quote a professor who says that this doesn’t mean that if your hostess has made this wonderful dessert you should turn it down.  My wife used to say I always looked for that hostess.“ -Linus Pauling, 1987. Linus Pauling and John Yudkin [...]

Ryoichi Sasakawa

Ryoichi Sasakawa was among the most controversial of Linus Pauling’s many acquaintances.  To this day, opinions on Sasakawa tend to polarize: a politician, successful businessman and generous philanthropist, he was also considered by many to be a war criminal.  Many Japanese also referred to him as “kuromaku,” a shadowy force behind the visible power of [...]

Akira Murata

A year before being introduced to Fukumi Morishige‘s work, Linus Pauling was paying close attention to research being conducted by another Japanese colleague, Dr. Akira Murata, who was studying the inactivation of viruses by vitamin C.  Over the coming years, Morishige and Murata often worked together on research related to vitamin C.  And as with [...]

Fukumi Morishige

Dr. Fukumi Morishige, a chief surgeon of the Fukuoka Torikai Hospital for over thirty years, introduced himself to Linus Pauling via letter in 1975.  In this initial outreach, the Japanese physician informed Pauling of his own research on vitamin C, asking to meet with him when Pauling visited Japan later that year. Pauling did indeed [...]

Later Japan

Sixteen years passed between Linus Pauling’s participation in the 1959 Hiroshima Conference and his next visit to Japan in Fall 1975.  And while the 1975 trip largely dealt with his findings and research on Vitamin C – a common theme for many of his travels to East Asia and elsewhere – some of his time [...]

Chris Hables Gray, Resident Scholar

Dr. Chris Hables Gray, professor at the Union Institute and University and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the fourth individual this year to complete a term as Resident Scholar in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center.  Dr. Gray is a self-described “anarchist, feminist, post-modernist” who has written widely on a [...]

Biochemical Individuality

[Part 4 of 4 in a series on Vitamin C and the Common Cold] Toward the end of his book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, Linus Pauling included a chapter on human biochemical individuality.  In it, he addressed the fact that every human is different, and as a result, each individual has a unique [...]

Vitamin C Deficiency in Humans: An Issue of Evolution?

[Part 3 of 4 in a series on Vitamin C and the Common Cold] In the chapter “Vitamin C and Evolution” from his book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, Pauling wondered about the reasons why the rest of the animal world can synthesize vitamin C, while human beings, along with a very small group [...]