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.”

Linus Pauling and the Structure of Proteins: A Documentary History

Today is Linus Pauling’s birthday – he would have been 112 years old.  Every year on February 28th we try to do something special and this time around we’re pleased to announce a project about which we’re all very excited: the sixth in our series of Pauling documentary history websites.

Launched today, Linus Pauling and the Structure of Proteins is the both latest in the documentary history series and our first since 2010′s The Scientific War Work of Linus C. Pauling. (we’ve been a little busy these past few years)  Like Pauling’s program of proteins research, the new website is sprawling and multi-faceted.  It features well over 200 letters and manuscripts, as well as the usual array of photographs, papers, audio and video that users of our sites have come to expect.  A total of more than 400 primary source materials illustrate and provide depth to the site’s 45-page Narrative, which was written by Pauling biographer Thomas Hager.

Warren Weaver, 1967.

That narrative tells a remarkable story that was central to many of the twentieth century’s great breakthroughs in molecular biology.  Readers will, for example, learn much of Pauling’s many interactions with Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Foundation, the organization whose interest in the “science of life” helped prompt Pauling away from his early successes on the structure of crystals in favor of investigations into biological topics.

So too will users learn about Pauling’s sometimes caustic confrontations with Dorothy Wrinch, whose cyclol theory of protein structure was a source of intense objection for Pauling and his colleague, Carl Niemann.  Speaking of colleagues, the website also delves into the fruitful collaboration enjoyed between Pauling and his Caltech co-worker, Robert Corey.  The controversy surrounding Pauling’s interactions with another associate, Herman Branson, are also explored on the proteins website.

Linus Pauling shaking hands with Peter Lehman in front of two models of the alpha-helix. 1950s.

Much is known about Pauling’s famously lost “race for DNA,” contested with Jim Watson, Francis Crick and a handful of others in the UK.  Less storied is the long running competition between Pauling’s laboratory and an array of British proteins researchers, waged several years before Watson and Crick’s breakthrough.  That triumph, the double helix, was inspired by Pauling’s alpha helix, discovered one day when Linus lay sick in bed, bored and restless as he fought off a cold. (This was before the vitamin C days, of course.)

Illustration of the antibody-antigen framework, 1948.

Many more discoveries lie in waiting for those interested in the history of molecular biology: the invention of the ultracentrifuge by The Svedberg; Pauling’s long dalliance with a theory of antibodies; his hugely important concept of biological specificity; and the contested notion of coiled-coils, an episode that once again pit Pauling versus Francis Crick.

Linus Pauling and the Structure of Proteins constitutes a major addition to the Pauling canon. It is an enormously rich resource that will suit the needs of many types of researchers, students and educators. It is, in short, a fitting birthday present for history’s only recipient of two unshared Nobel Prizes.

Happy birthday, Dr. Pauling!

The Building Blocks of Linus Pauling Day-by-Day

fig. 1 The technical workflow of Linus Pauling Day-by-Day

Any given page in the Linus Pauling Day-by-Day calendar is the product of up to four different XML records.  These records describe the various bits of data that comprise the project – be they document summaries, images or full-text transcripts.  The data contained in the various XML records are then interpreted by XSL stylesheets, which redistribute the information and generate local HTML files as their output.  The local HTML is, in turn, styled using CSS and then uploaded to the web.

Got all that?

In reality, the process is not quite as complicated as it may seem.  Today’s post is devoted to describing the four XML components that serve as building blocks for the calendar project.  Later on this week, we’ll talk more about the XSL side of things. (For some introductory information on XML and XSL, see this post, which discusses our use of these tools in creating The Pauling Catalogue)

Preliminary work in WordPerfect

The 68,000+ document summaries that comprise the meat of Linus Pauling Day-by-Day have been compiled by dozens of student assistants over the past ten years.  Typically, each student has been assigned a small portion of the collection and is charged with summarizing, in two or three sentences, each document contained in their assigned area.  These summaries have, to date, been written in a series of WordPerfect documents.

The January 30, 2009 launch of Linus Pauling Day-by-Day is being referred to, internally, as Calendar 1.5.  This is in part because of several major workflow changes that we have on tap for future calendar work, a big part of it being a movement out of WordPerfect.  While the word processing approach has worked pretty well for our students – it’s an interface with which they’re familiar, and includes all the usual advantages of a word processing application (spellchecking, etc.) – it does present fairly substantial complications for later stages of the work flow.

For one, everything has to be exported out of the word processing documents and marked-up in XML by hand.  For another, the movement out of a word processor and into xml often carries with it issues related to special characters, especially “&,” “smart quotes” and “em dash,” all of which can play havoc with certain xml applications.

Our plan for Calendar 2.0 is to move out of a word processing interface for the initial data entry in favor of an XForms interface, but that’s fodder for a later post.

The “Year XML”

Once a complete set of data has been compiled in WordPerfect, the content is then moved into XML.  All of the event summaries that our students write are contained in what might be called “Year XML” records.  An example of the types of data that are contained in these XML files is illustrated here in fig. 2.  Note that the information in the fig. 2 slide is truncated for display purposes – all of the “—-” markers represent text that has been removed for sake of scaling the illustration – but that generally speaking, the slide refers to the contents of the January 2, 1940 and August 7, 1940 Day-by-Day pages, the latter of which will also serve as our default illustrations reference.

fig. 2 An example of the "Year XML" mark-up for January 2, 1940 and August 7, 1940.

Cursory inspection of the “Year XML” slide reveals one of the mark-up language’s key strengths – it’s simplicity.  For the most part, all of the tags used are easily-understandable to humans and the tag hierarchy that organizes the information follows a rather elementary logic.  The type of record is identified using <calendar>, months are tagged as <month>, days are tagged as <day> and document summaries are tagged as <event>.

The one semi-befuddling aspect of the “Year XML” syntax is the i.d. system used in reference to illustrations and transcripts.  After much experimentation, we have developed an internal naming system that works pretty well in assigning unique identifiers to every item in the Pauling archive.  The system is primarily based upon a document’s Pauling Catalogue series location and folder identifier, although since the Catalogue is not an item-level inventory (not completely, anyway) many items require further description in their identifier.  In the most common case of letters, the further description includes identifying the correspondents and including a date.

Fig. 2 provides an example of three identifiers.  The first is <record><id series=”09″>1940i.38</id></record>, which is the “Snapshot” reference for the 1940 index page.  This identifier is relatively simple as it defines a photograph contained in the Pauling Catalogue Photographs and Images series (series 09), the entirety of which is described on the item level.  So this XML identifier utilizes only a series notation (“09″) and a Pauling Catalogue notation (1940i.38).

The two other examples in Fig. 2 are both letters.  The first is <record><id series=”01″>corr136.9-lp-giguere-19400102</id></record>, a letter from Linus Pauling to Paul Giguere located in the Pauling Catalogue Correspondence series (series 01) in folder 136.9, and used on Day-by-Day as the illustration for the first week of January, 1940.  Because the folder is not further described on the item level, there exists a need for more explication in the identifier of this digital object.  Hence the listing of the correspondents involved and the date on which the letter was written.

The second example is a similar case: <record><id series=”11″>sci14.038.9-lp-weaver-19400807</id></record>, used as the Day-by-Day illustration for the first full week of August 1940.  In this instance, however, the original document is held in Pauling Catalogue series 11, Science, and is a letter written by Pauling to Warren Weaver on August 7, 1940.

METS Records to Power the Illustrations

We’ve talked about METS records a few times in the past, and have defined them as “all-in-one containers for digital objects.”  The Pauling to Weaver illustration mentioned above is a good example of this crucial piece of functionality, in that it is used as a week illustration in the August 1940 component of the Day-by-Day project, and is also a supporting document on the “It’s in the Blood!” documentary history website.  Despite its dual use, the original document was only ever scanned once and described once in METS and MODS.  Once an item is properly encoded in a METS record, it becomes instantly available for repurposing throughout our web presence.

Just about everything that we need to know about a scanned document is contained in its METS record.  In the case of Day-by-Day, we can see how various components of the Pauling to Weaver METS record are extracted to display on two different pages of the project.  Fig. 3 is a screenshot of this page, the “Week Index View” for the August 7, 1940 Day-by-Day page (all of the days for this given week will display the same illustration, but will obviously feature different events and transcripts listings).  Fig. 4 is a screenshot of the “Full Illustration View,” wherein the user has clicked on the Week Index illustration and gained access to both pages of the letter, as well as a more-detailed description of its contents.

fig. 3 The "Week Index View" for the August 7, 1940 Day-by-Day page

fig. 4 The "Full Illustration View" for Pauling's letter to Warren Weaver, used to illustrate the first full Day-by-Day week of August 1940.

Below (fig. 5) is an annotated version of the full METS record for the Pauling to Weaver letter.  As you’ll note once you click on it, fig. 5 is huge, but it’s worth a look in that, among other details, it gives an indication of how different components of the record are distributed to different pages. For example:

• The Object Title, “Letter from Linus Pauling to Warren Weaver,” which displays in both views.
• The Object Summary, “Pauling requests that Max Perutz…,” which displays only in the Full Illustration View.
• The Object Date, used in both views.
• The Local Object Identifier, sci14.038.9-lp-weaver-19400804, which displays at the bottom of the Full Illustration View.
• The Page Count, used only in the Week Index View.
• Crucially, the 400 pixel-width jpeg images, which are stored in one location on our web server (corresponding, again, with Pauling Catalogue series location), but in this example retrieved for display only in the Week Index View.
• And likewise, the 600 pixel-width jpeg images, which are retrieved for Day-by-Day display in the Full Illustration View, but also used for reference display in the Documentary History projects.

fig. 5 An annotated version of the full METS record for digital object sci14.038.9-lp-weaver-19400804

An additional word about the illustrations used in Linus Pauling Day-by-Day

One of the major new components of the “1.5 Calendar” launch is full-page support for illustrations of ten pages or less – in the 1.0 version of the project, only the first page of each illustration was displayed, no matter the length of the original document.  Obviously this is a huge upgrade in the amount and quality of the content that we are able to provide from within the calendar.  The question begs to be asked, however, “why ten pages or less?”

In truth, the ten pages rule is somewhat arbitrary, but it works pretty well in coping with a major scaling problem that we face with the Day-by-Day project.  Users will note that the “Full Illustration View” for all Day-by-Day objects presents the full page content (when available) on a single html page, as opposed to the cleaner interface used on our Documentary History sites.  There’s a good reason for this.  In the instance of the Documentary History interface, essentially two html pages are generated for every original page of a document used as an illustration: a reference view and a large view.  This approach works well for the Documentary History application, in that even very large objects, such as Pauling’s 199-page long Berkeley Lectures manuscript, can be placed on the web without the size of a project exploding out of control – the Berkeley Lectures comprise 398 html pages, which is a lot, but still doable.

Linus Pauling Day-by-Day, on the other hand, currently requires that the full complement of images theoretically comprising an illustration be used, specifically, for each unique day of the week for which an image is chosen.  In other words, if the Berkeley Lectures were chosen to illustrate a week within the calendar, and the full content of the digital object were to be displayed for each day of that week using the same clean interface as a Documentary History, a sum total of 2,786 (199 x 2 x 7) html pages would need to be generated to accomplish the mission.  For that week only.  Obviously this is not a sustainable proposition. By contrast, the current version 1.5 approach always requires 7 html pages for each week, though full image support and super-clean display are sometimes sacrificed in the process.

Calendar 2.0 will deal with the issue using a database approach, but again, this is a different topic for a different time.

Last but not least, TEI Lite

We’ve discussed TEI Lite in the past as well and will not spend a great deal of time with it here, except to reiterate that it is a simple mark-up language that works well in styling full-text transcripts and other similar documents for the web.

There are nearly 2,000 TEI Lite documents included in Linus Pauling Day-by-Day, virtually all of them transcripts of letters sent or received by Linus Pauling.  Transcript references within the Year XML are illustrated in fig. 2 above – they follow the exact same naming convention as our METS records, except that the mets.xml suffix is replaced by tei.xml.  It is worth noting that rough drafts of most of the text that was eventually encoded in TEI for the Day-by-Day project were generated using OCR software.  And while OCRing has improved mightily over the years, it still does have its quirks, which is why some of you might find, for example, the lower-case letter l substituted for by the number 1 in a few of the transcripts currently online. (we’re working on it)

The TEI Lite mark-up for the Pauling to Weaver letter is illustrated in fig. 6, as is, in fig. 7, the encoding for the biographical chronology (written by Dr. Robert Paradowski) used on the 1940 index page.  Note, in particular, the use of <div> tags to declare a year’s worth of information in the Paradowski mark-up.  These tags were included as markers for the xsl stylesheet to pull out a given chunk of data to be placed on a given year’s index page.  The entire Paradowski chronology will be going online soon, and once again that project, as with Day-by-Day, will be generated from only this single record.

fig. 6 The TEI Lite mark-up for Pauling's August 7, 1940 letter to Warren Weaver.

fig. 7 The TEI Lite mark-up for one year of the Paradowski chronology

Custom XML, METS records and TEI Lite – these are the building blocks of Linus Pauling Day-by-Day.  Check back later this week when we’ll discuss the means by which the blocks are assembled into a finished website using XSL stylesheets.

Pauling and the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation administrator Warren Weaver.

“We are … particularly gratified that the Institute has found it possible to make a substantial contribution which will enable you to direct a larger proportion of our aid to the study of the substances of fundamental biological importance.”
- Warren Weaver to Linus Pauling, December 27, 1934.

It is obvious from much of his scientific work that Linus Pauling possessed a brilliant and uncanny ability to think across and between disciplines. Pauling was also a pragmatic and often business-like researcher who understood the necessity of securing financial support for his projects. The long and fruitful relationship Pauling maintained with the Rockefeller Foundation – and, in particular, a Rockefeller administrator named Warren Weaver – made possible much of Pauling’s most groundbreaking work on hemoglobin and structural chemistry. The full force of this intellectually-fruitful relationship reveals both the importance of interdisciplinarity in scientific work as well as the essential nature of active and timely funding.

Pauling received his first grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in 1932 for a program of research in structural chemistry. Shortly thereafter, in the fall of 1933, Pauling applied for and later received a three-year grant from the Foundation to support his experimental researches.  Pauling’s proposal was bolstered by his recent work in electron and X-ray diffraction, and held great promise of continued theoretical development in the study of the electronic structures of molecules.

In 1934 Pauling received more funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, this time in support of his hemoglobin research. He proposed to study hemoglobin in part because he understood that a great deal of general interest lay in the biomedical application of theoretical chemistry.

It is also clear that Pauling was, at least to a degree, shifting his research focus to match the lines of inquiry that the Foundation was interested in funding. In 1986, Pauling would note

…I’d had one elementary course in organic chemistry and no biochemistry. Didn’t know much about these things. I was getting support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Warren Weaver said to me, “Well it’s alright. We’ve been giving you some money to determine the structure of the sulfide minerals. But the Rockefeller Foundation isn’t really interested in the sulfide minerals. We’re interested in biological molecules and life.” So I said, “Well, I’d like to study the magnetic properties of hemoglobin and see whether the oxygen molecule loses its paramagnetism when it combines with the hemoglobin molecule.” So they said, “Alright, we’ll give you more money.”

And so it was, more or less, that Pauling’s hemoglobin work received Rockefeller support on the order of $70,000 per year circa 1940.

Listen: Pauling discusses the roots of his relationship with the Rockefeller Foundation

Pauling not only sought and gained special assistance from Rockefeller funds, but Rockefeller personnel also contributed to the development of his hemoglobin work throughout the 1930s. Alfred E. Mirsky, a professor in cell biology at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, was one of the first individuals with whom Pauling discussed potential hemoglobin research. Pauling quickly developed a personal friendship with Mirsky and clearly held his colleague in very high regard as a scientist. In a 1944 letter recommending Mirsky for a position at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Pauling wrote

I do not know any one who is so keenly interested in the development of the field of science involving the applications of chemistry and physics to borderline problems of biology, and especially of genetics, and who has such a penetrating understanding of the work which has been done. I find that every conversation which I have with Dr. Mirsky gives me some valuable idea. He has a masterly ability to coordinate results into a significant whole.

Alfred E. Mirsky

Indeed, over the years Pauling gave a number of lectures at the Rockefeller Institute and continued to benefit from a wide array of academic and personal relationships that began with the Foundation. The Foundation also continued to fund Pauling’s work well into the 1950s, contributing mightily to the “big science” phenomenon that helped define academic research following World War II.

The Rockefeller Foundation was pioneering in its recognition of the importance of supporting interdisciplinary work; in particular, it actively sought to foster research between biology and chemistry. In many ways, Pauling with the prototype scientist that the Foundation was looking to support. Looking back, few can deny the impact that this partnership made on the history of twentieth century science.

For more information on Pauling’s relationship with the Rockefeller Foundation, see the website It’s in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin, Sickle Cell Anemia. We also strongly recommend the book The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology (1993), written by the late Dr. Lily Kay.

Pauling’s Methodology: Electrophoresis

Diagram of a Tiselius electrophoresis apparatus.

[Electrophoresis image extracted from the published version of Arne Tiselius' Nobel lecture, December 13, 1948.  A digitized version of this lecture is available here courtesy of the Nobel Museum.]

“The item of $7,500 for apparatus, supplies, animals would permit us to use the large number of animals required for some of our projected researches, and should permit also the construction of a Tiselius apparatus for the electrophoretic separation of antibody fractions by the suggested method of combination with charged haptens, and for other investigations.“
- Linus Pauling, budget request letter to Warren Weaver. January 2, 1941.

Though, by the late 1930s, X-ray crystallography had become important to Linus Pauling’s research on the structure of complex organic proteins, the newly developed technique of electrophoresis eventually became the technology that defined his work on sickle cell anemia.  Indeed, Pauling was one of the first in a generation of scientists to effectively use the technique of electrophoresis to explain a biological phenomenon.

Lying at the core of Pauling’s interest in sickle cell disease was this question: What really made normal hemoglobin and the hemoglobin from someone suffering from sickle cell anemia different? Though Pauling and his fellow researchers theorized that the answer lay in differences between the structures of the hemoglobin molecules themselves, and also figured that magnetic properties somehow played a role, they had yet to find or develop a method suitable for testing their ideas.

As it turned out, Pauling and his colleagues had to do both: they found and they developed.

The Pauling group seized upon the new technique of electrophoresis but manipulated it considerably to fit their own research agenda. Pauling attributed the idea of using electrophoresis in the first place to one of his graduate students, Harvey Itano. Later Pauling and Itano sought advice, assistance and collaboration with others who were also using the technique, including Karl Landsteiner and Arne Tiselius, both accomplished researchers and close colleagues of Pauling’s. After the construction at Caltech of an electrophoretic machine, Stanley Swingle, a general chemistry instructor at the Institute, developed a number of mechanical improvements while Harvey Itano and Seymour Jonathon Singer conducted research using the apparatus.

After much trial and error, electrophoresis emerged as one of the more important experimental methods used to determine the difference in electrical charge between normal hemoglobin and sickle cell hemoglobin.

Listen:  Pauling discusses the evolution of electrophoresis work at Caltech

The results of Pauling’s electrophoretic experiments, reported in his group’s groundbreaking 1949 paper, “Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease,” promoted the argument that sickle cell anemia was not only a pathology resultant of differential protein folding patterns, but that it was also inherited in a simple Mendelian pattern. In other words, sickle cell anemia was both ‘molecular’ and ‘genetic,’ and by seeing it as such, Pauling suggested certain therapies that directly addressed both the structural and the genetic components of the disease.

Even as late as the 1960s Pauling was still looking for ways to use electrophoresis in his research. He mentions, in a handwritten note, that of the ‘likely developments’ in biology, control of molecular and genetic diseases could possibly be obtained through the “electrophoresis of sperm.”

Notes by Linus Pauling: "Biology - what are the likely developments?" 1960s.

(Though the idea may sound strange today, Pauling was an advocate for the controversial notion of positive eugenics — that is the planned and controlled production of healthy offspring, primarily through genetic counseling. We’ll talk more about this component of Pauling’s thinking in a later post.)

In more ways than one, electrophoresis was a new technology that required the coordinated effort of a number of trained individuals. Though it took several years to fine-tune both the method and the instruments, the results were well worth the wait.

To learn more about Linus Pauling’s use of electrophoresis, please visit the website It’s in the Blood!  A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia.

The Pauling Point

Linus Pauling, in lecture at the California Institute of Technology. 1935

“[Pauling] has a speculative mind of the first order, great analytical ability, and the genius to keep in close and inspiring touch with experimental work…. He…is nearly universally rated as the leading theoretical chemist of the world.“
- Warren Weaver. Weaver diary notes, October 1933, as referenced in Force of Nature, by Tom Hager, p. 187.

Linus Pauling was known for what his students referred to as the “Pauling Point” – the notion that a problem is best analyzed and solved by examining the broadest possible picture without distorting the details.

Pauling, in other words, believed that by looking too closely at a problem, one could become lost in a mass of variables. On the other hand, should an investigator fail to examine a problem closely enough, its unique properties would fade from view. The intersection then, of “too close” and “not close enough” is “The Pauling Point.”

What follows is a philosophical discussion, written by Pauling, that demonstrates his unique – not to mention long-held – approach to problem solving.

I remember when I was 11 years old that I asked myself what evidence I had that the rest of the world existed anywhere except in my consciousness. I could not think of any convincing evidence to the contrary. I was in danger of becoming a solipsist – I am not sure that I should say that I was in danger, but there was the possibility that I might have accepted this as a philosophy.

As I continued to think about the problem, however, I recognized that the world as it presented itself to my senses seemed to be essentially symmetrical in its relation to me and to other young human beings, such as other students in the grammar school I was attending. This symmetry involves so many facets as to cause me to conclude that, despite the special relationship that my own consciousness had with me (in my interactions with the rest of the universe, as it presented itself to my senses), it was highly probable that I myself did not occupy a unique position in the universe. The actions of individual human beings influence the history of the world.

This fact is especially clearly recognized when we think about the influence that rulers and politicians have had on the history of the world – such people as Julius Caesar, Hitler, Abraham Lincoln. A writer such as William Shakespeare and a discoverer such as Christopher Columbus have clearly changed the world in such a way as to have influenced in a striking manner a tremendous number of people who have lived since their times. Actions taken by what might be called ordinary people have no doubt also had a large effect on the history of the world, even though we are not able to document such effects.

On thinking about this whole question, I recognize that my questioner probably was correct in formulating the basis of his question to me; that is, in saying essentially that I had changed the lives of millions of people. This thought gives me satisfaction, but I do not feel that I should claim special credit for my actions. I have acted in response to my education, my environment, and other factors, especially the influence on my thinking of ideas and convictions expressed by my wife. I have never had the feeling of being a martyr or of sacrificing myself, nor have I had the feeling of being ordained or selected in any way to assume a special position among the billions of people who have lived on earth.

There is one question, however, that raises itself in my mind from time to time, and to which I do not know the answer. This question deals with the theory of probability. My career has been unique. In a sense, the life of every human being is unique, but it seems clear to me that I have had the good fortune to lead a life that is significantly different in quality from that of most other human beings. Perhaps one person in a million, or one person in a hundred thousand, or one person in ten million can be said to have led a life that differs as much from that of most other human beings as mine. Yet I myself – my consciousness, my ego – am associated with this unique life that I have led.

The question that I ask myself is why this consciousness, which is I, should be associated with this life, rather than with one of the hundred thousand or million or ten million other lives that would have provided less satisfaction to me. If I were a solipsist, and able to determine the nature of the imagined universe about me, I might well have determined I in just the way that I have in fact experienced it.

But I am not a solipsist – I believe that I am a human being, like other human beings. Accordingly the problem of my identity remains, to puzzle me.

(Linus Pauling, 1981. As referenced in Mead, Clifford and Thomas Hager. Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2001. 236-37.)

While Pauling most often applied his trademark technique to the sciences, as seen above, he could apply it to virtually any subject, even as a child. Where others might have become lost in the paradoxes imbued within concepts like “reality” and “self-awareness,” Pauling was able to remove himself from the equation to the point where he could arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. This technique would characterize his life’s work, resulting in some of the most important discoveries of the twentieth century.

“One could say that Pauling’s ‘failure’ was to plant a lot of seeds, basic ideas, without working them out fully…. As soon as Slater gets an idea he works it out to the end before he gets a new one. But that is also dangerous, of course, because you look at the trees and you don’t see the forest…[Pauling] looks at the forest and lets other people…work out the specific individual things in detail; he has a terrifically lively intellect, reading [Pauling's] paper, the information here is just tremendous, the ideas flow out of the pen, and there are several lifetimes of work…to be done.”

(Sten Samson. Interviewed by Anthony Serafini for Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science. 1984.)

More “facets of Linus Pauling” are available in Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker, now available in paperback from Oregon State University Press.