Goodbye Cliff

Today marks the final day in the office for Clifford Mead, the only Head of Special Collections that Oregon State University has ever known. He is retiring after twenty-four years of service to OSU Libraries, a time during which the institution has experienced tremendous growth.

When Linus Pauling donated his papers to OSU in April 1986, there was no Special Collections unit in what was then known as the Kerr Library. Recognizing that this major new acquisition required its own department, the library soon hired Cliff from Keene State College in New Hampshire to oversee the monumental task of shepherding the Pauling Papers into usable form. Items flowed from at least four different locations to Corvallis (and to a warehouse in Albany, as the original Special Collections facility was not large enough to house the archive) and the staff went to work.

In the two decades that followed, the more than 4,400 linear feet of materials that comprise the Pauling collection have been arranged, described and made available, many of them in digital form. (Currently, fourteen online resources related to Pauling, including this blog, have been released by the OSU Libraries Special Collections.) At the same time, the department has added more than two dozen ancillary book and manuscript collections, most of which focus on the history of science and technology in the twentieth century.

Linus Pauling, Cliff Mead and members of the Special Collections student staff. 1987.

With Cliff’s retirement, the library loses its last employee who worked closely with Linus Pauling. So too will it lose a wealth of knowledge concerning the history of the book, for Cliff is surely among the region’s most capable evaluators of rare book collections. Cliff has headed the organization of three conferences of international import, overseen the awarding of six Pauling Legacy Awards and coordinated the month-long visits of five Resident Scholars. In twenty-four years, he has attended countless meetings, led innumerable tours and taught scores of classes, acting always as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic ambassador for Special Collections.

As an emeritus professor, Cliff plans, among other pursuits, to continue working on a book project of his own and to follow his beloved Yankees with the same energy that he has devoted to his professional work. To those of us on staff in Special Collections, he will remain a generous mentor, gracious colleague and loyal friend.

Oregon State University has released an official press release announcing Cliff’s retirement, the text of which is appended below. For those interested in watching Cliff in action, check out this ten-minute tour of our facility, recorded in 2008.

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CORVALLIS, Ore. – Clifford Mead, an expert on the life of one of Oregon State University’s most celebrated alumni, Linus Pauling, and the man responsible for the growth of OSU Libraries’ world-class collections, is retiring after 24 years at the university.

Mead, who is head of Special Collections for OSU Libraries, will retire Jan. 1. His expertise in special collections administration has resulted in the development and growth of a collection that serves as a resource not only for the OSU community but for scholars from across the globe.

Mead has dedicated himself to making the OSU collections available to the public, explained Mary Jo Nye, the Horning Professor of Humanities and Professor of History emeritus.

Cliff Mead, Linus Pauling and biographer Thomas Hager on the OSU campus, March 1991.

“Cliff and his staff have pioneered online website communication of historically valuable documents, photographs, films, and other resources to the public,” Nye said. “He has been a real treasure at OSU whom countless visitors have found to be their engaging and omniscient guide in Special Collections.”

The focus of OSU Special Collections is on the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, with a broader emphasis on the history of 20th century science and technology. Mead has led the Special Collections’ development of digital resources, especially those that provide in-depth coverage of the life and work of Linus Pauling, the only recipient of two unshared Nobel Prizes.

“In addition to Professor Mead’s leadership in developing a truly innovative and world-renowned web presence for displaying the vast resources of the Special Collections department, he has provided exceptional opportunities for OSU students to have first-hand experience working with primary research materials,” said Karyle Butcher, former OSU University librarian and director of the OSU Press.

Cliff Mead with Warren Washington, 2010 recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Mead is recognized as the authority on the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. He has authored several publications, and most recently co-edited with OSU’s Chris Petersen, “The Pauling Catalogue: Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at Oregon State University” (2006).

Mead received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse University.

Paul Farber, an OSU distinguished professor emeritus, said Mead’s personality drove the collection.

“Cliff has that rare combination of intelligence, organization, personality, wit and humor that makes a university collection of papers and books into a Special Collection,” Farber said. “He has been at the center of creating this major asset at OSU, one that has large portions available online, and one that brings scholars from around the world to campus. He cannot be replaced, but he has built an institution that will persist.”

Larry Landis, OSU’s university archivist, will serve as interim director of Special Collections beginning Jan. 1. He has been at OSU since 1991.

On Success as a Scientist

Linus Pauling, 1980s. Leigh Wiener, photographer.

“Science cannot be stopped. Man will gather knowledge no matter what the consequences – and we cannot predict what they will be. Science will go on – whether we are pessimistic, or are optimistic, as I am. I know that great, interesting, and valuable discoveries can be made and will be made… But I know also that still more interesting discoveries will be made that I have not the imagination to describe – and I am awaiting them, full of curiosity and enthusiasm.”

– Linus Pauling, “Chemical Achievement and Hope for the Future.” 1947.

For Linus Pauling, scientific research was always so much more than just a way to pay the bills. The passion that Pauling harbored for his career is evident in virtually every manuscript that he ever published, every lecture that he gave, and in many of the thousands of letters – both work-related and personal – that are housed in his papers.

Simply put, Pauling was almost always thinking about some aspect of science. This trait, while certainly playing a major role in his success, was, by his own admission, only one of the many reasons that he rose so far above his peers. In three of his publications from three very different points in his career, Pauling discussed a few of the major requirements that he deemed to be necessary for one to thrive and flourish as a scientist.

The first of these traits is the subject of his manuscript “Imagination in Science,” written for publication in Tomorrow and appearing in print in December 1943.  In it, Pauling writes

The scientist, if he is to be more than a plodding gatherer of bits of information, needs to exercise an active imagination. The scientists of the past whom we now recognize as great, are those who were gifted with transcendental imaginative powers, and the part played by the imaginative faculty in his daily life is at least as important for the scientist as it is for the worker in any other field – much more important than for most.

As examples, Pauling cites the work of luminaries including Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, and others. Later, he sums up the main point of his manuscript nicely, suggesting that “…all of the scientific and technical advances which have been made during the present century, are due more to the imagination of scientists than to any other attribute.”

A few years later, in “Academic Research as a Career,” which was prepared in 1950 for Chemical and Engineering News, Pauling more directly addresses the path that a student interested in scientific research should follow in order to enjoy a successful career in the field.

The training that a student should obtain in preparation for a life of academic teaching and research should be as broad as possible and as fundamental as possible…. Languages are important, and the student should learn languages as early in life as possible, preferably beginning in high school. German is essential. A knowledge of French should also be obtained and an opportunity to learn something about Spanish, Italian, or other European languages should not be ignored.

In this regard, Pauling was fortunate, as his paternal grandparents, with whom he spent a great deal of time as a youth, spoke German in the home.  For most, however, language training would be reserved for the classroom.  But certain other crucial traits could not be engendered through lecture or recitation.  In Pauling’s view

There is one all important requirement – that he have a deep curiosity about nature, a consuming desire to know more about the world; in short, that he have the scientific spirit.

And though the right attitude was of course important, it didn’t hurt to be smart as well.

In addition to scholarly interest, scholarly aptitude is desirable. A brilliant student, with a penetrating mind and phenomenal memory, has the greatest chance of being a brilliant research man, provided that he also has the scientific spirit.

Linus Pauling, 1963.

As the years passed, Pauling eventually returned to his original theme – the importance of an active imagination. In his 1961 speech “The Genesis of Ideas,” presented to the Third World Congress of Psychiatry in Montreal, he emphasizes the use of the subconscious as a major problem-solving tool.  In doing so, he first introduces his remarks by quickly noting the traditional paths to scientific discovery.

Many scientists have been interested in the question of the way in which scientific discoveries are made. A popular idea is that scientists apply their powerful intellects in the straightforward, logical induction of new general principles from known facts and the logical deduction of previously unrecognized conclusions from known principles. This method is, of course, sometimes used; but much advance in knowledge results from mental process of another sort – in large part unconscious processes.

Evidently, these unconscious processes were something that Pauling utilized extensively.

My own experience, which I may illustrate in my talk by some examples, has suggested to me that it is possible to train the unconscious to help in the discovery of new ideas. I reached the conclusion some years ago that I had been making use of my unconscious to help in the discovery of new ideas in a well-defined way. I had developed the habit of thinking about certain scientific problems as I lay in bed, waiting to go to sleep. Sometimes I would think about the same problem for several nights in succession, while I was reading or making calculations about the problem during the day. Then I would stop working on the problem, and stop thinking about it in the period before going to sleep.

Continuing this train of thought, Pauling offers his opinion of what might be going on while he sleeps.

I think that after this training the subconscious examined many ideas that entered my mind, and rejected those that had no interest in relation to the problem. Finally, after tens or hundreds of thousands of ideas had been examined in this way and rejected, another idea came along that was recognized by the unconscious as having some significant relation to the problem, and this idea and its relation to the problem were brought into the consciousness.

In conclusion, Pauling explains the benefits that could be gleaned from further research into the birth of ideas.

As the world becomes more and more complex and the problems that remain to be solved become more and more difficult, it becomes necessary that we increase our efforts to solve them. A thorough study of the general problem of the genesis of ideas and the nature of creativity may well be of great value to the world.

From these three publications, one can obtain a very good understanding of the qualities that Linus Pauling considered to be necessary for the enjoyment of a successful career in science. Interestingly enough, although he recognized that a large amount of training is required to become a scientist, the few requirements that he considered most important – an active imagination, the “scientific spirit” and an involved subconscious – are among those that typically cannot be taught in a classroom.

Pauling’s First Publication

The Student Engineer, Vol. XII, No. 1

“These tests show that Oregon cement is not inferior to California cement, nor, in fact, is it far excelled by any.  So it is not a hardship in this case to ‘Patronize Oregon Industries.’ The cement industry has come to stay.”

-Linus Pauling, 1920.

In December 1989, the Oregon State University Special Collections received a rather run-of-the-mill letter from Linus Pauling, who had donated his papers some three years earlier and was in the habit of regularly corresponding with the repository. In this letter, Pauling noted

In early 1920 I wrote a paper on the manufacture of cement in Oregon, published in The Student Engineer (Oregon Agricultural College) . . . I am sending the copy of The Student Engineer under separate cover.

Considering the fact that Pauling published over 1,100 papers during his lengthy and illustrious career, a publication such as this normally would not be given any special attention. However, it turns out that this short article – officially entitled “The Manufacture of Cement in Oregon” – is Linus Pauling’s first published work.

In 1920 Pauling was not your typical 19 year old. In normal circumstances, he would have been a junior at O.A.C. (now Oregon State University), but due to financial problems he was not able to return for his third year. Instead, he accepted a job offered to him by the college’s chemistry department (one that was unexpectedly short a few faculty members), and spent the year as a full-time assistant instructor in quantitative analysis – a course that he himself had taken only the year before. Despite his age, it was evident that Pauling’s academic maturity clearly had risen far above his peers. He quickly proved an able “boy professor.”

In the 1989 letter, Pauling provided further insight into his introduction to the science behind cement.

When I was about 14 years old, the Oregon Portland Cement Company built a plant at Oswego, Oregon. I spent the weekends in Oswego, where my grandparents lived. I immediately began to spend much time in the laboratory of the cement plant. The chemist was a man who was not very interested in chemistry, but who served as scoutmaster and who was willing to talk with me and to answer my questions.

It seems then that while many of his classmates were likely going to great lengths to avoid learning on a weekend, Pauling willingly spent his free time gobbling up new information from any source that he could find. Clearly, his passion for furthering his knowledge in any subject that caught his interest began very early in his life.

Linus Pauling, 1920.

(It is also worth noting that, overlapping his employment with the O. A. C. chemistry department, Pauling spent the better part of three years working off and on for the Oregon Department of Transportation as a pavement inspector – another example of an early practical application of his interest in scientific topics.)

Understandably, the time that he spent at the Oswego plant made Pauling very knowledgeable on the subject of how cement is manufactured, a fact that is immediately clear upon reading his article. The young author writes with authority on the subject, simplifying a process that is undoubtedly considered not-so-common knowledge. And although the processes involved are not as complicated as, say, the manner in which a protein configures itself into an alpha helix, the procedure requires a fair number of steps, all of which Pauling methodically describes with his signature precision and thoroughness – skills that he had begun to refine even in his adolescence.

Although Pauling’s first publication may not be his most interesting and is undoubtedly nowhere near his most prominent, its genesis is certainly a fascinating story.   Scans of the full text of this article are included below.

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Britton Chance, 1913-2010

Britton Chance, ca. 1960s.

We were saddened to learn of the death of Britton Chance, a prominent biochemist and biophysicist best known for his important enzyme kinetics research. Chance, who was an old friend of Linus Pauling, not only enjoyed a very successful scientific career, but was also an Olympic gold medalist in sailing.  He died at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital on November 16, 2010 at the age of 97.

Chance was born on July 24, 1913 in Wilkes-Barr Pennsylvania. Sailing became an interest of his at a very young age, and this – when combined with his knack for inventing – led to his development, while still in his teens, of an automatic steering-correction device for ships. He earned his Bachelor of Science degree in physical chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania in 1935, and followed that with a Master’s degree and Ph.D. from the same institution in the same subject. In 1942, after spending time at the University of Cambridge in England, Chance earned a second doctorate, this time in physiology and biology. Although he stayed in Pennsylvania for the majority of his career, Chance also spent a couple of years in Stockholm, Sweden as a Guggenheim Fellow after the end of World War II.

Chance became a member of the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1941 when he was hired as Assistant Professor of Biophysics and Physical Biochemistry at the School of Medicine. From there he worked his way through the ranks, eventually attaining promotion to full professor. He remained in this position until his retirement in 1983, after which he was named Emeritus Professor. He took this role very seriously, and continued to be active in the university.

During his graduate years, Chance developed a micro-flow version of the stop-flow apparatus, which is used to measure chemical reactions that involve enzymes. This invention later led to his enzyme-substrate complex principle, which posits that when an enzyme is used to catalyze a reaction, it temporarily associates with its substrate to form a complex. Chance called this the “enzyme-substrate complex,” a term which gave rise to the names of his two sailing yachts – Complex I and Complex II.

Christmas card sent from Britton Chance to Linus Pauling, 1984.

Although enzyme research was Chance’s main focus for much of his career, he also worked with magnetic resonance spectroscopy and near-infrared optics with an eye toward developing techniques for analyzing muscle dynamics, detecting breast cancer and assessing cognitive function. Aside from the sciences, Chance’s interest – and aptitude – in sailing earned him a place on the 1952 U.S. Olympic Yacht Team, which won a gold medal at the summer games in Helsinki, Finland. He was married three times, and was father to eleven children and five stepchildren.

Chance’s work earned him many honorary degrees from various institutions, among them the University of Düsseldorf, the University of Buenos Aires, the University of Copenhagen, and the Medical College of Ohio at Toledo. He also received numerous awards, including the John Price Wetherill Medal in 1996, the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Medicine in 1987, and, most notably, the National Medal of Science in 1974.

The Britton Chance Papers were donated to the University of Pennsylvania Archives in 1999. In them, it is likely that one would find a comprehensive collection of Chance’s side of his correspondence with Linus Pauling, which ran from at least 1947 until 1993. Based on the letters held in the Pauling Papers, it is not completely clear when the two men became acquainted, but the evolution of their friendship can be easily observed. In their writings over the years, the two men discuss many scientific topics relating to their research, and several letters are dedicated to more personal topics such as family, travel plans, and visits to one another. It is clear that each man not only greatly respected the other, but also considered him a good friend.

The Palmer Committee

Vannevar Bush, 1940s.

Linus Pauling’s experimental work for the government came to an end with the closure of the oxypolygelatin program. Despite that, his association with the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) continued. In late 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt contacted Vannevar Bush, director of the OSRD, and requested a report on the future of science in the United States. In response, Bush organized his colleagues into committees and requested that they consider the problem of funding American science and, eventually, offer recommendations.

Pauling, along with dozens of others, was selected to serve as an adviser. A result of his experience with the Committee on Medical Research, oxypolygelatin, and the oxygen meter, Pauling was assigned to a medical advisory committee chaired by Walter W. Palmer, a professor of medicine at Columbia University.

Once the committees had been organized, Bush plied them with discussion topics, asking them to consider the implications of government support for the sciences. Pauling himself was an enthusiastic advocate of government-funded research. He believed that public dollars were the best way to promote scientific growth and allow scientists to make progress in fields that didn’t promise an immediate financial return.

Science leading up to World War II had been funded almost exclusively by universities and corporations, both vying for the prestige and monetary profit that would result from marketable discoveries. Because pure science couldn’t promise the same economic returns that commercial science could, funding for university labs was significantly lower, frequently leading researchers to abandon their professorships in favor of positions in the private sector. Pauling believed that the most efficient way to address this problem was through a governing body empowered with the ability to provide support according to a proposed project’s scientific merit. Funding would be provided with an eye toward the value of the research in relation to the general body of scientific knowledge rather than its potential commercial worth.

Ultimately, the Palmer Committee concluded that no existing federal agency would be able to assign grants without some degree of specialization bias creeping into its process. As a result, Palmer’s group advocated, for one, the creation of a new agency with specific focus on supporting scientists from different fields of medicine and governed by medical experts spanning multiple fields.

Bush was troubled by the committee’s assumption that a separate organization should be created to oversee and fund medical research. Bush’s career had been severely complicated by the lack of cooperation between Washington’s many bureaucracies, and he was loathe to support what he saw as a further bloating of the system. As a result, he took the best of the Palmer Committee’s ideas – the governing body of experienced researchers – and combined them with his own ideas and those of his other colleagues. In the summer of 1945, Bush delivered his treatise on post-war science, “Science: The Endless Frontier,” to Harry S. Truman, President Roosevelt’s successor. In it, Bush recommended the creation of a National Research Foundation (NRF) charged with providing monies to researchers, including medical researchers, according to scientific merit.

Presidential Medal for Merit. Awarded to Linus Pauling by President Harry S. Truman, February 2, 1948.

For nearly five years, politicians and lobbyists battled over the details of this so-called “National Research Foundation.” Funding, focus, and structure were all issues that kept the organization from taking shape. To further complicate matters, while Bush’s proposal was stymied by politicians, other national science organizations like the Atomic Energy Commission and National Institutes of Health became major contributors to the “big science” movement, thus reducing potential NRF jurisdiction.

After years of debate, a consensus was finally reached and on May 10, 1950 President Truman signed the National Science Foundation Act. This legislation created the National Science Foundation (NSF) which was directed by a 25-person National Science Board that included 24 part-time members and an executive officer as appointed by the President. For the first several years of its existence under the direction of the physicist Alan T. Waterman, the NSF was virtually destitute thanks to the expense of the Korean War. Nevertheless, the organization persevered and by the mid-1950s was equipped with a $100 million budget.

After his work with the Palmer committee, Pauling quietly left the OSRD and returned to his personal research agenda at Caltech. His contributions and departure did not go unnoticed by OSRD officials, however, and he was officially recognized by the War Manpower Commission, the NDRC and OSRD, the War Department, and the United States Navy Bureau of Ordnance. In 1948 he was awarded the Presidential Medal for Merit for his wartime contributions. The war chapter of his career concluded, Pauling continued on with his biochemical research and began a campaign against nuclear weapons, ultimately earning two Nobel prizes and becoming one of the most influential chemists and peace activists of the 20th century.

Invisible Inks

Test screed developed as part of a research program on invisible inks. November 14, 1945.

By 1944 the oxygen meter and propellant projects were running smoothly with only minimal oversight from Pauling.  With more free time available to him, he began looking into new lines of research.  That year, he was contacted by Arthur Lamb, a Harvard professor, regarding a new line of inquiry.  During World War I, Lamb had developed invisible inks for the U.S. government.  He was restarting his work with inks and wanted Pauling’s help.  And so it is that, in September 1944, Linus Pauling became an official investigator in the Office of Scientific Research and Development’s invisible inks project.

The goal for Pauling and his team was to create a series of inks that were truly invisible and could only be developed by a limited number of chemicals. From September to October 1944, Dr. George Wright, William Eberhardt, and Frank Lanni made preliminary examinations of potential methods for developing invisible inks, the specifications of which were not defined in Pauling’s official reports to the OSRD. Once the preliminary tests were complete, Pauling and his team began a wide range of experiments, testing a variety of potential approaches for creating secret inks.

The team began with possible protein-based inks. They applied various proteins including rabbit serum, human saliva, and homogenized milk to standard typing paper. Then, after steaming and ironing the treated page, the team painted it with a mixture of ink, acetic acid and sodium chloride. The combination of acid and ink caused the protein to darken slightly, rendering it legible in well-lit conditions.

The group also tested non-organic inks such as diluted potassium iodide. After drying, the test screed was painted with gold chloride, rinsed, and then treated with a substance referred to only as “the silver physical reagent,” a compound protected by the Office of Censorship.

Page of test screeds developed as part of a research program on invisible inks. 1945.

Pauling and his team needed to find a better way to protect invisible inks from being identified when intercepted by enemy forces. To this end, the team turned its focus toward substances with high immunological specificity; that is, organic substances that reacted with only a limited number of other compounds. The team began with a polysaccharide gum distilled from a bacterium responsible for lobar pneumonia in humans. (Because the gum was largely non-reactive with other chemicals, the paper it was printed on hid it well.) The ink was then masked with an additional coating of a wax-like substance to prevent all but the most immunologically-specific chemicals from developing it. While tedious, the process was effective.

In addition to the use of polysaccharide gum, Pauling and his group examined antibodies and antigens in the hope that they could be used to create inks. In a report to the OSRD, Pauling explained that when a foreign protein (antigen) is introduced to an animal’s bloodstream, the animal produces a highly specific complementary protein (antibody) to neutralize it. When the two proteins combine, they form a stable protein-protein pair.

Initial tests of the solution suggested that the antibody-antigen combination could be highly effective. Unfortunately, as the researchers began practical testing they found it extremely difficult to develop the protein-protein pair without staining or otherwise rendering illegible the paper on which the ink was printed. What’s more, some of the antigens could be developed with non-organic chemicals, greatly reducing their security. Ultimately, the antibody-antigen ink was impractical. Pauling suggested that a few changes might be made to the process, but no record of additional experimentation appears in the Pauling Papers.

Despite having achieved some measure of success with a variety of inks, Pauling suggested that the project might be pushed even further. As he explained in a report,

From the offensive standpoint, it might be considered that the development by the new techniques of substances which are not detectable by the present methods might be useful as a basis for offensive methods.

While Pauling left no traces suggestive of his engaging in this process, it is at least plausible that he and his team did in fact note and retain a number of potential developers for future scientists to test.

In all Pauling and his team created or enhanced around a dozen different ink-developer combinations, ranging from improvements on existing camphor-based Presto pencils to complex processes using albumin, gypsum, and the catalytic reduction of silver. The project was closed with the publication of the “Final Report on Biological SW” dated December 31, 1945.

Hydrogen Peroxide

Linus Pauling in the laboratory. 1940.

“I am planning to carry out during the next few days some experiments on the resistance of concentrated peroxide to shock by detonators and by rifle bullets, and I shall let you know the results of the experiments.”

-Linus Pauling, letter to T. K. Sherwood, November 14, 1940.

Beginning in early 1940, Dr. Paul A. Giguere, a visiting researcher from Laval University, began a study of the properties of concentrated hydrogen peroxide at the Caltech labs. Under Pauling’s watch, Giguere spent several months performing electron diffraction analyses on samples of hydrogen peroxide and hydrazine. By November, the testing had been completed and the two men wrote a brief report on their findings. Pauling, already deeply involved in the development of the oxygen meter for the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), felt that his and Giguere’s work might net the Institute another war research contract.

On November 14 he sent Thomas K. Sherwood, his primary NDRC contact, an enthusiastic letter detailing the initial findings. One early indication of Guigere’s work was that hydrogen peroxide might be used to absorb shock from explosives or rifle bullets. He also thought it possible to develop a means of controlling the evolution of hydrogen peroxide, suggesting that it could be used to produce oxygen for respirators. The laboratory intended to begin shock resistance tests immediately so that a clean set of data might be prepared, pending Sherwood’s response.

Pauling received an encouraging reply from Sherwood, but it is unclear at what point further work on the hydrogen peroxide project began. Fully two months after the initial correspondence exchange, Sherwood sent a letter to Caltech requesting a progress report from Pauling. In response, Pauling appears to have sent two letters: one detailing work on the oxygen meter and the other containing information on the hydrogen peroxide project. Unfortunately, it seems Pauling’s archives are incomplete as only the first letter remains extant. Whatever information may have been included in the second letter is lost, though we do know that Sherwood responded positively and sent Pauling data on hydrogen peroxide as a chemical fuel for combustion engines.

Thomas K. Sherwood, ca. 1960s. National Academy of Sciences image.

Bizarrely, following this last communication from Sherwood, no further mention of the hydrogen peroxide problem appears in Pauling’s papers until February 1943, in the form of a letter from Giguere demanding to know why Pauling’s article – presumably on his hydrogen peroxide research – had never been published. In response, Pauling reported that he and Dr. Verner Schomaker had only recently completed the manuscript and would send it on to Giguere shortly. Interestingly, this report too appears to be absent from the archives. What’s more, only a single page of hydrogen peroxide research remains in Pauling’s research notebooks.  This page details the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide in blood – a tantalizing entry that gives little indication of the nature of his research.

It is surprising that Pauling, who maintained comprehensive records of his scientific activities, possessed so few notes on his work with hydrogen peroxide. One might speculate that perhaps certain of the materials related to this project were turned over to higher authorities within the government, as has been confirmed with other projects in which Pauling was engaged.

Whatever the cause may have been for this lapse in the record, it seems plausible that Pauling’s early hydrogen peroxide work did have some long-term consequences.  In 1942 Pauling began work on a war research project on the development of a plasma substitute eventually known as oxypolygelatin. This work was spawned from his private Caltech-based research into bovine gamma-globulin, possibly the cause of Pauling’s initial experiments with blood and hydrogen peroxide. It may have also been this initial investigation that led Pauling to use hydrogen peroxide in the creation of oxypolygelatin.

Unfortunately, without letters, reports or laboratory data to review, it is impossible to know exactly what Pauling’s hydrogen peroxide research entailed or how it affected his later research. It seems then, that this particular project will remain one of many small mysteries in Pauling’s life.

Penicillin

Linus Pauling and Dan Campbell in the laboratory, California Institute of Technology. 1943.

In early 1942, Merck & Co. began producing penicillin with the intention of making it available for soldiers in the field. Up to that point, the company was able to produce only tiny amounts of the drug, making it a precious commodity. They needed a way to mass produce penicillin.

While chemists and biologists worked frantically to devise a better production method, Linus Pauling began to consider a completely different approach to the problem: What if smaller quantities of penicillin were needed to treat a patient?

From his oxypolygelatin experiments, Pauling knew that one of the biggest issues with conventional gelatin-based plasma substitutes was that they typically left the bloodstream at a rapid rate, requiring multiple injections. Pauling and Dan Campbell‘s process for treating gelatin in the oxypolygelatin program had caused molecular chains to form and required more time to cycle out of the blood. In thinking about this new problem, Pauling theorized that, by pairing a penicillin molecule with a protein molecule, the substance would remain in the bloodstream for a longer period of time, greatly increasing its effectiveness.

Pauling first presented his and Campbell’s idea for penicillin in the fall of 1943, generating positive feedback from Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) officials and Committee on Medical Research (CMR) staff. And after conducting more experiments with oxypolygelatin, Pauling had enough evidence to move forward.

In May 1944, he sent a proposal and contract request to the CMR. The proposal was accepted and in September he received 1,000,000 units of penicillin for use in experimentation. By this time, the drug had emerged from novelty status to that of a major medical landmark, adding importance to Pauling’s research. A.N. Richards, the chairman of the CMR, seemed particularly interested in the work, noting in one letter that his request for additional information was “simply a suggestion which emerges from my interest and curiosity.”

Portrait of A. N. Richards, ca. 1940s. National Academy of Sciences image.

Unfortunately, all of the enthusiasm that Richards, Pauling, and Campbell could muster wasn’t enough to make the project succeed. One major deterrent to success was the fact that at the time of the experiments, the molecular structure of penicillin was still classified, forcing Pauling to make guesses as to the way the molecule could combine with gelatin. As a result, what should have been a well-planned series of experiments instead became a game of guess-and-check.

By late December 1944, Pauling was ready to submit his first report and the results were not promising. Pauling and Campbell had treated the penicillin samples with urea, alkaline chemicals, and high temperatures – each a denaturing agent meant to break down the penicillin and reform it with the gelatin. On the contrary, these treatments appeared to cause the penicillin to deactivate. Instead of causing the penicillin to bond with the gelatin, the denaturing agents were destroying it.

Pauling and Campbell provided Richards with a one-page report accompanied by a two-sentence cover letter. The investigation was going nowhere and there were other projects to be looked after. What the researchers didn’t say, however, was that Howard Florey and his team at the University of Oxford had, in the meantime, discovered a method to mass produce penicillin and were in the process of creating a large cache for military use. The need for augmented penicillin was gone.

After the informal update was delivered to Richards, no other mention of the penicillin project appears in the Pauling Papers. It seems that the project was quietly discontinued without so much as the traditional final report to the CMR.