Ava Helen Miller in Corvallis, 1921-1923

Ava Helen Miller, ca. 1922. Note annotation by Linus Pauling: “Ava Helen about when I met her.”

[Part 2 of 2]

Ava Helen Miller entered Oregon Agriculture College, now Oregon State University, as a freshman in the fall of 1921. During that first year, she met Linus Pauling, and shortly thereafter the two fell in love and became engaged. This chance meeting derailed her plans to continue her formal education, and after five terms at OAC, she left school to start her life with Pauling. But even though she spent less than two academic years in Corvallis, Ava Helen made the most of her experience.

The tenth of twelve children, Ava Helen was born in 1903 in Beavercreek, Oregon, an unincorporated area southwest of Portland. When the time came to begin considering colleges, OAC proved a natural choice because, by 1921, three of her siblings were already attending the school. These siblings were her brother Milton, a senior majoring in agriculture; another brother Clay, a junior also studying agriculture; and sister Mary, a senior in home economics. Like Mary, Ava Helen entered OAC as a home economics major. And instead of living in a women’s dormitory like most first-year students, Ava Helen lived with her siblings in a Corvallis rental home that her mother Nora also resided in.

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Though college was not an ordinary expectation for women of the era, a higher education seemed to be in the cards for Ava Helen. She had always excelled as a student, graduating from Salem High School in three years as the class president. Buoyed by her past successes, Ava Helen enrolled in a wide variety of courses during her OAC tenure, including Spanish and French, languages for which she showed a particular aptitude.

Generally speaking, her performance in college improved as she became more settled. During her first term, she received mostly Bs with a C in general chemistry and an A in English composition. Interestingly, during her second quarter, Ava Helen received her only F, which was also in English composition. That winter term was clearly challenging with respect to academics, as her grades were somewhat worse than was typical for the rest of her OAC time. (Coincidentally or not, this was also the term in which she met her future husband.) But later, her grades improved. In her last quarter, she took Child Care and received an A, perhaps a foreshadowing of her future responsibilities as a mother of four.

Chemistry was always one of her best subjects, and instructors besides the young Pauling took note of her chemistry aptitude. One of them, an organic chemistry instructor named Mr. Quigly, remarked that she was among his best students. Despite this aptitude, Ava Helen notably received a B in general chemistry during the winter term of her first year, a grade that she felt was lower than she deserved. This belief was accurate, but because the instructor for the course was her soon-to-be husband, the instructor – “boy professor” Linus Pauling – deliberately lowered her grade from an A to a B, in an effort to obfuscate any potential impropriety. This decision remained a source of good-natured ribbing between the couple for years to come.

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Ava Helen pursued interests outside of academics during her stint in Corvallis. She joined the school’s drama club, known as the Mask and Dagger, during her first year. The club produced several plays including larger productions like Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “Clarence,” a modern “light comedy” by Booth Tarkington. Near the middle of the year, Ava Helen hit the stage in a one-act offering titled “Pierro by the Light of the Moon” by Virginia Church; Ms. Miller was cast as Columbine, the second lead.

During her second year at OAC, Ava Helen also served as secretary of the Lyceum Club, which consisted of “musicians, readers, and lecturers.” The club focused on coordinating cultural events for the local community and, during Ava Helen’s year, hosted several prominent artists and musicians, including the Flonzaley String Quartet.

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A discussion of Ava Helen’s time at OAC would be remiss if it did not include mention of her romance with Linus Pauling. During the winter term of her first year, she was enrolled in a general chemistry course that was mandatory for all home economics majors. Pauling, himself a fifth-year senior at OAC, was assigned to teach the class, though he was only a few years older than the students that he was asked to teach. Shortly after their first encounter in January 1922, Ava Helen and Linus hit it off, and by the end of the school year they were engaged.

In the summer of 1922, Pauling left Oregon to begin his graduate studies at Caltech while Ava Helen continued her schooling, starting her second year at OAC. The initial plan was for Ava Helen to stay at OAC and complete her degree while Pauling worked on his Ph.D, and the pair wrote to each other nearly every day, and saw one another on breaks. But the waiting and separation proved too much, and by the end of the second quarter of her second year, in March 1923, Ava Helen dropped out of school in order to plan her wedding. In June 1923, the couple married and Ava Helen moved to Pasadena to begin a new life.

Ava Helen’s OAC

Ava Helen Miller, fall 1921

[Part 1 of 2]

Ava Helen Miller entered Oregon Agricultural College (OAC), now known as Oregon State University, in the fall of 1921. She spent a total of five quarters at the school; one quarter shy of two full academic years. And even though her experience in Corvallis was relatively short, it was a memorable period for Ava Helen, one culminating in her meeting her future husband, Linus Pauling.

During the 1921-22 school year, OAC was home to its largest student body to date – more than 7,000 enrolled for at least one quarter, and a graduating class of 3,147. (2,040 men and 1,107 women.) The freshman class was 300 students larger than had been the case the previous year and the student body included 47 international students from Bolivia, Palestine, Peru and South Africa, among other far away lands. An additional 995 out of state students pursued an OAC education, with Washington leading the way (384) followed by California (315) and Idaho (111). Within the college, Home Economics awarded the most degrees that year, tallying 889; the School of Agriculture came in a close second with 876 degrees.

Those enrolled from out of state did so despite the fact that, in the fall of 1921, OAC began charging non-residents tuition – $20 per term – for the first time. The change impacted new students only, meaning that existing out of state students could still attend for free. (Ava Helen was a resident of Oregon, so this did not affect her.) Understanding the financial burden that this decision could have on its students, the OAC Board decided that non-Oregon residents who had served in World War I could receive a 50% discount on tuition. According to the monthly OAC Alumnus, the fees were enacted to “prevent an undue influx of students from other states and at the same time [provide] additional income […] in the construction of buildings.”

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OAC’s post-war population bump coincided with shifts in the types of activities available to the college’s women students. Several clubs for women were sponsored, including those dedicated to riflery and mandolins, but new sports were an area where women were really able to broaden their horizons. OAC co-eds competed in baseball, basketball, swimming, track, tennis, archery, volleyball, and the afore-mentioned riflery; dance was also organized as part of women’s athletics.

As was the case most everywhere however, traditional men’s athletics remained far more popular across campus and the community. The most prominent sport at OAC was football and the team, affectionately known as the “gridiron squad,” was lavished with rituals and processionals prior to each game. Among the most extravagant was a feeding party where the players dined on “big juicy steaks cooked rare, toast crisp through and through, big baked potatoes that rival the prizes of the Pullman diner [a popular upscale train car from the time] – all topped off with ice-cream.” And though the men ruled the sporting world at OAC, these epic meals took place in the women’s Home Economics Tea Room, as that was clearly the place for the best food on campus.

With more people at the school, more options to choose from, and requirements that first- and second-year women sign up for P.E. credits, its no surprise that, during Ava Helen’s second year, women’s physical education courses saw more enrollees than ever before. Elective options included seasonal sports, aesthetic dancing, swimming, or apparatus work, which is similar to gymnastics. The era’s women did not play softball, but were allowed to play baseball (with other women). To help manage growing numbers, and to harken back to times when the program was much smaller, the Physical Education Club arranged weekly dinners to assist students in getting to know one another.

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Competitive speaking was another area opening up to OAC’s women. By the fall of 1921, women had three different debate teams available to them – varsity, junior varsity, and intramural. During Ava Helen’s first year, the women’s Dual Debate Team (junior varsity), competed against the University of California and was asked to address the possibility of Irish independence. Meanwhile, the varsity squad was charged with discussing: “That the principle of the closed shop should be applied to all American industries. Farming and all industries employing less than three men are excepted.”

Intramural debate tended to pit classes against one another, with a 1921 contest asking freshmen and juniors to consider federal government ownership and operation of coal mines. Other topics shed light on the culture of the state a century ago – notably, a men’s interclass competition considering whether or not “Oregon should enact a law prohibiting Orientals from acquiring land within the state.”

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By Ava Helen’s time, women had clearly emerged as a priority for OAC. Importantly, in the fall of 1922, the college finished construction of its third women’s dormitory, Margaret Snell Hall. And a year prior, OAC had welcomed it newest Dean of Women, Mary A. Rolfe.

Rolfe had worked for various organizations before OAC, including the YWCA and the University of Iowa, but immediately prior to her tenure in Corvallis she had served in France as a “searcher.” In that role, she worked with other stenographers to write down wounded soldiers’ last words, which would then be conveyed to their families back home. As Dean, Rolfe believed that “My relation to young women should be that of friend,” an ideology that she upheld by creating opportunities for women and treating them as capable and inquisitive. One early example of this was her sponsoring the Oregon chapter of the Home Economics Conventions, a program “of interest to all women, whether professional home economics women, teachers, or homemakers.”

Ava Helen Miller took advantage of all that her college had to offer during a period of significant change. An exploration of her experiences at OAC will be the focus of our post next week.

Remembering Ken Hedberg: Part 4, An Influential Friendship

Ken Hedberg performing in “The Road to Stockholm: The Appalling Life of Linus Pauling,” December 1954. Hedberg and other Caltech colleagues sang and danced on stage to celebrate Pauling’s receipt of the Nobel Chemistry Prize.

[Celebrating the life of Dr. Kenneth Hedberg (1920-2019), part 4 of 5.]

Though he left Caltech at the end of 1955, Ken Hedberg maintained a friendship with Linus Pauling that lasted for the rest of Pauling’s life. Despite their physical distance, the two kept an active correspondence and Pauling sometimes sent samples from his own research for Hedberg to run through his electron diffraction apparatus in Corvallis. Pauling also wrote multiple letters of recommendation in support of various fellowship applications submitted by his former student, frequently noting the many important contributions that Hedberg had made to the field of electron diffraction.

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James Jensen, President of Oregon State University from 1961-1969.

Hedberg’s friendship with Pauling turned out to be especially fruitful for Oregon State University, because it was partially through his persistent efforts that the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers made their way to OSU.

The story begins in the early 1960s, when Hedberg was chatting with Ava Helen Pauling at a banquet where they happened to be seated next to each other. During the course of the conversation, Ava Helen revealed that she and her husband had been pondering the question of what to do with their papers when they died, noting that they had received expressions of interest from several universities and other institutions. Although OSU was not among those courting the Paulings, Ava Helen felt that their alma mater was the right home for the materials and had run this idea past her husband. Though Linus had been embroiled in a rift with the university for most of the 1950s (over the firing of his former student, Ralph Spitzer, on political grounds), Ava Helen was now trying to convince him to “let bygones be bygones” and renew his bond with Oregon State.

Ava Helen also confided that Pauling was not happy with offers that he had received from the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress, Caltech, and many other highly-respected institutions, because they only wanted his papers and not hers, wanted to cherry pick the items that they would keep (Pauling wanted everything kept together), or wanted the papers right away, despite Pauling’s need to retain many of them for his ongoing research.

Hedberg was fully aware that, were OSU to be selected by Pauling as the repository for his papers, the announcement would serve as a major boost in prestige. He also understood that if Pauling’s bitterness against the university were to be assuaged, the conciliation would have to come from the university president. In short order, Hedberg wrote to OSU President James Jensen, stating that “…it seems to me that Pauling’s eminence in science and in world affairs together with his historical association with the State of Oregon and Oregon State University makes this a proper place for these papers.” He further suggested that if “…handled correctly, it might be possible for Oregon State to obtain these papers.”

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Pauling’s split with Oregon State College came about as a direct result of actions taken by President August Strand, who led the institution from 1942 to 1961. His successor was James Jensen, who took over shortly after OSC became OSU, and it was under Jensen’s watch that the relationship with Pauling came to be repaired. Spurred by Hedberg’s note, Jensen wrote to Pauling lamenting the rift that had grown between him and the university, assuring him that he remained one of the university’s most beloved alumni, and concluding that

When it comes time to think of a repository for your letters and other documentary matters, I hope you will consider the possibilities of Oregon State University and its repository of important papers which is located within a stone’s throw of where you and Mrs. Pauling met!

Jensen also created a Distinguished Service Award in 1964 and made Pauling the first recipient.

Finally, in 1966, the president extended an invitation to Pauling to speak at the university, which was accepted. In December of that year, he delivered a well-attended convocation lecture titled “Science and the Future of Man” at Gill Coliseum. It was the first talk that he had given on the Oregon State campus since a 1937 lecture on hemoglobin and magnetism, which he had presented at the dedication ceremonies for the Oregon State chapter of the Sigma Xi scientific research honorary.

With the ice finally broken, Pauling began returning to the university more frequently, eventually regaining his old affection for OSU and choosing to make trips to Corvallis whenever he was passing through the area. Pauling also admitted that he was “pleased” by OSU’s request for his papers, telling Jensen that in addition to OSU, he had offers in hand from the Library of Congress, the American Philosophical Society, and the University of Oregon, among others. As he continued to ponder the final home for his materials, he asked that Jensen have the university archivist send him a letter describing OSU’s archival facilities and the plans that it would put in place for the preservation and use of the papers.

In March 1967 Jensen again wrote to Pauling, this time including a draft donation agreement as well as the requested comments on facilities from the university archivist. By July, Pauling had largely been won over and claimed that he felt ready to begin giving his papers to the university. That said, he was as busy as ever and seemed reluctant to actually part with any of his material. His continuing research and trips to Europe, combined with disruptive California wildfires, meant that he never had time for OSU’s archivist to visit him to evaluate and organize the collection.

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For whatever reason, Pauling continued the stall tactics for the remainder of Jensen’s tenure as president. In 1972, Hedberg wrote to Jensen’s successor, Robert MacVicar, to loop him in on the conversation. In addition to forwarding copies of past communications between himself, Jensen, and Pauling, Hedberg expressed his point of view that Jensen’s negotiations seemed to have been successful, but hastened to add that a final agreement was never reached. Jensen, sensing Pauling’s hesitation, had eventually stopped asking about the papers for fear of endangering the relationship that he had successfully rehabilitated.

Hedberg encouraged MacVicar to pick up where Jensen had left off in trying to obtain the papers. MacVicar took the suggestion to heart and contacted Pauling, but kept Hedberg in the loop since he knew Pauling so well. Over time, Hedberg was able to mediate communications somewhat, often advising MacVicar on how he thought Pauling might interpret different phrases of a draft letter and predicting how he would respond. Pauling still felt that he was not ready to part with the papers, so MacVicar followed Jensen’s precedent and focused on maintaining a good relationship with Pauling with the occasional gentle reminder about his promise to give his papers to OSU.

Activist Norman Cousins, Portland mayor Bud Clark, Linus Pauling and OSU President John Byrne at a celebration marking Pauling’s donation of his papers to Oregon State University.

Ava Helen passed away in 1981 and the next year Hedberg helped to found the Ava Helen Pauling Lectureship on World Peace at OSU. Meanwhile, in 1984 John Byrne replaced MacVicar as OSU president and, once again, Hedberg forwarded copies of past correspondence and encouraged the new president to continue the effort. Byrne saw that, while his predecessors had succeeded in winning Pauling over, their gentle reminders had done little to motivate Pauling to actually make the donation.

Byrne decided to change tactics by setting up a committee to handle the negotiations, from which emerged a concrete offer to build a Special Collections unit that would house and manage the donated materials. Byrne also agreed to all of Pauling’s requests regarding the treatment of the collection: namely, that Ava Helen’s papers be included in the acquisition, that the collection be kept intact, that the collection be made available for use by any qualified researcher, and that Pauling himself also receive unfettered access should he need to consult any of his old letters or manuscripts. Among these requests, the Ava Helen piece was likely the most significant; with her passing, it became particularly important to Pauling that her papers be treated with the same deference as his own.

Hedberg and Pauling among others at an event celebrating the donation of the Pauling Papers to Oregon State University, April 1986.

At long last, on April 18, 1986, Pauling formally announced that he would be transferring his papers to the Oregon State University Libraries. The first item that Pauling sent to OSU was the three volume United Nations Bomb Test Petition, an encapsulation of the work for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963. Other materials were added gradually over the rest of his life, once he had decided that he did not need them for his current research activities. Eventually the university sent a representative to Deer Flat Ranch to see how big the Pauling collection was, and they found that he had over 90 filing cabinets full of materials just at his Big Sur home.

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As Pauling made more frequent trips to Corvallis, Hedberg was usually assigned to act as his guide and chaperone. On one reminiscent wander around campus, Pauling pointed out to him the room in present-day Furman Hall where he first met Ava Helen. He also showed Hedberg the house on 15^th street where he had lived as a student.

Frequently, the Hedbergs and the Paulings were participants in the same dinner parties, some of which were hosted by Ken and Lise. Pauling was fond of vodka and often favored a drink prior to attending a formal event; Ken always made sure that Pauling’s preferred brand was in the cabinet. Another time, at a dinner party hosted by the Hedbergs, Pauling recognized the wine that they served as being of the same vintage as that served at a similar party the previous year. Hedberg was shocked that, of all the dinner parties and events that Pauling attended, he would remember the wine that had been served at a particular gathering a year prior.

Ken Hedberg, David Shoemaker and Lise Hedberg at a dinner party hosted by OSU President John Byrne, 1991. Linus Pauling was seated across the table from Ken Hedberg.

Though they saw one another with some frequency, Pauling and Hedberg continued to make time to provide updates on their lives through correspondence. Pauling wrote to Hedberg about his own rectal cancer, and Hedberg asked Pauling for advice concerning a friend’s inoperable cancer and for managing Lise’s arthritis. Ken also shared the unhappy news when their mutual colleague, David Shoemaker, died of complications related to kidney disease. Ken likewise expressed his frustrations to Pauling when the National Science Foundation reduced his grant funding in 1992 due to concerns about his age.

Political and social issues also frequently came up in Pauling and Hedberg’s communications, and the two friends tended to share a similar mindset on the issues of the day. Like Pauling, Hedberg was firmly opposed to the use of nuclear weapons and, following a 1961 visit to Hiroshima, wrote that “…I believe world peace could be assured by simply escorting the world’s political leaders through the park and museum.” In a different letter written that same year, Hedberg confided that

Lise and I…were utterly dismayed at the resumption of nuclear testing. Most of us feel that the fallout problem is bad enough, but what really frightens is the return to the mailed fist kind of diplomacy they represent… I’m quite convinced that the world is controlled by people gone mad. My more optimistic friends aren’t so worried – ‘after all, another world war is unthinkable.’ What impresses me over and over, though, is how full of irrational people the world is, how singularly alike in some respects the opinions of such people are, and how easily national attitudes seem to be born of such opinions… Most people seem unable to comprehend that the ancient techniques of enforcing national interests on an international scale will lead only to their destruction. Perhaps a part of this is due, at least on the local scene, to what people imagine death to be like. Corvallis is a religious town, and as one of my physicist friends put it, ‘most people here feel that death is a new experience, rather than what it is – the complete absence of experience for all eternity.’

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Hedberg retired from OSU in 1987, a moment that prompted a letter of congratulations from his friend and former mentor. In it, Pauling confessed that “I remember you, Ken, as one of my favorite graduate students in the California Institute of Technology.” Once his retirement festivities were completed, Hedberg penned a note of gratitude in response.

I think this is also the time for me to tell you how much I have appreciated your help and support during my professional career. You’ve written many recommendations on my behalf without which my life would have been totally different. It would have been nearly impossible to build my laboratory without help from the Research Corp., the Sloan Foundation, and others, to which you sent words on my behalf. Perhaps you are even responsible for Lise’s entering my life – without my Guggenheim to Norway we would never have met! And lastly, you are surely responsible for my accepting a position here at Oregon State. You encouraged me to accept the job, and apart from problems at the start, Lise and I have been very happy here.

Trouble at Freeman and Co.

A W.H. Freeman catalog from 1986 noting the firm’s long association with Scientific American magazine.

[Exploring Linus Pauling’s relationship with the W.H. Freeman & Co. publishing firm. Part 5 of 8.]

After more than a decade of success in the publishing world, W. H. Freeman and Co. hit a roadblock. The difficulties began with a personal matter that arose in the summer of 1959, when Bill Freeman separated from his wife, the former Verne Kopplin. When divorce papers were ultimately filed the following year, Freeman offered his wife an even division of all their assets, with the notable exception of his stake in the company. Collectively, the couple owned 43% of the firm and Verne insisted that she retain her share. In her communications with Freeman, Verne pointed out they had married in 1946, the same year that the company was founded, and that they had worked together to grow the company to its current stature. As such, she was entitled to a degree of control over its future direction.

From the outside looking in, Linus Pauling maintained a different point of view. In a letter to Freeman, Pauling expressed his feeling that, although Verne – a prominent Bay Area attorney – had previously provided legal services to Freeman & Co., she had, in his opinion, done little to support the company beyond her contributions as a consultant.

The possibility that Verne might retain a claim to the company was one that weighed heavily on Freeman. In a letter to Pauling he revealed that “I find it quite impossible to carry on my work while sharing with her anything of my future.” He also expressed concern that he might lose control of the company were Verne to retain her shares.

Freeman knew that he would not be able to influence Verne’s decisions concerning the direction of the company. He also feared that she was planning to consolidate the stocks held by colleagues and friends to essentially buy the company out from under him.

Pauling did his best to provide a lift in his reply:

I believe that W.H. Freeman and Company, as built up by you, has become the outstanding publisher of college textbooks of the highest quality in the United States…I was so greatly impressed by your ability that I felt that the advantage of having my book [General Chemistry] put out by your firm, because of your extraordinary ability and originality and convictions about the importance of publication of books of high quality, would outweigh the disadvantage of lack of an organization and reputation of long standing.

He concluded that he wouldn’t feel comfortable continuing his association with the company in the event that Verne succeeded in reducing Freeman’s control over it.

So strong was Pauling’s conviction that he expressed a willingness to dramatically increase his skin in the game. Cognizant of the financial burden that the divorce and its aftermath had placed on Freeman, and hoping to ease this burden, Pauling offered to buy Freeman’s stock, which would provide Freeman with the capital to purchase Verne’s shares should he wish. Freeman agreed to the proposition but only on condition that he be given the option to buy his stock back within three years. Pauling was not comfortable with this arrangement and the two failed to arrive at a solution that would satisfy them both.

In the end Verne retained her shares, and once the divorce was settled in the fall of 1960, Freeman continued to spiral. In order to keep Verne from gaining control of the company, he was obliged to purchase at least 200 of her shares at $55 each while also paying the mortgage on the house that they had shared. In a letter to illustrator Roger Hayward, Freeman bemoaned his state of affairs:

Old man Freeman feels like the tempest in a terribly small teapot; no one ever gives any thought to the tempest’s feelings or understands how constrained he feels.

In need of an escape, Freeman took the summer off to travel around Europe. He made it as far as Greece and self-published a book describing his experiences, titled Ola Kala: The Greek Word for It.

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An excerpt from Stanley Schaefer’s letter to shareholders written during trying times for the company that he now led. October 1, 1962.

Meanwhile, tensions mounted at W.H. Freeman & Co. as their eponymous leader became increasingly unstable. A growing sentiment among many stockholders was that Freeman would do anything to keep control. As this idea continued to grain traction, executive vice president Stanley Schaefer became nervous about the future of the company and sent out a request to many of the stockholders that they become proxies, thereby granting them the authority to make decisions about the firm.

Finally, in January 1962, Bill Freeman agreed to sell his stock, though he was resistant to sell within the company because of his objections to the firm’s recent association with Scientific American. It is likely that the arrangement with Scientific American was entered into to provide a measure of protection for the company amidst the financial damage caused by Freeman’s divorce. In his correspondence with Pauling – one of the few people at W.H. Freeman & Co. that he still trusted – Freeman railed against the decision and expressed sharp criticisms of Stanley Schaefer and Bill Kaufman as well as other long-timers like Harvey McCaleb and Adam Kudlacik. Pauling balked at these denunciations, pointing out that Freeman had hand-picked these men and needed to trust in their judgment, as Pauling did.

After a different and particularly troubling discussion with Freeman, who sometimes met the Paulings for dinner, Linus reflected on the current state of the company, noting that “Bill and Verne damaged it, neglected it, and [devoted] their energy to fighting each other.” Though he was sympathetic to Freeman’s situation and deeply concerned about his friend, Pauling believed that there was no justification for the damage that Freeman was causing to the company.

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Stanley Schaefer also wanted to help and offered to buy Freeman’s stock. When Freeman declined, Schaefer suggested that Scientific American could purchase the shares. Freeman felt that this was not a realistic solution either. He did, however, agree to not sell his stock to a competing company. When Freeman subsequently took a job at Addison-Wesley’s western office, signing a contract that would allow the company to purchase his Freeman & Co. shares, he effectively broke this promise.

When Pauling asked Freeman why he had done this, Freeman confessed that he was too dissatisfied with the present management at Freeman & Co. to consider associating with it anymore. Scientific American stepped in at this point and made an offer for Freeman’s stock that Addison-Wesley could not match. Ava Helen Pauling, who remained a confidant for Freeman, advised him to sell his stock to the magazine publisher. Doing so, she reasoned, could secure a stable future for his children while also providing an avenue for Freeman to leave his old company gracefully.

Freeman reluctantly agreed and Gerald Piel, the president of Scientific American, put the money from this transaction into a trust fund. Trustees “in whose rationality and integrity” the company had confidence would vote at a later date on the matter of what to do with the proceeds. Meanwhile, once Freeman had become associated with Freeman & Co. in name only, Verne also lost interest and refocused her energies on her legal career. She eventually remarried and went on to challenge discriminatory policies at law firms in Connecticut, where she practiced law for several years.

Some time later, having relocated and newly married to his former secretary, Margaret Cooper, Freeman reached out to Ava Helen to explain his behavior. In his letter, he confided

For old times’ sake, I will say to you that I had no alternatives – financial ones possibly, but professional or personal ones, absolutely none…As I’ve said to Linus, until the future speaks, I trust that we can each of us respect the other’s right to act in accordance with his convictions.

Pauling’s “Immoral Man”: Nuclear Testing, the Nature of Leadership, and Letters to the Kennedys

[This is post 3 of 3 originally authored by SCARC Student Archivist Ethan Heusser for the Rare@OSU blog.]

For internationally renowned scientist and activist Linus Pauling, the early 1960s represented a time of feverish peace work that matched the dangers and necessities of an ever-escalating international crisis. One of the most interesting (and complicated) examples of his correspondence to world leaders during this time was to President John F. Kennedy.

Most of Pauling’s communications with JFK happened during his tenure as President of the United States between 1961-63. (Pauling, meanwhile, was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1963.) The topics of their letters varied widely between nuclear disarmament, nuclear test bans, international peace treaties, and even the Cuban Missile Crisis itself.

Though Pauling’s letters frequently asserted an authoritative tone, the two did not always maintain the level of peership this might imply; many of Pauling’s letters went unanswered, and those that did get replies were sometimes written by others on Kennedy’s behalf.

Pauling was often vehemently critical of President Kennedy’s policies and public relations efforts regarding the cold war and nuclear disarmament, attacking his moral character for failing to take strong enough action to de-escalate rising nuclear tension.

It’s also worth noting that Ava Helen Pauling played a similar role in advocacy to the Kennedys; she wrote Mrs. Kennedy with a similar message about the threat of nuclear weapons, albeit focusing specifically on the impact this might have on her own children. The Paulings’ two-pronged approach is emblematic of their larger team effort.

Nevertheless, Pauling’s lengthy diatribes and urgings to the Kennedys ended abruptly after the infamous assassination in 1963. Of particular significance is a brief letter written to the First Lady three days later, within which Pauling expresses remorse over the death “of our great President, John F. Kennedy.”

The tone of that letter is hard to interpret due to its pithiness, but the typically stoic manner in which Pauling writes reveals here a brief moment of vulnerability. For all his “urgings” and his attacks on Kennedy’s moral character, Pauling clearly also had a certain amount of faith in Kennedy’s ability to listen to reason, make compassionate decisions, and lead the nation through moments of immense political pressure. Not only that, but as someone familiar with death threats due to activism, it’s hard to imagine Linus Pauling seeing November 22^nd as anything other than a sobering and uncertain experience. The long and difficult relationship between them was snuffed out, but the legacy of the work, unfortunately, needed more than ever to be continued.

The History of the Pauling Blog: An Archivist Reflects

Red carnations left anonymously in the Valley Library Special Collections and Archives Research Center foyer on February 28, 2018 — Pauling’s 117th birthday.

[Extracts from an interview by Tiah Edmunson-Morton with Chris Petersen, conducted on the occasion of the Pauling Blog’s tenth anniversary. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity. Part 4 of 4.]

Tiah Edmunson-Morton: Do you see yourself as his biographer?

Chris Petersen: Oh no, definitely not. But here is what I do see myself as. I see myself as a person who, through pure accident, wound up in a very unique position. I was hired as a student assistant in 1996, I was hired as a full-time [faculty member] in 1999, and that was the period of time during which the collection was being processed. And somehow I took charge of that when I was a student. The person who had my job before me left in the spring of my senior year of college, and at that point I began to lead the processing effort of this enormous collection. And that continued.

We published the catalog in 2006, so that’s ten years of work based on my start date as a student. And that’s never going to happen again. Nobody’s ever going to re-process the Pauling Papers. I hope not, at least. [laughs] So I had this opportunity that nobody else will ever have. And when you work with a collection, you don’t necessarily become their biographer, but you do have a level of intimacy with the material that nobody else will ever have, because nobody else is going to process that collection.

Linus Pauling in the original Special Collections reading room, 1988.

And now when I think about the blog I think about it in multiple ways, but one of the ways that I think about it is it being a resource for future archivists who work at OSU to be able to work with this collection in a more effective way, just because they’re not going to have that same experience of working with it that I had. And part of what continues to motivate me to publish the [Pauling Blog] is that — to leave a little bit of my experience behind after I’m gone. Because the blog will hopefully continue to exist. I doubt it will continue to be published after I stop doing it, whenever that is, but what we’ve done will continue to exist. We’re archiving it with our Archive-It instance, so it’s in the Internet Archive. It gets archived once a quarter.

And I’m happy about that. It’s a very big collection, it’s difficult to provide reference for it because of its size, and it’s unfair for all of the people who work here to be expected to know it on anything more than a surface level. So this is a tool for them to have in the future.

TEM: Is there a post that you thought about writing, because of the depth of knowledge that you have about the collection, that you decided not to write?

CP: Yeah, I thought about writing something [for the tenth anniversary of the Pauling Blog] but we’re doing this instead. [laughs]

There’s a part of me that wants to write a reflection about my engagement with Pauling, a person I never met. He died when I was a senior in high school; actually the summer after my senior year of high school. I was working for the Department of Transportation picking up garbage by the side of the road in Eastern Oregon on the day that he died. So that was my status at the end of his life. But I have come to know him well through strange ways, and I have come to know his oldest son quite well – Linus Jr. – through oral history. And I was in the middle of this department [Special Collections] that doesn’t exist anymore, that was devoted to him. And that’s, again, a unique experience.

Part of my oral history work, in addition to Linus Jr., was to interview Cliff Mead – basically the only head of Special Collections that ever existed – to try to get some of his memories from the chapter before I came along in ’96, because there were nine years of time that elapsed. So I could have a history of Special Collections recorded somewhere.

And anyway, part of me has thought about writing these recollections down, but it seems like a lot of work [laughs] and I have other things to do right now. But maybe someday.

Ava Helen Miller with Linus Pauling, 1922.

TEM: What about topics that you’ve thought about writing about? I mean, there’s some really personal relationship stuff between he and Ava Helen.

CP: Yep. That’s actually a good example of something that I’ve thought about and haven’t done. So they were separated for a year when he went to Caltech and she was here [at Oregon Agricultural College]. They wanted to get married and their parents wouldn’t let them, so she stayed here in Corvallis for a year and he went for his first year of grad school. And then he came back that next summer, they got married, and they went off together. But they were apart for one year and they wrote to each other basically every single day, and we have all of his letters but none of hers, because he burned them. And I think that there’s probably good stuff in those letters but I just can’t deal with it because there’s also a lot of lovey-dovey stuff, and there’s just a lot of stuff period.

But I think that the correspondence between he and Ava Helen is ripe for mining, and Mina Carson did some of that for her Ava Helen biography. Pauling was super formal in his correspondence and pretty much to the point, because he was doing a lot of corresponding and just was a very busy person. The one time where he reveals himself on any deeper level, or reveals any kind of vulnerability, is in his correspondence with his wife. So I think that there’s probably a lot there that could be thought about and teased out, but it would take a lot of time and thinking to try and figure out what exactly is going on here with some of that stuff. But that’s something that I would like somebody to do some day; that’s definitely at least a paper, if not a book.

Something that I would like somebody else to do that definitely is a book is to talk about his relationship with Caltech. He was there for a long time and it would be really interesting to trace his evolution while there and also to trace the Institute’s evolution while he was there, and think about how the two of them were symbiotic on some level. I mean, Caltech was not Caltech when he joined, and it is Caltech today in part because he was there. He helped to build that place. He certainly wasn’t the only person, but he was a significant piece of it.

And on the same token, when he went to Caltech — he came from an extremely humble background and he’s lucky to have made it out of that background. When he went to Caltech he was very smart and ambitious but super green. I mean, his education that he got here was, I think, pretty modest. OAC was a land grant institution, it was focused on practical stuff, and he had far greater aspirations than that.

Hand-tinted photo of Pauling at the Sutherlin work site, 1922.

And he got into Caltech — one of my favorite stories about Pauling is that, so he’s been accepted to Caltech and the summer before he goes down there he’s working for the Department of Transportation and he’s a pavement inspector. And so he’s out in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, inspecting pavement and living in a tent. But before he embarked upon this job he wrote to A.A. Noyes, who is the head of the Chemistry section of Caltech — there are basically three people who started Caltech and Noyes was one of them — and Pauling says, “I’m coming to grad school, how do I become a grad student?” And Noyes is writing a textbook and he sends him a manuscript version of the textbook and tells him, “Do all the problems in this book.” And so that summer in his tent, with a lantern, Pauling is doing this work and learning how to become a grad student and how to become a scientist.

And so he goes to Caltech and he’s there for a few years and at the end of that he gets this Guggenheim fellowship to go to Europe to learn quantum mechanics as it’s basically being invented. And then he comes back to the United States, applies quantum mechanics to structural chemistry, publishes a series of papers that become The Nature of the Chemical Bond in 1939, and that’s Nobel-quality work at that point. And it’s a very short period of time during which this process is moving forward, but for me it begins in that tent.

In any case, Caltech was hugely important for Pauling and vice-versa, and I think that would be a book that somebody should write; I’d love to see that. That’s not a series of blog posts.

One of the things that we’ve done a lot is to talk about his associations with places. We’ve done a series on his tenure at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, which was rocky at best and short-lived. Same thing with UCSD. We’ve got a series coming out soon about his time at Stanford. We’ve done a lot on his relationship with Oregon Agricultural College too. But it’s harder to wrap yourself around the relationship with Caltech because he was there for so long and so much happened.

But I think I figured out a way that we can start to engage with that a little bit, and that’s something that’s being worked on right now, and that’s to talk about his work as an administrator. So he was the head of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering for a long time and he was in charge of a lot of grant money and he had an army of grad students who worked for him. And part of his success story is that he was a very able administrator, and obviously a brilliant thinker.

So he’d come up with an idea and give it a grad student, and that might become that grad student’s entire career basically. They would pursue that as a grad student and continue to pursue it for the rest of their career. It was something that would emerge from this yellow piece of paper that he would give to people, saying “you can work on this if you want, you don’t have to.” It was implied that you should. [laughs]

But he published 1,100 papers and you don’t do that without help. And there are plenty of co-authors there and people who went on to win Nobel Prizes — the Pauling tree is vast and significant. So I’m interested in that; I’m interested in his ability to be a leader of men. And it was men, because Caltech didn’t allow women. But I’m interested in his ability to attract grant money and how this all flows into creating this career that is so remarkable. And a lot of it happened at Caltech; a lot of the best stuff happened at Caltech.

A Global Friendship

Asima Chatterjee (front row, third from right) with her students and the Paulings, February 1967. Credit: Indian Academy of Sciences

[An examination of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling’s relationship with the influential Indian chemist, Asima Chatterjee. Part 2 of 2.]

Asima Chatterjee’s one and only meeting with Linus and Ava Helen Pauling took place during the Paulings’ tour of India, which spanned the months of January and February 1967. During the final leg of this trip, for a mere sixteen hours, the Paulings landed in Kolkata, toured the University, saw Chatterjee’s labs, and met her students. From there the Paulings departed India en route to Honolulu, where they planned to spend a few days visiting with their son, Linus Jr. Before leaving however, the Paulings gave a sum of money to Chatterjee that they later requested she spend on a wedding gift from them for her daughter. Though a small token, this gift was surely an indication of the esteem that the Paulings felt for their friend and fellow scientist.

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While 1967 began on a high note for Chatterjee, the year ultimately proved to be profoundly difficult. In the months following the Paulings’ departure, Chatterjee lost both her husband and her father. Congruent with these personal tragedies, the political environment in Chatterjee’s home region of West Bengal, and particularly in Kolkata, began to deteriorate as a radical communist group, the Naxalites, began to gain influence in the area.

While the details of Chatterjee’s personal heartache, as well as India’s mounting regional strife, were communicated in her letters to the Paulings, one is also able to intuit a degree of solace being found in correspondence. In particular, Chatterjee was keen to point out Linus Pauling’s sweeping geniality and friendship, commenting that “we all admire his enthusiasm and unlimited energy. He is so dynamic! We wonder where he gains this energy.”

Though first and foremost a scientist, Asima Chatterjee’s concerns for her home country’s well-being echoed similar frustrations being felt by her stateside correspondents. While the Paulings were focused primarily on global problems of the nuclear age, in India the worries were more acute. In particular, the need to navigate and correct a wide array of political, social and economic dysfunctions left behind by the colonial era proved to be a momentous and primary challenge.

The strains of adjusting to a new era of independence that were felt nation-wide also impacted Chatterjee in a multitude of ways. Professionally, many students at her university abandoned their studies to join the Naxalites in protest. As these demonstrations grew in intensity, splinter groups resorted to attacks on Kolkata’s infrastructure that resulted in damage to the city’s power grid.

During this period of tumult, Chatterjee’s concern for the fortunes of her students, her daughter and, indeed, her country were evident in her communications with Ava Helen. In their letters, the two women discussed a number of social issues, including student unrest around the world, Kolkata’s seemingly intractable troubles, and the escalation of violence in Vietnam. In a 1971 letter, Ava Helen expressed her sympathy for Chatterjee’s plight. “The world gets no better and we have been full of sorrow and anxiety for India the past year,” she wrote. “It is so dreadful that the world refuses to try another method.”

Replying a few weeks later – during the final months of a genocidal campaign that resulted in the deaths of between 300,000 and 3 million people in present-day Bangladesh – Chatterjee expressed growing dismay about the state of affairs on the subcontinent.

Air raid sirens and black outs are frequent occurrences in the city. The number of refugees in India is beyond imagination… It is not possible for India to look after those millions of refugees permanently.

Though she could not have known the final tally at that time, statistics now show that some 10 million refugees fled Bangladesh for India in 1971.

Asima Chatterjee (at center in white sari) with some of her students, 1997. Credit: Indian Academy of Science.

Chatterjee also noted that academic rigor at the University of Calcutta had diminished, suggesting that “the University has been converted into a machine for turning out [hundreds] of graduates every year.”

And yet, in spite of it all, Chatterjee remained very productive. By 1961 she had published 105 peer-reviewed papers and, in 1972, she was selected to be the honorary Programme Coordinator at the Centre for Advanced Studies in Chemistry of Natural Products. Three years later, she became the first woman to be elected as General President of the Indian Science Congress Association.

In 1982, after retiring from her duties as a professor, Chatterjee received a very different kind of honor when she was selected to a seat in the Raiya Sabha. A component of India’s parliament, the Raiya Sabha consists of twelve nationals who, in the estimation of the President, have made a profound impact on their fields. Chatterjee served in this is position until 1990. She died sixteen years later, on November 22, 2006, and is survived by her daughter Julie Banerji, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Calcutta.

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The global friendship shared by Linus Pauling, Ava Helen Pauling and Asima Chatterjee was certainly unorthodox — in person, the relationship consisted entirely of a single, half-day meeting. Through the power of the pen however, the Paulings and Chatterjee cemented and grew their fondness for one another, regularly exchanging holiday greetings and carrying out various professional favors. Today, their bond stands as evidence in support of the imperative that knowledge flow freely across social and geographic boundaries. Their story also serves as an example of the ways in which science and concerns for humanity are so often intertwined.

Scientist, Sartorialist

[Part 3 of 4 examining Linus Pauling’s sense of style. Today’s post covers the 1960s and 1970s.]

Posing with a model near the end of his time at Caltech, 1963.

 

Harvesting abalone at Deer Flat Ranch, 1963.

 

Elsewhere on the grounds at Deer Flat Ranch, 1964. Photo Credit: Arthur Herzog.

 

Sitting for sculptor Zena Posever at Deer Flat Ranch, 1966. Note that Pauling was suffering from a broken leg at the time.

 

On Thanksgiving Day, 1968 with Linda Pauling Kamb and her boys. This image was taken in La Jolla, California, where Linus and Ava Helen maintained a residence for a handful of years. Photo Credit: Barclay Kamb.

 

Posing in San Francisco, 1969. Photo Credit: Margo Moore.

 

The Paulings with Norma Lundholm Djerassi in 1970. Pauling came to favor this tan fishing hat for informal occasions.

 

The Paulings at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, D.C. for the Lenin Peace Prize ceremony, 1970. In this photo they pose with Russian geoscientist Boris Davydov.

 

On the deck at Deer Flat Ranch, 1971. At far left is Frances Fritchman.

 

Pauling posing next to a poster featuring a detailed cross-section of the human epidermis. Stanford University, 1971.

 

A striking portrait taken at the University of Missouri, 1972.

 

Matching (!) in Dallas, Texas, 1972.

 

Pauling with his sister Pauline on the day of her wedding to Charles Dunbar, 1973. This photo marks an early appearance of a red jacket that Pauling came to wear with some frequency.

 

In Nagasaki, Japan, 1975.

 

With Nahid Hakimelahi in Persepolis, Iran, 1975.

 

With “Z. Hecher” in Menlo Park, California, perhaps on the grounds of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, 1977.

 

With Ivan Zupec in Belmont, California, 1977.

 

Linus and Ava Helen in their living room at Deer Flat Ranch, 1977.

 

The red jacket makes another appearance. This is one in a series of photos taken to promote the NOVA documentary, “Linus Pauling: Crusading Scientist,” in 1977.

 

Pauling in his office at LPISM with a visitor identified only as “Kazuo,” 1978.

 

A portrait from 1978.

 

Posing in Pasadena on a beautiful autumn day, 1979.

 

Pauling Couture

[Part of 2 of 4 in a series exploring Linus Pauling’s sense of style. Today’s post features photographs taken during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.]

Baby Peter Pauling with his parents and brother Linus Jr. The family poses here in front of the Pauling home on Arden Road, Pasadena, 1931.

The Paulings pose with an unidentified family. This photo marks an early appearance of Pauling’s beard. 1933.

A relaxing moment with Linda, who is two years old in this photo. 1934.

In lecture at Caltech, 1935.

The beard returns, this time at Painted Canyon, California, a common getaway location for the Pauling family during the 1930s. Photo taken in 1935.

A more formal portrait of Pauling with his beard, 1935.

Dressed for cold weather at Niagara Falls. Of this moment, Ava Helen wrote: “It was so cold we wrapped scarfs around our heads and then put our hats on over the scarf.” The Paulings pose with their friend Yvonne Handy. Photo taken in 1938.

Ava Helen and Linus photographed during a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, July 1939.

Picnicking at Corona del Mar, California, 1940.

In the laboratory with rabbits, 1942.

Lecturing on structural chemistry at the Richards Medal ceremony. Pauling received this award from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society in 1947.

On holiday with the family of Carl Nieman, 1948.

Posing with a new friend, 1948.

And posing once more (and proudly) with the family car, 1948.

In England with Lord and Lady Leverhulme, 1948. Pauling spent much of this year as a visiting professor at Oxford.

In Hawaii, 1948.

Another photo from the Hawaii trip, 1948.

An early image of Pauling wearing what would become an iconic accessory for him – a black beret. Photo taken in 1953.

Posing in front of the Fairpoint Street home, Pasadena, 1954.

A publicity still of Pauling with a model of the alpha helix, 1954.

In white tie and tux at the 1954 Nobel ceremonies.

 

With Ava Helen at the old cabin, Deer Flat Ranch, 1957. Photo Credit: Arthur Dubinsky.

 

Visiting Albert Schweitzer’s compound in Lambaréné, Gabon, 1959.

 

Clothes Make the Man

[Ed Note: The Pauling Blog becomes a photo blog for the next four weeks as we dig into the 5,500+ images held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. In addition to showing off some pictures that have never before been released online, this examination pays particular attention to Pauling’s evolving taste in clothes over the years. Today’s post features selections from Pauling’s birth in 1901 to the end of the 1920s.]

Pauling in 1902, age 1. Note in particular the necklace.

Pauling, age 5, posing in buffalo-skin chaps, 1906. Linus’s father had this photo commissioned for use in advertising his Condon, Oregon pharmacy.

Linus, at center, with his two sisters, Lucile (left) and Pauline. This photo was also taken in Condon in 1908.

Eight years later, the Pauling children posed near their home in Portland with their mother. From left to right: Lucile, Linus, Belle and Pauline Pauling, 1916.

Pauling in his ROTC uniform during Fall term of his freshman year at Oregon Agricultural College. He is sixteen years old in this photo. Two years of ROTC was compulsory for all male students attending OAC at the time.

An iconic portrait of the young Pauling taken the summer after his freshman year at OAC. Specifically, this photo was taken on the Oregon Coast in Tillamook, where the Paulings spent some time during the summer of 1918. Linus worked as a pin boy at a local bowling alley during the stay.

Another photo of Pauling in his military dress, 1918. Though only two years were required, Pauling opted to remain in ROTC for the entirety of his OAC experience, graduating from the college having attained the rank of Major.

Far from a typical look for Pauling, this image is cropped from a group photo of participants in the OAC “Feminine Section Intrafraternity Smoker,” circa 1920.

Pauling with his life-long friend, Paul Emmett, in 1920. Also a Beaver, Emmett went on to become a major scientific figure in his own right, making significant contributions to the study of catalysis chemistry. Emmett also became Pauling’s brother-in-law when he married Pauline Pauling late in life.

Pauling clowning around sometime near his graduation from OAC in 1922.

Newly arrived at Caltech, Pauling poses on the back of a student’s car.

Pauling with his bride, Ava Helen, her mother, Nora Gard Miller, and Nettie Spaulding, one of Ava Helen’s eleven siblings. Standing at front is Nettie’s daughter, Leone. 1924.

The young couple outside their Pasadena home in 1925. Linus had been working on their Model-T Ford prior to this photo being taken.

Looking very California on a trip to the beach. 1925.

At the Temple of Neptune, Paestum, Italy, during his legendary Guggenheim trip to Europe. This photo was taken by Ava Helen in April 1926.