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.

Pauling’s OAC: Super Senior Year

[Ed Note: School starts today here at Oregon State University! As we have for the previous four years, we take this opportunity to look back at Linus Pauling’s undergraduate experience in Corvallis, this time documenting his “super senior” experience as a Beaver.]

The 1921-22 academic year was Linus Pauling’s fifth at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC), now known as Oregon State University. In the twelve months to come, Pauling would finish his coursework; graduate; become engaged; and move to Pasadena, California to begin his graduate studies. Needless to say, it was a year of great change for Pauling, but one that he embraced with excellence.

In the fall of 1921, seniors at OAC were welcomed back to the college through a series of “Get Acquainted” dances, which were aimed at helping them become more comfortable with their apical position in the social hierarchy. Though these dances were a running tradition at OAC, each senior class approached them in their own way. During the 1921-22 academic year the dances were themed, with one particularly memorable event, the Goof Dance, challenging participants to wear the craziest outfits they had. 

For Pauling, the start of the year marked a continuation of his effort to earn solid marks and gain entry into a good graduate program. Throughout his time at OAC, he had always applied himself, and by his senior year, those efforts were evident. As with other colleges, the OAC Beaver yearbook included basic information on all its seniors, as well as additional details documenting their participation in extracurricular organizations and clubs. These blurbs often consisted of a handful of words, but Pauling’s was, not surprisingly, several lines long.

As per OAC custom, Pauling’s entry lists his major (Chemical Engineering), his hometown (Portland), and his fraternal membership (Delta Upsilon). Other decorations included his membership in Sigma Tau, the engineering honor society into which he was inducted during his junior year and served as secretary during his final year at OAC. His participation in the Scabbard and Blade, a military honor society that he joined during his junior year, is also listed. During his senior year, Pauling served as a Captain in the Reserve Officer Training Corps, which was recognized by the yearbook as well. So too was he a member of the Chemical Engineering Association (junior year treasurer) and the Chi Epsilon civil engineering honor society (junior year president). His efforts in competitive speaking were noted as well.

Pauling’s accomplishments were likewise praised by outside organizations. One of them, the Oregon Alumni Society, heralded Pauling’s admittance into the Forum Honor Society, OAC’s most prestigious academic group. Pauling, along with sixteen other students, was admitted for his “excellence in scholarship, leadership in school activities and strength of character.” OAC President William Jasper Kerr welcomed the new members personally, a group that also included Pauling’s friend and future colleague, Paul Emmett. 

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Linus Pauling on OAC graduation day, June 1922.

As graduation day neared, Pauling was asked to deliver the senior class speech. He was a likely choice to fill this role, given his strong academic standing and his success in a junior year debate contest. But unlike past years, where speakers tended to offer fairly generic observations, Pauling’s speech was notably more pointed.

Pauling viewed the speech as an opportunity for him to position himself as a scientist, and he focused his rhetoric on contemporary world events as observed through a scientific lens. A main thrust of the talk was his belief in scientists’ duty to use their tools for good. In exploring this, he referred to the scientific developments that had advanced weaponry options, including chemical weapons, during World War I. Pauling also expressed a feeling that science was being used to create income gaps and remove humanity from workspaces, before suggesting that “the country is crying for a solution to these difficulties, and is hopefully looking to the educated man for it.” This call to action was the real point of his talk, which ended with an exhortation to his classmates that they repay OAC in the years ahead through acts of service in their communities.

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

Pauling was well-aware of the need to move beyond OAC to continue his learning, and throughout the year the decision of where to go for graduate studies weighed heavily on his mind. Always keen on a future in chemistry, Pauling stayed current on recent developments in the field and knew that there were a handful of institutions equipped to provide him with an advanced education that could keep up with the changing times.

He decided to apply to four graduate programs: Harvard University, the University of California at Berkeley, University of Illinois, and the California Institute of Technology. Of these schools, Pauling was perhaps most attracted to Berkeley because it was headed by G.N. Lewis, who had discovered that electron bonds are shared. Harvard was also enticing, in part because its program was led by Theodore Richards, who was America’s only Nobel Laureate in chemistry at the time. Richards had attended the University of Illinois for his graduate work, and this connection had helped to boost its program. Caltech, by comparison, was the smallest and newest of the possibilities in which Pauling was interested.

Pauling eventually opted for Caltech, a decision that was made, in part, because of a fortunate sequence of events. All of the universities that Pauling wanted to attend were interested in him, and Harvard offered an attractive fellowship that would cover his tuition. But shortly after receiving this offer, Caltech’s letter arrived. Like Harvard, the Pasadena school offered a full-ride fellowship, but Caltech’s package also included a $350 stipend to work as a teaching assistant in undergraduate chemistry courses. Importantly, Caltech had also accepted Pauling’s close friend, Paul Emmett, and the two would ultimately live together for their first year as graduate students. These two factors tilted the scale in Caltech’s favor, and Pauling would remain at the Institute for more than forty years.

Pauling’s OAC: A New Decade

[Looking back on Linus Pauling’s junior year at Oregon Agricultural College. This is part 3 of 3.]

The 1920-21 academic year at Oregon Agricultural College was, in many respects, a period of growth and change. With World War I now concluded, the school grew in size, many of its programs became better known, and the campus was buoyed by a sense of optimism.

One signal that the Roaring Twenties had reached Corvallis was the aptly named “Inter-Fraternity Smoker” contest. The cheeky competition – in which Linus Pauling participated – saw fraternity members “v[ying] with one another to produce the best characterization of womankind.”

Sports at OAC also enjoyed growth and success during the school year. Football, basketball, baseball and track all competed without the encumbrances mandated by the flu years, a new tennis program came into being, and OAC’s wrestling team won an intercollegiate championship. The college likewise sponsored several sports-adjacent groups, including a varsity “yell team” that was comprised of three students who rooted especially hard for the Beavers at all athletic events. “Women’s aesthetic dancing” also made an appearance during the year.

At this point in its history, OAC was committed to providing physical education opportunities for its entire matriculated population. All women enrolled at OAC were required to take a P.E. course, and the Physical Education for Men curriculum was among the most robust on the West Coast.

P.E. opportunities during the year were augmented by the completion of a new campus pool, chronicled as a welcome relief to students who had, according to The O.A.C. Alumnus, “swelter[ed]” through an “unprecedented heat wave.” The 50 x 100 foot facility, 9.5 feet deep at the diving well end, was among the larger pools around, and was surrounded by a grandstand that could seat 5,000 people.

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The 1920-21 school year was also important for OAC’s academic programs, many of which were garnering more attention. The schools of Agriculture and Engineering could both boast of national rankings, while the School of Home Economics was the third largest in the country, featuring four departments (household science, household art, household administration, and home economics education) which all led to a four-year degree. The School of Forestry, which focused on logging engineering and technical forestry, was among the biggest in the country, and the School of Pharmacy – which offered pre-medicine courses in addition to a more standard pharmacy curriculum – was a leader on the West Coast. OAC did not house a School of the Liberal Arts, but its music program was, on the basis of size, ranked second among western colleges.

An OAC Chemistry lab, circa 1920

While not of national stature, OAC’s Chemistry program was quite large, owing to the fact that all students were required to take at least introductory chemistry as part of their studies. The Physics department created a research branch during the school year, and students in Botany and Plant Pathology could make use of the largest library of plant diseases and plant equipment west of the Mississippi River. Two new degree programs were added in Fall 1920, a B.S. in Vocational Education and a B.S. in Military Science and Tactics, “for the training of men for appointment as officers in the Regular Army.”

The school year also saw significant additions to the built environment on campus. The Health Services department moved into new quarters, where one full-time physician and two nurses cared for the OAC community. The School of Commerce broke ground on a new building, as did the School of Home Economics, and the School of Engineering moved forward on a series of projects with an estimated value of $360,000 (approximately $4.7 million today). Notably, present-day Kearney Hall – then known as Apperson Hall and home to the School of Engineering – received an extensive addition.

The 1920-21 academic year was also the last tuition-free year for OAC students. In previous years, students had been charged fees to help support specific classes, but they were not assessed a separate tuition charge.

Additional costs continued to come about for lodging. As before, all female students were required to live in the dorms, unless they received special permission from the dean or their parents lived in Corvallis. OAC’s women’s dorms featured “large air parlors” and cost $18 per term for a single or $9 for a double, plus $5 for deposit and incidentals. All rooms had access to “pure mountain water, both hot and cold,” lights, heat and “other modern conveniences” including a bed, pillows, linens, towels, sheets, and a wardrobe. Starting a few years prior, men also had the option to live in dorms. Their rooms were outfitted for between two to six people, but private rooms could be found around town for $4.00 – 5.50 per week, including meals.

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Despite all of the positive momentum, many at OAC recognized that it was still hard for recent graduates to find work outside of the Pacific Northwest. (except for those from the School of Agriculture, who had “no such hardship.”) Some argued that a reason for this was the name of the school, and that if O.A.C. were to be rechristened as Oregon State College, a “handicap” that was “neither fair nor equitable” to graduates outside of the School of Agriculture would be removed. As it happened, the school was eventually renamed, but not until 1927 and even then as Oregon State Agricultural College. OSAC became Oregon State College in 1932 and, at long last, Oregon State University in 1961.

Pauling’s OAC: A Maturing Relationship with Chemistry

Linus Pauling, 1920.

[A look back at Linus Pauling’s undergraduate experience from 100 years ago; part 2 of 3.]

By the fall of 1920, Linus Pauling was connected to an academic trajectory that he would continue to pursue for the rest of his life. That said, during his years at Oregon Agricultural College, he was compelled to advance his studies in chemistry through rather unorthodox means. Because OAC was a land grant institution, the practical and applied sciences were the main point of emphasis within the college’s curriculum. Further, because the state of Oregon discouraged (and later mandated against) redundancy in the majors offered by its two largest institutions of higher learning, and because the University of Oregon already offered a degree in chemistry, Pauling’s only real option as a Beaver was to major in chemical engineering.

Partly as a result of these circumstances, much of the chemistry that Pauling had learned so far was fairly out of date. Not surprisingly, Pauling had found many of his classes to be dull and, at times, rote in their emphasis on solving problems of interest to engineers rather than academic chemists. But by the fall of 1920, having spent the previous year teaching, Pauling re-enrolled at OAC with a boost in confidence and a willingness to seek out opportunities in non-traditional ways. Fortunately, the school year reciprocated, offering key new acquaintances who broadened horizons for the precocious young student.

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Throughout his studies in chemistry, the young Pauling often found himself questioning aspects of what he was learning and seeking to uncover more. For example, Pauling was intrigued by magnetism and puzzled over questions of why certain materials with similar physical structures varied in their degree of attraction to one another.

The courses that Pauling had taken to date were not providing answers to these questions. As a chemical engineer in training, he was learning that different substances expressed different levels of magnetism, but he had no insight into why. Prior to his junior year, Pauling may well have been resigned to the notion that these were unanswerable questions. However, more satisfactory solutions soon emerged with the help of a few influential professors.

OAC alumni inducted into Phi Kappa Phi, 1924. John Fulton stands in the back row, second from right.

Though he had saved up enough money to return to school, Pauling still needed to earn a wage to pay for on-going expenses, so he took up a job as an assistant to OAC Chemistry Professor Samuel Graf. Even though the job consisted mostly of working through computations, it also allocated time for Pauling to engage with the scientific literature. OAC’s Chemistry head, John Fulton, helped facilitate this by giving Pauling a few of his own chemical journals, and during his stint as Graf’s assistant, Pauling began to consume these journals with relish.

It was in this setting that Pauling first encountered the work of G.N. Lewis and Irving Langmuir, both of whom were exploring some of the most exciting questions in subatomic chemistry. While their publications did not answer all of Pauling’s questions, (many of which were in their earliest stages of formation) reading Lewis and Langmuir made Pauling realize that this new field of subatomic chemistry could solve problems, many of which he had not even realized existed.

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While the history of the field of subatomic chemistry is quite complex, many of the ideas that Lewis and Langmuir were developing emerged because of headways that the Danish chemist, Niels Bohr, made with the formalization of his quantum theory in 1918. At OAC all of the chemical engineering courses were physical and practical in their orientation. The kind of theoretical work that Bohr, Lewis, and Langmuir were doing was novel – and not being taught at OAC – but making its acquaintance equipped Pauling with new tools to explore some of the questions that he was pondering as a nineteen-year-old undergraduate. This breakthrough renewed Pauling’s fervor for chemistry and his determination to pursue it for a career.

Pauling’s moment of insight was especially well-timed in that it corresponded with another interaction that he had with an OAC professor, one where he learned about the availability of graduate fellowships at the California Institute of Technology. The fellowship announcement bore the imprimatur of Caltech chemistry chief A.A. Noyes, among the country’s leading physical chemists and a mentor to several promising young scholars. It is no surprise then, that the flyer caught the eye of Pauling almost immediately and helped to steer him toward graduate studies in Pasadena.

Pauling’s OAC, 1920-21: A True Junior Year

“Peany” Pauling – “a prodigy, yet in his teens.”

[A look back at Linus Pauling’s undergraduate experience at Oregon Agricultural College one-hundred years ago. This is part 1 of 3.]

The 1920-21 academic year at Oregon Agricultural College (present-day Oregon State University) marked a season of change for Linus Pauling, both academically and personally. The previous year, due to financial constraints, Pauling did not enroll in classes but instead taught introductory chemistry courses at OAC in order to make ends meet. But by the fall of 1920 Pauling was able to resume his studies, having saved up from his teaching and from a summer job working as a paving inspector in southern Oregon. As such, even though it was Pauling’s fourth year at OAC, he recommenced his academic work with junior year standing.

When Pauling moved back to Corvallis in September 1920, he rejoined the Gamma Tau Beta fraternity, one of the smallest Greek houses on campus. Pauling’s involvement in the fraternity had been crucial to his social development, and his year out of school had also provided ample opportunities for personal growth. Partly as a result, when Pauling returned to student life he was no longer so strictly interested in chemistry, but instead began to dabble in a number of additional pursuits, excelling at most.

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One of the most significant diversions from chemistry that Pauling began to pursue was competitive public speaking. When he first came to OAC, Pauling was, by his own account, a shy individual lacking in self-confidence. However, as time went forward (and perhaps spurred by his experiences as a teacher) Pauling developed a degree of confidence and interest in oratory that he pursued for the final two years of his OAC career. And so it was that Pauling jumped at the opportunity to participate in the school’s annual campus-wide competition, even seeking out the help of an English professor (and former minister) to assist with his diction and delivery. 

Though the all-campus contest was open to anyone, each class was ultimately required to nominate two participants to serve as its representative. Following a rigorous vetting process, Pauling was selected as one of the two junior class nominees. His speech, titled “Children of the Dawn,” was a plea for scientific rationalism and offered firm support for Darwin’s thinking on evolution. Though ably delivered, the content of the lecture may have been too progressive for the competition’s judges, and Pauling ultimately lost out on first place to his fellow junior class nominee, William P. Black, whose speech was decidedly less controversial. Black, who went on to win second place in the statewide speech contest, delivered a talk titled “House Divided Against Itself.” Pauling tied as runner up with the sophomore candidate, who spoke out against stifling immigration in his lecture, “Closing our National Door.”

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Despite coming up short in the final judging, the OAC contest aided Pauling in his maturation as a person and aspiring academic. Mostly due to his excellence in the classroom, but also prompted by his strong performance in the oratory event, Pauling was invited by members of the OAC faculty to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship, an application that ultimately fell short.

Pauling was naturally disappointed by the decision of the Rhodes committee, but he was also able to see a silver lining. As he recalled years later, Oxford’s chemistry department – where he would have studied had he been awarded the scholarship – was stuck in the past. In Pauling’s view, the department’s faculty were not interested in some of the new innovations emerging within the discipline, and had he attended Oxford at an impressionable age, he may well have been steered down a less prosperous path.

More tangibly, Pauling’s application drew the attention of several professors who provided support to the prodigious student for the remainder of his undergraduate career. Floyd Rowland, a chemical engineering professor at OAC, noted that Pauling “possesses one of the best minds I have ever observed in a person of his age, and in many ways is superior to his instructors.” Likewise, the English professor who helped Pauling with his speech earlier in the year observed that Pauling “does not expect results without hard work, but seems to delight in digging hard.” German professor Louis Bach followed suit with the keen observation later affirmed by numerous biographers:

[Pauling] is endowed with a remarkable memory in combination with good judgement, sound analytical and synthetic discrimination: a brilliant mind.

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Pauling is seated at center left, in the light colored sweater.

As the year progressed, Pauling also garnered increasing attention from the school’s honor societies. First and foremost, Pauling was elected into Forum, OAC’s most prestigious and academically stringent honorary. Created six years earlier in 1914 and akin to Phi Beta Kappa, Forum was comprised of juniors and seniors who were elected by current members on the basis of their “scholastic attainment and leadership.”

Pauling was also a member of Sigma Tau, the national honor society for engineering. Like Forum, Sigma Tau was open to juniors and seniors, but its membership was selected by faculty in engineering. The organization, which was first established at the University of Nebraska in 1904, came to OAC in 1913 as the eleventh chapter in the country.

In addition, Pauling continued on as president of Chi Epsilon, the chemistry honor society. OAC’s chapter was recently formed (1918) and targeted towards chemistry students who showed “scholastic promise and who intend to make some phase of chemistry their life work.”

Pauling also devoted time to several campus clubs. He remained a member of the Chemical Engineering Society, which he had joined as a freshman and now served as treasurer. He also helped out a bit with the production of the Beaver yearbook, and was tasked, along with fellow student Ernest Abbot, to create a page documenting Forensics activities.

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And as usual, Pauling earned stellar grades. Over the course of his junior year, he received all As, except for a B in Military Drill during the first quarter and, interestingly, a B in inorganic chemical engineering in the third quarter.

The 1920-21 academic year also marked the first year that Pauling was awarded the elusive A in track and field that he so desired. During his freshman year, Pauling had tried, unsuccessfully, to circumvent the school’s required gym credits by joining the track team. When he failed to make the team, Pauling simply decided to skip gym, and thus earned a failing grade for the year. Redemption came as a junior though, with an A in athletics complementing excellence in the classroom that had always come a bit easier.

The “Spanish Flu” at OAC, 1918-1919

Linus Pauling, 1918.

[Ed Note: School is underway here at Oregon State University, and as has become tradition for us, next week we will begin an investigation of Linus Pauling’s undergraduate experience from 100 years ago, the 1920-1921 academic year. Today however, we take a closer look at life on campus a few years before; a time period also clouded by a pandemic, and a moment in history that Pauling shared with about 4,000 other students enrolled at OAC. An earlier version of this post originally appeared on our sister blog, Speaking of History, in May 2020.]

As Oregon Agricultural College students began to arrive back on campus for the start of classes in October 1918, the “Spanish Flu” had not yet arrived in Corvallis, but measures were in place to take care of sick students and to help prevent the spread of the virus.  The presence of the Students’ Army Training Corps (SATC) – mobilized on OAC’s campus during World War I – greatly affected the efficiency of caring for sick students, which in turn encouraged Corvallis to follow suit.

Case tracking on campus started on Tuesday, October 1, 1918, the day classes commenced.  A “Report of the College Health Service” published in the College Biennial Report of the Board of Regents, 1916-1918, gives an excellent narrative of how the epidemic was controlled on campus, especially among the SATC cadets.  From it we learn that 1918 was the first year that treatment was split based on gender.  Male students who fell ill were treated by a medical officer and dentist attached to the SATC, care that was supplemented by eight local physicians. 

Amy Cyrus

With the campus Medical Adviser, Dr. Wendell J. Phillips, himself away on medical leave, female students were treated by the resident nurse, Amy Cyrus, who saw patients in her office on the ground floor of the Home Economics building or at students’ residences.  From October through December, Cyrus attended to 159 cases of “Spanish influenza,” a time period during which there were no female deaths documented on campus.  The Regents report attributed Cyrus’ success to early prevention efforts including, in particular, teaching students to diagnose and treat the symptoms of the flu themselves. 

To tend the ill, the third floor of Waldo Hall – OAC’s primary women’s dormitory – was converted into a thirty bed infirmary for male students, and similar measures were taken to isolate sick female students as well.  Courses in hygiene and pharmacy adapted and added lectures in the management of colds and grippe, and also on the nature of the Spanish flu.  Sororities and fraternities were closed to visitors, and house mothers received training and supplies to care for their female students.  Any student who came down with a cold was instructed to stay home and not attend any classes.

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On October 11, the Gazette-Times newspaper announced that there were no cases of influenza in Corvallis, but that OAC students were being given medical attention at the first signs of colds or grippe. However, SATC reports painted a different story: during the second week of classes, cases numbered close to 200 and an appeal was made for expert medical assistance. 

By early November, two deaths out of 400 cases had been noted in Corvallis, and four deaths out of 600 cases on campus. This relative success was noted by US Major Cross of the medical corps, and attributed to “above average intelligence” within the community and a successful newspaper education campaign. The case rates also proved satisfactory to a state official who visited campus amidst complaints that the school was still operating; after inspecting operations and reviewing the statistics, he allowed the college to stay in operation. In his own final report, Major Cross surmised “that the epidemic had been more successfully controlled at the Oregon Agricultural College than at any center of military training in the country where an equal number of men were concerned.”

The flu, naturally, impacted student life.  In particular, most student activities were cancelled or suspended, and informal interactions were limited. However, despite the restrictions, a football season punctuated by two-week breaks and “shots in the arm” was completed, though only one game was contested on campus.  In the 1920 Beaver yearbook, which (oddly enough) covers the 1918-1919 academic year, the OAC Vigilance Committee commended the Freshman class for having shown “a fine spirit of willingness and helpfulness toward the institution and its customs” despite having lost three months of social life due to the cancelation of activities in the Fall 1918 term.

By the end of 1918, OAC had suffered a total of 785 cases, with four deaths recorded.

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Shepard Hall, 1916

In early January 1919, Corvallis was reporting a decrease in the number of confirmed cases, despite rumors to the contrary and concerns that the town would have to be quarantined.  On January 9, it was reported that no deaths had occurred since December 26, but there does seem to have been a spike in mid- to late-January 1919 that made it necessary to use Shepard Hall – the YMCA/YWCA space on the OAC campus – as a hospital.  Shepard was enlisted in part due to a shortage of nurses and the difficulty of isolating students in dorms and other living communities, such as sororities or fraternities.  Although beds were provided, students at the hospital had to supply their own linens.  By January 13, nineteen more cases were reported, bringing the total to 51, but officials maintained that there was no need to worry about the increase.

February continued to see an impact on campus life.  Although the end of the war and the demobilization of troops was a major bright spot, a second quarantine order prevented any return to normal and made an impact on the college basketball season.  More sadness hit the student body when beloved librarian Ida Kidder passed away at the end of the month. On March 2, instead of a traditional indoor ceremony, a memorial service was held in the open space in front of the library while Kidder laid in state in the main corridor of the building.

As Spring neared and the epidemic subsided, thoughts turned to the future.  Importantly, due to the need for nurses that had been demonstrated by the pandemic, OAC began offering home nursing classes during spring term 1919.

Pauling’s OAC, 1919-1920: Social Life

“Feminine Section Intrafraternity Smoker,” 1919-1920. Linus Pauling is seated at front, far right.

[The third and final installment of our look at Linus Pauling’s experience of the 1919-1920 academic year at Oregon Agricultural College.]

Campus life during the 1919-1920 school year was generally more lighthearted than had been the case during the previous few years; a time period defined largely by the horrors of World War I. War-time bans on major social gathering were lifted, making way for near weekly dances and school-sanctioned social events for all students to attend.

A major point of emphasis to kick off the school year was Homecoming Weekend. Beginning with a parade and rally held on the night of Friday, October 24^th, and continuing through a home football game versus Stanford on Saturday (a 14-6 loss for the Aggies) and a campus church service on Sunday, Homecoming was a festive occasion meant to built bridges between students, faculty, and alumni. Unfortunately for Linus Pauling, his obligations to the state highway department resulted in his arriving on campus two weeks after the celebrations were over.

While not a student during the 1919-1920 academic year, Pauling still lived at the Gamma Tau Beta house as a faculty member. This was a regular practice at the time, especially for those who were unmarried. Professors whose names now adorn buildings at Oregon State University – individuals including Ava Milam, Grant Covell, Richard Dearborn, and Samuel Graf – were all members of various Greek organizations on campus.

A major highlight of the school year for the Gamma Tau Beta fraternity was their annual house dance, held on February 3^rd, 1920. The house hired the Duke Vaughn Jazz Band to provide the entertainment and hosted a variety of faculty, alumni and out-of-town guests in addition to current Aggies.

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Gamma Tau Beta intramural baseball championship team, 1919-1920. Linus Pauling likely took this photo.

“Here’s to men we know and love, / Beavers tried and true; / Here’s to the men of the orange line / Wiping the ground with you; / Up with the glass and pledge them, lads, / Flashing its amber gleam, / While deep in our hearts the toast shall be: / Here’s to the Old O.A.C.”

-“Toast to the Team”

Sports played an outsized role in campus social life, and for those who didn’t compete on OAC’s varsity teams there were many opportunities to participate in intramural activities. Recognized today as the third oldest program in the country, intramural sports at OAC operated under the motto of “Everybody in Sports” and worked throughout the year to include the participation of as many male students as possible. Pauling’s fraternity, Gamma Tau Beta, was very successful athletically, winning the college’s baseball divisions in both fall and spring, and placing second in cross country.

Women’s intramurals were not as well developed at OAC, but the college did offer opportunities for female students to compete in basketball, field hockey, swimming, and tennis. Through the Women’s Athletic Association, women at OAC also had the chance to practice baseball, volleyball, archery, fencing, soccer, and hiking. Relatively few actual games were scheduled during the school year due to a lack of teams and fears related to the influenza outbreak.

Beyond sports, OAC’s students took advantage of access to a number of different recreational pastimes including The Mask and Dagger Dramatic Club, and the Glee and Madrigal Clubs. In the winter, Mask and Dagger joined forces with the Glee Club to produce the school play, “The Importance of Being Earnest.” Student publications were another way to get involved on campus, be it through The Barometer newspaper, The Beaver yearbook or school-aligned quarterlies like The Student Engineer and The Oregon Countryman.

Linus Pauling and Paul Emmett, 1920

The recreational group with which Pauling was most closely associated was the Triangular Debate team, which offered the school’s best speakers the chance to compete intercollegiately. While Pauling was not eligible to participate during the year, his close friend Paul Emmett did compete in two separate debates, while also serving as the Forensics Manager for the sophomore class, one year beneath him in standing.

Emmett’s first competition was against the University of Oregon, during which he represented the negative argument to “Resolved, that the principles of the Chinese Exclusion Act should be applied to all immigration to this country for a period of not less than five years.” Later in the year, Emmett competed against the University of Washington, once again representing the negative positing on “Resolved, that the peace conference should have awarded the province of Shantung to China.” After graduating from OAC, Emmett earned a Ph.D. from Caltech and went on to become one of the foremost catalysis chemists of the twentieth century.

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Traditions, even in the relatively early years of OAC’s history, were extremely important. Freshmen – more commonly known as “rooks” – were required to don green caps (for boys) or green ribbons (for girls) when on campus. To enforce these and other rules, the sophomore class was charged with forming a Vigilance Committee, which could mete out demerits and other punishments – including paddlings – for violations that they observed.

Important traditions for the junior class, to which Pauling would have belonged had he been able to return as a student, included Junior Prom, Beaver Annual, and Junior Flunk Day. Junior Prom was held in the Men’s Gymnasium (present-day Langton Hall), which was decorated with orange and black crepe paper, and attended by many school faculty. Junior Flunk Day was devoted to games contested between and within classes, as well as pranks pulled by juniors on the unassuming.

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Students working in Graf Hall, circa 1921

Students at OAC weren’t just busy playing intramural sports and attending school dances, many also maintained a keen interest in state politics. One continuing point of conversation was the fact that, in 1920, the U.S. dollar was worth approximately half as much as had been the case in 1913, yet all other university expenses had gone up. (Incomes had also risen a mere 4%.) During that same period of time, enrollment at Oregon’s primary institutions of higher learning – including the University of Oregon, Oregon Agricultural College, and Oregon State Normal School – had grown by 150% though classrooms had only barely increased in size.

As a potential corrective, students writing in The Barometer and elsewhere encouraged the citizenry to vote yes on the Higher Educational Tax Act, which would provide a boost in funding for the state’s colleges by increasing personal income taxes throughout Oregon. The measure passed in 1920, but was not enacted until the beginning of 1921.

In addition to stressing students’ budgets, funding woes for higher education in Oregon also hamstrung OAC’s ability to retain some of the temporary faculty that it had hired during the 1919-1920 school year, Linus Pauling among them. Fortunately, Pauling had built his savings up enough over the course of the year to re-enroll as a student for the fall 1920 quarter.

Retaining faculty was likewise encumbered at OAC by sub-standard facilities. The college was in especially dire need of a new auditorium as well as new Commerce, Home Economics, Pharmacy, and Engineering buildings. While a new engineering laboratory – present-day Graf Hall – began construction in November 1919 just off of Monroe Street, the other much needed buildings had to wait for several more years.

Pauling’s OAC, 1919-1920: The Campus Scene

A view of the OAC campus looking east toward Corvallis, circa 1920. At right is Science Hall, where Linus Pauling taught chemistry as an 18-year old instructor.

[A look back at Linus Pauling’s third year at Oregon Agricultural College. This is part 2 of 3.]

As we noted in our last post, Linus Pauling wasn’t able to register as a student for his third year at Oregon Agricultural College, and spent most of the academic year teaching instead. In not registering, Pauling was one fewer body contributing to what turned out to be OAC’s second largest enrollment ever — a whopping 4,086 students. This number was outpaced only by the 1914 school year’s 4,176 students, and was surely propped up by the return of many students from their wartime obligations. Notably, the college also welcomed twenty-four international students, many of whom came from Southeast Asia and were members of the school’s Filipino Club.

The boost in student numbers led to a pronounced insufficiency in faculty staffing, a circumstance that ultimately led to the 18-year old Pauling’s hire as a Chemistry instructor. The problems with meeting student needs in the classroom were widely acknowledged within the student body, as evidenced by many articles in the campus newspaper – The Barometer – demanding that the administration hire more instructors.

Of the total population of students, 3,073 were male and 1,013 were women, a set of numbers that presented a housing crisis for which the college was largely unprepared. Once OAC’s administrators realized that they did not have the infrastructure to house 500 more students than had been on campus the previous year, they requested support from the government to convert the school’s old ROTC barracks into a new male dormitory. This residence hall, which would be named Poling Hall, took a month to refashion into an acceptable livable facility. In the meantime, hundreds of young men were housed by the campus’ YMCA chapter.

Autochrome image of Waldo Hall with campus greenhouses in the background, circa 1920.

The college’s primary female residence hall also suffered from the increase in enrollment. During the year, more than 300 OAC co-eds crammed into Waldo Hall, the largest number since its construction in 1907. While Shepard and Cauthorn Halls were also used for female students, each one was overflowing with students.

Surrounding OAC was the small college town of Corvallis which, at about 6,500 inhabitants, was just barely bigger than the campus population.

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Students who went to accredited Oregon high schools did not need to formally apply for admission to OAC. Instead, they were immediately accepted so long as they had completed three units of English and two units of mathematics. One result of this low bar to entry was that incoming students did not need to have a high school diploma in hand in order to begin as college students. Pauling, famously, did not graduate from Portland’s Washington High School before beginning his OAC studies at the age of 16.

Compared to the fifteen colleges that Oregon State University supports today, a century ago there were only eight academic schools available at OAC: Agriculture, Commerce, Engineering, Forestry, Home Economics, Mines, Pharmacy, and Vocational Education. The college was also very clear about its Land Grant point of view, stating in its general catalog that

Special attention is given to the application of science…while the industrial or technical work is emphasized, the importance of a thorough general training, of mind development, and of culture, is recognized in all the work at the institution.

Unsurprisingly, the most popular major at OAC was Agriculture (338), and the second most popular was Home Economics (314, likely all of whom were women). The School of Commerce also attracted many students, including both women and men pursuing the Secretarial Science curriculum that was housed within the school.

The 1920 Commencement ceremonies, held in the Men’s Gymnasium.

The cost of attending OAC ranged between $261-351. Tuition was free to all students, but many classes had fees tacked on, including a $24 charge for laboratory usage. If you wished to graduate during the school year, you were required to pay an additional $5 graduation fee as well as an extra dollar to cover the cost of binding your graduation thesis and printing your diploma. Room and board for eight months would run an $250 on average. While these costs seem very affordable today, the national income per capita in 1919 was only $3,724.05, rendering an advanced education unattainable for many.

Because of his own financial difficulties, Pauling was not in a position to take any courses during the 1919-1920 school year. In his first two years at OAC he had enjoyed physics, chemistry, mechanical drawing, and place surveying studies. Had he returned as a student, he would have taken mechanics, hydraulics, electrical machinery, engineering, geology, mining, and military tactics courses along with the other Chemical Engineering juniors studying in the School of Mines.

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Ida Kidder in her wickermobile, 1920.

In February 1920, sad news sent the campus into a period of mourning when it was reported that OAC’s beloved librarian, Ida “Mother” Kidder had passed away at the age of 65. In the few months before her death, Kidder had been mostly bed-ridden, only capable of travelling around campus in a “wickermobile” cart that had been designed and built by students at the college. Though she had been at OAC for only twelve years, Kidder, who was the college’s first professional librarian, had made a great impression on the student body, and tributes were paid to her in numerous publications on campus and as far away as the Dishina School for Girls in Kyoto, Japan.

Though Kidder’s death was a major event at OAC, she could not be mourned at a public funeral or memorial service for nearly a month because the entire city of Corvallis had been placed under quarantine. Specifically, health authorities on campus had strictly banned all social gatherings that were not absolutely necessary as an outbreak of the flu had wreaked havoc on the community. Fortunately, the student body was not too drastically affected by the outbreak, with only a handful of intercollegiate basketball games being cancelled as a precautionary measure.

Machine gun training on the OAC campus, circa 1919.

And though the Great War had concluded the previous fall, military influence was still very prominent on campus. All male students were required to complete twelve credits of military training to graduate. If a student failed to enroll in military training over the course of a year, the remainder of their schedule was voided and they were fined until they began attending. But these formal strictures aside, it was clear that the environment on campus had changed from previous years, and nearly everyone was grateful to see the return of social events and other gatherings that had been banned during wartime.

Pauling’s OAC, 1919-1920: The Boy Professor

Paul Emmett and Linus Pauling, circa 1919

[Ed Note: Next week, school begins anew here at Oregon State University. And as has become tradition at around this time, we reflect back today on Linus Pauling’s attendance at Oregon Agricultural College one-hundred years ago. In this three-part series, we explore Pauling’s life and the culture of OAC during the 1919-1920 academic year.]

Linus Pauling began the summer of 1919 in a job he detested. Working 60 hours a week, Pauling held a position at Riverside Dairy that was responsible for “monitoring the quality of the bitumen-stone mixes” used in the company’s products. Exhausted and bored, Pauling started his search for a new summer job within only a couple of weeks.

Quickly he found a more desirable job with the Oregon State Highway Department working as a plant inspector at the Wolf Creek-Grave Creek section of the Pacific Highway. Importantly, the position allowed Pauling to work closely with chemicals, and once the new opportunity was confirmed, Pauling left the Riverside Dairy in favor of Josephine County, Oregon, where he would help to oversee the paving process.

The Grave Creek paving plant, 1919

As the end of summer neared, Pauling began to prepare himself to return to Oregon Agricultural College for his junior year as a Chemical Engineering student. However, he soon received devastating news: his mother, who as in dire financial straits, had used all of his savings to keep the family afloat in Portland, meaning that there was no money available to fund his continued schooling.

Defeated, Pauling continued his work as a plant inspector and, once September rolled around, he found himself debating paving techniques with other inspectors rather than attending classes in Corvallis. But even in these debates, Pauling relied upon his scientific training to put forth an informed argument and to contradict the conventional wisdom. Specifically, Pauling claimed that the state’s guidance to lay pavement at temperatures between 225-275 degrees Fahrenheit was not accurate enough; 275 degrees was, in Pauling’s view, necessary for the best outcome.

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John Fulton, 1947. Also an OAC alum, Fulton served as chair of the Chemistry Department from 1907-1940.

Fortunately for Pauling, Oregon Agricultural College had seen an unprecedented growth in enrollment that fall and was now confronting a crisis as faculty struggled to meet the needs of a much larger student body. In late October, OAC Dean of Chemistry John Fulton reached out to Pauling – who was by then well-known to the faculty as being an exceptional talent – and offered him a position teaching analytical chemistry. Pauling was 18 years old at the time of the offer.

Though it would come with a $25 pay decrease to $100 per month, Pauling readily accepted the job, returning to campus on November 14 and officially beginning work as an instructor in Chemistry on November 20, 1919. Pauling’s personnel file indicates that this was not his first job within the Chemistry department – the previous academic year he had been employed as a student assistant, charged with mixing solutions for use in general chemistry laboratories.

Despite the pay decrease, Pauling found that his new job did come with a few perks. Nestled in Science Hall (present day Furman Hall) Pauling worked primarily on the second floor, which was dedicated to quantitative analysis, and was assigned his own office. He also enjoyed the services of his own assistant, a Mr. Douglas, who helped prepare solutions for the courses that Pauling instructed (the same job that Pauling had held the year before).

In winter 1920, his debut as a collegiate instructor, Pauling taught three courses: two sections of quantitative analysis for mining engineers, chemical engineers and pharmacy students; and one section of general chemistry for agriculture, home economics, and entry-level engineering students. The courses were listed as Chemistry 244 and Chemistry 102 respectively.  In these three classes combined, Pauling taught 83 students, one of whom was his close friend Paul Emmett, later to become an influential catalysis chemist. Emmett received an A in Pauling’s quantitative analysis course for chemical engineering and pharmacy students.

And as the year progressed, Dean Fulton and Pauling developed a consequential academic relationship and also a friendship. Importantly, it is likely that Fulton referred Pauling to a series of papers authored by Irving Langmuir and G.N. Lewis that became very influential in his later research. Following Pauling’s graduation from OAC, Fulton also supplied $100 and $200 loans to support Pauling’s research during his graduate school years at the California Institute of Technology.

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With one term of instruction under his belt, Pauling’s horizons began to expand and his interest in the opportunities offered by an OAC education started to wither. In particular Pauling believed that the land grant curriculum put forth by OAC was lacking, particularly in its attention to theory, and increasingly he found himself drawn to Caltech and its new Gates Chemical Laboratory. As he considered a transfer, Pauling initiated a brief correspondence with Caltech’s Chemistry head A.A. Noyes, and he also secured a letter of recommendation from John Fulton. In the end though, Pauling was simply unable financially to commit to a move to southern California, and decided to stay on at OAC for another term as an instructor.

For spring term, Pauling was assigned two new courses: Chemistry 242 and Chemistry 245. Both were quantitative analysis surveys designed for engineering students and each included at least one lecture, one recitation, and anywhere from three to twelve hours of lab work per week. Each day of Pauling’s schedule had several morning hours blocked out for preparing and delivering the majority of his lectures.

View of the inside front cover of Pauling’s 1920 Quantitative Analysis notebook.

Pauling’s research notebook for that year – annotated with a hand-written “Keep Out! No Admittance” across the front cover – is riddled with student grades, calculations and notes on experimental methods. Pauling was compelled to consult this journal when, after finishing his position at the end of spring term and returning to his pavement inspector job, Dean Fulton contacted him at his Wolf Creek address. In his letter, Fulton requested that Pauling decipher some of the notes on quizzes that he had administered to his students during the previous term. Fulton also needed clarification on unknown solutions that he had produced and used during his classes.

Pauling’s appointment for the academic year ended in June 1920 and by June 11th, when OAC’s students were wrapping up their final examinations, “the boy professor” was returning to his position with the Oregon State Highway Department. He did so having also applied for a job as an assayer at Mountain Copper Company in Keswick, California, but he ultimately decided not to make the move so far south. During the summer months that followed, Pauling worked especially hard to accrue enough savings to support a true junior year at Oregon Agricultural College. Fortunately, he was able to do so and returned to campus the following fall, eager to begin classes after a one year hiatus.