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Linus Pauling: Reflections Author(s): Linus Pauling, George B. Kauffman and Laurie M. Kauffman Reviewed work(s): Source: American Scientist, Vol. 82, No. 6 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 1994), pp. 522-524 Published by: Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/29775323 . Accessed: 18/03/2013 01:05
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Linus
Pauling:
Reflections
or billion-dollar physics. Papers are published in with more than a hundred Physical Review Letters authors... but there is still a good number of peo? ple, theoretical physicists and chemists, who con? tinue to work in the old way of the individual try? to have an idea that will lead to the solution of ing some problem. And there are, of course, plenty of smart people around, probably more than there were in the early days because there are more physicists and more dhemists now, and a certain fraction of them can be described as unusually smart. They are apt to continue to make discover? ies the old way.
CONCEIVING A THEORY
In 1961 Pauling proposedwhat would be one of several controversialtheories, one suggesting thatanesthe? this siaworks throughthe formationofhydratecrystals that with electricalactivity in thebrain. The story interfere reveals the mind. workings ofa creativescientific About 19521 heard a lectureby the professor of anesthesiology Henry K[nowles] Beecher.... He said xenon was a good anesthesia. I pricked up my ears, and I thought, "How can xenon, which doesn't form any chemical compounds, serve as a general anesthetic? How do general anesthetics work, anyway?
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lay awake at night fora fewminutes before to sleep, and during thenext couple ofweeks going each night Iwould think, "How is itpossible for xenon tobe an anesthetic agent, and how do anes? thetic agents work?" Then I forgot to do it after a while, but I'd trained my unconscious mind tokeep thisquestion alive and to call [it] to my conscious? ness whenever a new idea turned up thatmight possibly be related to general anesthesia. So seven years went by. About 1959, I went down to the lab in Pasadena and put my feet up on thedesk and started reading my mail, and here at was a letter from University George Jeffrey [the of] Pittsburgh, an x-ray crystallographer, on his determination of the structure of a hydrate crystal. Immediately I sat up, tookmy feet off the desk, and said, "I understand anesthesia!" ...I spent a year reading up about anesthesia and checking the hydrate crystals that Dick [for] the [Richard E.] Marsh and I determined structure of chloroform hydrate, and then Iwrote my paper published in June of 1961.
.. .1
^ ^^^^^^^^^^^
Linus
Carl Pauling,
1901-1994
that this author knows what he's writing about, so I'll justgo ahead and publish thepaper." The paper, submittedon January28,1931, was pub? more thansevenweeks later. lished March 21, slightly
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me on the right track.... I published [the idea] that the gene consists of twomutually complementary strands, each ofwhich can serve as a template for the other one.... BothWatson and Crick heard me talk about that. was My wife made a comment which I triink was such an important She said, "If that pertinent. problem, why didn't you work harder at it?"And I ttunkI can say, "If I had worked harder, Iwouldn't have needed to go to London to see Rosalind Franklin. Imight well have discovered the double helix. Iwasn't really paying much attention to the problem of the structureof nucleic acid."
the president of the institute,Lee DuBridge, said, "It's really remarkable that any person should get two Nobel Prizes, but there ismuch difference of work thatProfessor opinion about thevalue of the Pauling has been doing." That's the work for world peace, you know. Well, I thought, that's a little toomuch, so I decided to resign.
VITAMIN C
I have a number of reports from people?scien? tists?that say, "Well, I don't know anything about vitamin C or other vitamins, but Linus Pauling has been right so often in thepast that I just accept
he says."
what
are a bitmore skeptical and Physicians, of course, in general, they don't have the outspoken, and, They don't know background of knowledge.... to say thathe has been successful so often enough in thepast thathe's probably right this time.Physi? cians don't try to form opinions of this sort any? medical authorities say way. They justdo what the medical profes? to do. Of all of the professions, the which the individual practitioners sion is theone in do the smallest amount of triinkingfor themselves.
SOURCESOF PRIDE
Sometimes I say I'm most proud ofmy 1931 pa? per,which changed the nature of chemistry in a a significant way. Sometimes, if I'm feeling like
humanitarian,
[made by] my work in the effort to get a bomb test treaty signed, stopping damage by fallout.
I say...
contributions
to well-being
Readings
chemical bond. Pro? Pauling, Linus. 1928. The shared-electron National Academy of Sciences U.SA. 14:359-362. ceedings of the nature of the chemical bond. Ap? Pauling, Linus. 1931. The from the quantum mechanics plication of results obtained to the and from a theory of paramagnetic susceptibility structure of molecules. Journal of theAmerican Chemical
Society 53:1367-1400. Bond and the Pauling, Linus. 1939. The Nature of theChemical Mod? and Crystals: An Introduction to Molecules Structure of ern Structural Chemistry. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; 2nd edition, 1940; 3rd edition, 1960; abridged as Modern Struc? The Chemical Bond: A Brief Introduction to tural Chemistry, 1967. 1956. Modern Structural Chemistry (1954 No? Pauling, Linus. bel Chemistry Prize Lecture, Stockholm, Sweden, De? cember 11,1954), reprinted in Science 123:255-258. War! New York: Dodd, Mead Pauling, Linus. 1958. No More & Co.; 25th anniversary edition, 1983. Pauling, Linus. 1961. A molecular thesia. Science 134:15-21. theory of general
Nobel Peace Prize. prise, I received the Iwas atmy home here in Salmon Creek, and I got back to Pasadena a couple of days later,and I was shown a copy of The Los Angeles Timeswhere
524 American Scientist, Volume 82
large
amount....
To my
sur?
anes?
Cold. San Pauling, Linus. 1970. Vitamin C and theCommon Francisco: W. H. Freeman & Co.
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