Linus Pauling - Molecular Biologist and Orthomolecular Scientist
Linus Carl Pauling was born February 28, 1901, in Portland Oregon to Herman and Lucy Isabelle (Darling) Pauling. He was the oldest of three children. His father was a pharmacist with great ambitions for his family, and he encouraged young Pauling in his studies. Unfortunately, his father died when Pauling was nine. His mother struggled to manage financially and suffered from depression throughout her life.
Pauling went to public schools in Condon and Portland. He exhibited an early interest in science, collecting insects, rocks and minerals, and building a chemistry lab with his friend Lloyd Jeffress.
Pauling enjoyed math and sciences classes, but he didn't complete high school. He had enough credits to graduate, but he hadn't taken a required course in civics. He took a stand against authority and dropped out of school at sixteen. Pushed by his mother to help support the family, Pauling took a job as an apprentice machinist, but he preferred the idea of college. In 1917, he was accepted at Oregon Agricultural College, now Oregon State University, where he studied chemical engineering. He worked part time jobs to pay his expenses throughout college.
Pauling's strong intellect easily absorbed the college coursework. He joined a fraternity and was on the track team. He had a summer job and sent his earnings to his mother to put in the bank for him. At the end of the summer, he learned that his mother had spent his money, so he couldn't enroll in the fall semester. The school did offer him a job as an assistant instructor, and he was able to continue college work. He read two papers what would have a strong impact on his work: one by G. N. Lewis on chemical bonding and a second by Irving Langmuir on shared electron pair bonds. During his senior year, Pauling taught a chemistry class to home economics majors. In this class was Ava Helen Miller. By the end of his senior year, Pauling was engaged.
Pauling decided on graduate studies at California Institute of Technology (CalTech). The head of the chemistry department was Arthur Noyes, who was interested in the nature of the chemical bond. Pauling received a teaching fellowship. Pauling learned about x-ray crystallography from Roscoe Dickinson. Pauling also studied with Richard Tolman, a noted physical chemist and mathematician. Pauling was driven to learn all he could and took sixty credit hours and twenty research hours. He used a scientific process he called the "stochastic method" which he said meant "to divine the truth from conjecture". Pauling would make a guess about a chemical's structure, and
