Linus Pauling is widely considered the greatest chemist of his century. Most scientists create a niche for themselves, an area where they feel secure, but Pauling had an enormously wide range of scientific interests: quantum mechanics, crystallography, mineralogy, structural chemistry, anesthesia, immunology, medicine, evolution, etc. In all these fields and especially in the border regions between them, he saw where the problems lay, and, backed up by his speedy assimilation of the essential facts and by (means) of his prodigious memory, he made distinctive and decisive contributions. He is best known, perhaps, for his insights into chemical bonding, for the discovery of the principal elements of protein secondary structure, the alpha-helix and the beta-sheet, and for the first identification of a molecular disease (sickle-cell anemia), but there are a multitude of other important contributions.
Pauling was one of the founders of the scientific field of molecular biology in the true sense of the term. For these achievements, he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
—Jack Dunitz
Lifestory: Linus Pauling,
produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation, 1997
Linus Pauling felt very deeply that he had been shaped by the values of the Western frontier: self-sufficiency, restless energy, love of nature, inquisitiveness, and hard work. One can see these traits in his scientific career, as his insatiable curiosity drove him from one field to another. He liked to work on the frontiers of knowledge, not in safe, crowded fields and many of his greatest discoveries were made in the interstices, between disciplines—between chemistry and physics, chemistry and biology, chemistry and medicine. Francis Crick once called him, “the greatest chemist in the world.” When Pauling was born, chemistry was a discipline dominated by Germans, but when he died, it was dominated by Americans, and Linus Pauling did much to bring about this transformation.
—Robert J. Paradowski
Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker
Linus Carl Pauling was born on February 28, 1901 in Portland, Oregon, to Herman and Lucy Isabelle (Darling) Pauling, nicknamed “Belle.” He was named Linus after Belle’s father and Carl after Herman’s father.
In 1905 the Paulings moved to the farming town of Condon, Oregon, where Herman opened a drug store. William P. Murphy, who would win the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1934, also lived in Condon at that time.
In 1909 Herman moved the entire family back to Portland after a fire totally destroyed the drug store. A year later, on May12, Herman Pauling wrote a letter to the Portland Oregonian about his nine-year-old son who “is a great reader” and deeply interested in ancient history and the natural sciences. He also asked readers of the newspaper to advise him about the proper works to procure for his child, who has “prematurely developed inclinations.”
One month later, on June 11, Herman Pauling died suddenly of a perforated gastric ulcer complicated by peritonitis.
In 1914, after observing an exciting chemical reaction in the makeshift bedroom laboratory of his high school classmate, Lloyd Alexander Jeffress, Pauling made up his mind to become a chemist.
In 1916, in the spring term at Washington High School, Pauling entered into his first chemistry class.
In 1917, in the spring term, Pauling applied for two semesters of American History, which were required subjects prior to graduation; however, the principal would not let him take both courses at the same time, which resulted in Pauling not getting a high school diploma. On October 6, 1917, Pauling entered the Oregon Agricultural College, which eventually became Oregon State University in Corvallis.
In 1925 Pauling earned his PhD in chemistry, minoring in physics and mathematics, with his dissertation entitled, “The Determination with X-rays of the Structure of Crystals.”
In 1926, in January, the Guggenheim Fellowships were announced and Pauling was chosen as a fellow and he goes to Europe.
In 1927 one of Pauling’s greatest works was published: “The Theoretical Prediction of the Physical Properties of Many-Electron Atoms and Ions, Mole Refraction, Diamagnetic Susceptibility, and Extension in Space.” That year Pauling returned to Caltech and was named Assistant Professor of Theoretical Chemistry.
In July of 1930 Pauling worked on quantum mechanics in Germany at Arnold Sommerfeld’s Institute for Theoretical Physics. While visiting Ludwigshafen, Pauling got Hermann Mark’s permission to use his electron-diffraction techniques at Caltech.
In December, Pauling developed a new theory of the quantum mechanics of the chemical bond. He published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society entitled “The Nature of the Chemical Bond.” Prior to Pauling’s landmark paper, chemists believed there were two types of chemical bonds: (1) Ionic: when one atom gives up an electron to another, and (2) covalent: when atoms share electrons. Pauling posed that the chemical bond was not that simple; in fact he demonstrated that electron sharing was somewhere between ionic and covalent.
Pauling’s new theory revolutionized the field, combining quantum physics with chemistry. His concept was so revolutionary that when the journal editor received the manuscript, he couldn’t locate an appropriate group of referees to review the paper. When Einstein was asked to review the paper, he threw up his arms and exclaimed, “It was too complicated for me.” For this single paper, Pauling received the Langmuir Prize as the most outstanding young chemist in America, He became the youngest individual elected to the National Academy of Sciences, was made a full professor at Caltech, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry when he was thirty years of age.
In 1933 Pauling was elected the youngest member of the National Academy of Sciences.
In 1934 Pauling applied for and received a three-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to support research on the structure of hemoglobin and other biologically important substances.
In 1935 Pauling and E. Bright Wilson, Jr. published Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, with Applications to Chemistry, a popular textbook for introducing chemists and physicists to the new field of quantum mechanics.
In 1939 The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals was published. This book, Pauling’s greatest, became, by the end of the century, “the most cited book in the scientific literature.”
In 1945 Pauling learned about sickle-cell anemia from Dr. William Castle, and theorizes that red blood cell sickling can be explained by abnormal hemoglobin.
In 1947 Pauling published General Chemistry, a textbook that is an immediate success and revolutionizes the teaching of college chemistry.
In 1948 Harvey A. Itano, one of Pauling’s PhD students, was able to prove that there was a slight electrophoretic difference between normal and sickle-cell anemia hemoglobin. Pauling’s group felt that people suffering from “sicklemia,” a milder form of the disease, was made up of a mixture of normal and pathological hemoglobin, in approximately equal amounts. They theorized that “sicklemia” was a heterozygous manifestation and sickle-cell anemia was the homozygous manifestation of the disease.
Based on their accumulated data on the molecular manifestation of sickle-cell anemia, Pauling and Itano proposed several treatments to prevent sickling. After two years of clinical trials, the results turned out to be a failure and were never published. Unfortunately, this would not be the last of such failures. According to Pauling, “Even today, our extremely detailed understanding of the molecular etiology of sickle-cell anemia has led to new diagnostic possibilities, but little in the way of significant improvements in therapy.”
In November of 1949 an article was published in the journal Science, which would over time play a fundamental role in the establishment of molecular biology and molecular medicine. Linus Pauling and his associates published a paper with the unusual title “Sickle-cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease,” showing that the hemoglobin molecules of patients afflicted with this deadly “hereditary” affliction had a different electrical charge than those of healthy patients. The paper had a dynamic impact on the biomedical community and the public at large, and it rapidly became a “citation classic.”
Pauling’s paper was important and novel in two different ways. Number one, it demonstrated for the very first time that the cause of a disease could be traced to an altered molecular structure, raising hopes that all diseases might eventually be explained in a similar fashion; secondly, since sickle-cell anemia was “known to be heritable,” the paper argued that genes determined precisely the structure of proteins. These two points have become dogma over the years, so it seems surprising that they were not always embraced.
Pauling, along with chemist Walter A. Schroeder, performed chromatographic analysis of normal and sickle-cell anemia hemoglobin and was surprised to find in 1950 that there was no difference in amino acid content, which could explain the electrophoresis result, a conclusion that was confirmed by additional researchers.
Pauling revamped his theory to propose that “the electrophoretic difference resulted from a difference in folding of the polypeptide chain.” In 1954 he summarized his new theory in a Harvey lecture where he stated that “the gene responsible for the sickle-cell abnormality is one that determines the nature of the folding of polypeptide chains, rather than their compositions.”
In 1991 Wallach was contacted by Phil Oliver, the genetic councilor for the Sickle-cell Foundation of Georgia. Oliver had read Wallach’s The Diseases of Exotic Animals and was shocked to read that Wallach could reverse sickle-cell anemia in white tail deer with a complete nutritional supplement program that was based on the 90 essential nutrients and emphasized the trace mineral selenium!
Oliver asked Wallach if he thought the supplement that was successful in white tail deer would also work in humans and Wallach quickly responded with a resounding—yes!
Wallach flew to Atlanta, Georgia, and showed Oliver how to put the sickle-cell patients on a gluten-free, anti-inflammation diet and to supplement this with the 90 essential nutrients, with an emphasis on extra amounts of the trace mineral selenium. The disease was then able to be clinically controlled in the small study group of humans using the Wallach protocol.
Oliver quickly formed a Sickle-cell Support Group (initially made up of 25 people) to get the information about the new treatment to the victims of sickle-cell anemia in Georgia. The universally successful results were very popular and the word spread quickly.
Those 25 members of the original support group who had obsessively followed a gluten-free diet and faithfully employed the supplement program had no flare-ups or hospitalizations. At the very least we had proved that sickle-cell anemia could be clinically managed in humans with a nutritional formula that had eliminated the disease in white tail deer!
As of 2013, Wallach’s gluten-free diet and 90 essential nutrient and selenium protocol for sickle-cell anemia is used internationally and continues to benefit all those who employ it.
In 1951, on his fiftieth birthday, Pauling contributed his article “The Structure of Proteins: Two Hydrogen-Bonded Helical Configurations of the Polypeptide Chain,” to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS). Everyone knew that proteins were a chain of amino acids; however, Pauling suggested that proteins had a secondary structure that was dictated by the folding pattern. He referred to one of these configurations as the “alpha helix,” which was later referred to by James Watson and Francis Crick to explain the basic helical structure of DNA.
In October 1954 Pauling learned that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry for “his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances.”
In 1961 Pauling obtained blood from gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys from the San Diego Zoo to answer the question, “Could mutations in hemoglobin be used as a kind of evolutionary clock.” Pauling then suggested that humans and gorillas had diverged from a common ancestor “about 11 million years ago.” A fellow chemist noted that, “At one stroke he (Pauling) united the fields of paleontology, evolutionary biology, and molecular biology.”
On October 1963, on the day that the partial ban on nuclear testing went into effect, the Nobel Peace Prize Committee of the Norwegian Parliament announces the awarding of the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize to Linus Pauling. He was now only one of two men who had received two unshared Nobel Prizes.
In 1970 Pauling’s best-selling book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold, was published. The book would be awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Book Award in 1971 as one of the most distinguished and important works published in 1970. Paperback editions were published in 1971 and 1973, and a second edition, Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu published three years later suggested that vitamin C could fend off a swine flu pandemic. Sales of vitamin C quadrupled and pharmacies could not keep up with the demand. Fifty million Americans were lining up to follow Pauling’s vitamin C protocol. Vitamin manufacturers referred to this massive response as the “Linus Pauling effect.”
In 1974 the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine changed its name to the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine.
On August 19, 1994, Linus Pauling died at the age of 93 from complications of prostate cancer at the Deer Flat Ranch, Big Sur, California.