Pauling 117

Today we mark the 117th anniversary of Linus Pauling’s birth, which took place in Portland, Oregon on February 28, 1901. At about this time last year, we sifted through and highlighted a collection of posts that we had published from 2010 to 2013, the idea being that relatively new readers might appreciate knowing about some of the more interesting bits that we had written in the past. In that same spirit, today we present ten sets of especially compelling or fun pieces that were authored and published between 2013 and 2015. Happy Pauling Day everyone!

---

1. 1. 1. The History of the Linus Pauling Institute: A collection of ten posts published over the course of two months and detailing the history of Pauling’s namesake institute on the occasion of its fortieth anniversary.
      2. Dorothy Wrinch and the Theory of Cyclols: A four-piece series recounting Pauling’s sometimes hostile clashes with Wrinch, a British scientist whose thinking on protein structures came into conflict with Pauling’s in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
      3. Retracing Pauling’s Nobel Peace Prize: In 2013 we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s Peace Prize by taking a close look at his road to Oslo and the experiences that ensued. The series examined the announcement of the prize in October; the response to this announcement by the media and by Pauling’s colleagues; the Pauling family’s trip to Norway; the Peace Prize ceremony itself; and the circumstances that awaited Pauling once he had returned home.
      4. The R/V Alpha Helix: Two posts chronicling the life and adventures of a research ship named after one of Pauling’s signature discoveries.
      5. Pauling’s Chiral Aliens: A fun look at an idea that Pauling had for a science fiction story, coupled with a follow-up post on the science behind Pauling’s idea, as submitted by Dr. John Leavitt, a former researcher at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine and a long-time friend of the blog.
      6. Irwin Stone, an Influential Man: Two pieces looking at Stone’s life and impact, including the communications with Pauling that spurred a very high profile interest in vitamin C.
      7. The Story of The Nature of the Chemical Bond: In 2014 we marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of Pauling’s most famous book by publishing a six-post series that investigated its authorship, publication and impact.
      8. Herman and Belle Pauling: An often melancholy inquiry into the short and difficult lives of Linus Pauling’s parents, neither of whom would ever come to know of the remarkable achievements attained by their only son.
      9. The New York Daily News Lawsuit: Of the many legal disputes in which Pauling found himself embroiled, this one was surely the strangest.
      10. One-Off Posts: OK, we’re cheating a little bit here since none of these pieces have anything to do with one another, but we can’t help but share three more singletons from each of the years under review:
          1. Atomic Desalination (2013)
          2. Pauling the Swimming Cheat? (2014)
          3. Pauling and the Moon (2015)

Advertisements &b; &b;