The Pauling family assembled prior to Linus Pauling’s Nobel Peace lecture, Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1963.
[Part 6 of 6]
As we conclude our series on Pauling’s Nobel awards, we examine those who nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, which he received in 1963. Nominator data has been supplied by the Nobel Foundation through an online database.
Interestingly enough, while Pauling was nominated at least seventy times for the Nobel Prize, only four of those were in support of his peace efforts. Details of the three men who put his name forward are included below.
Peace
1961:
- Helge Seip: Norwegian Member of Parliament representing the Liberal Party and later the Liberal People’s Party. At a young age he became involved in the Young Liberals, the youth wing of the Liberal Party. In 1948 he became a deputy member of the Liberal Party national board, advancing to regular board member in 1952, and he continued in this position until becoming national party leader in 1970. He was elected to the Parliament of Norway in Oslo in 1953 and as a MP could submit nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize.
- Kenneth M. Stampp: Professor of American history at the University of California, Berkeley, a professional standing which allowed him to nominate for Peace Prize. From the very beginning of his employment at Berkeley, he immersed himself in the political life of Berkeley. In his research, Stampp presented the views of slaves themselves alongside the conventional historical perspective of slave owners, which yielded a new and more complex picture of the institution of slavery than that which had previously been crafted by historians. He also argued against the notion that the decade after the Civil War was disastrous for the South – a time of vengefulness visited upon it by the North, and of rampant corruption and vindictive political maneuvering.
1962:
- Gunnar Garbo: Norwegian journalist, politician, ambassador, and member of Stortinget, the Norwegian Parliament. He wrote several books and numerous articles on political issues, in particular focusing on international politics and themes such as disarmament and the United Nations. From 1962 to 1973 he was a member of the Government’s Advisory Committee on Disarmament, the last three years of which he served as chairman. Throughout his political career he focused on foreign policy issues rather than domestic concerns, and in this he attempted to build bridges between eastern and western nations, advocating for mutual disarmament. When he left parliament in 1973, Garbo worked for the Institute of Peace Research and continued as chairman of the government’’s disarmament committee.
- Motivation for nomination: Pauling was nominated for his lectures and for initiating debates concerning the importance of eliminating or restricting weapons of mass destruction.
1963:
- Garbo (see above)
