With the 125th anniversary of Linus Pauling’s birth just days away, we are thrilled and honored to announce the release of our second book based on writing originally published on the Pauling Blog. The Many Worlds of Linus Pauling is now available through numerous online vendors, though readers who purchase it directly from the publisher, World Scientific, can receive a 25% discount by using the purchase code: Pauling25
Our first book with World Scientific, Visions of Linus Pauling (2023), was comprised of unique stories – either entirely new to the literature or far more in depth than had appeared in previous biographies – that we felt would be of both scholarly and general interest. That book turned out to be a success, receiving an Outstanding Academic Title award from the library journal Choice, and proving commercially viable enough to merit the release of a paperback version, in addition to the original hard cover and e-book options.
In preparing Visions though, we were forced to leave out two large batches of material that we would dearly have loved to include, simply because of restrictions on word count. The first was a substantial number of posts that we had written on Pauling’s relationship with his home state of Oregon, and the second was a novel deep dive into his decidedly impactful tenure as chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. These two collections form the foundation of this new project, The Many Worlds of Linus Pauling, a volume that plumbs the same source as Visions for its contents but does so in a somewhat different manner.
Whereas the first book consists of discrete but thematically unrelated chapters presented in chronological order, Many Worlds is comprised of four parts that hint at a unifying concept: Pauling’s relationship with physical, geographic and institutional spaces. Importantly, most of the chapters compiled for this volume are also mash-ups of many blog posts written by multiple authors and often published several years apart. As such, while Visions might be thought of as a curated collection of writings that generally bear a strong resemblance to their online companions, Many Worlds is more singular in its composition and is reflective of choices that we have made to interweave content originally developed at various times and for various purposes.
The Many Worlds of Linus Pauling consists of four parts: 1. Pauling in Oregon; 2. Caltech Administrator; 3. Period of Wandering; and 4. Travels. Its title is meant to evoke the theme that underlies and loosely connects the four parts, but it also works in the context of the Many Worlds Theory that some physicists use to make sense of the quantum universe. In so doing, it invites the reader to consider key moments of chance and fate that were critical to the arc of Pauling’s life.
In Part 1, for example, we tell the story of his early years largely through the eyes of his parents, Herman and Belle, both of whom struggled mightily with physical infirmity, financial hardship and, in Belle’s case, debilitating mental illness. Young Linus was an obviously bright boy, but his material circumstances were such that a life spent working in a machine shop would have seemed far more likely than a career as an academic, to say nothing of the revolutionary impact for which he is known today. Likewise, in Part 2, one wonders about the institutional trajectory that Caltech would have followed were Pauling not a member of its faculty writ large and, in particular, not in a position to attract significant funding from the Rockefeller Foundation during the Great Depression.
Aspects of Pauling’s peace activism are explored in Part 2, and so too are the consequences that Pauling faced as a result of speaking his mind. In Part 3, we stay connected to that theme by analyzing Pauling’s consistently frustrating attempts to find a suitable organizational home following his resignation from Caltech. Pauling’s eldest son, Linus Jr., once characterized this decade of wandering as a time where his father “felt that his creative scientific career was over,” spurred by a belief “that creativity and science was a product of youth.” Critically, it was during this period that Pauling made the chance acquaintance of a researcher named Irwin Stone, who turned him on to the potential health benefits of Vitamin C. Creatively adrift and institutionally unmoored, the enticing prospect of a high profile project with major popular implications was precisely what Pauling needed at the time and it ultimately dominated the final third of his life.
Finally, Part 4 sheds light on the extent to which Pauling was truly a citizen of the world. In it, we learn more about the exquisite timing of his Guggenheim-funded travels through Europe to learn the new quantum mechanics from the ground up. We likewise uncover another reason why Pauling so spectacularly failed to correctly elucidate the molecular structure of DNA: he was crossing the Atlantic on the Queen Mary with his family and many other passengers including Erwin Chargaff, a biochemist who had some important new details to share about the genetic material but was too abrasive to be around for very long.
The table of contents for The Many Worlds of Linus Pauling are listed below. We’re really proud of the finished product and hope you’ll check it out!
- About the Editor
- Preface
- Biographical Sketch of Linus Pauling
- Pauling in Oregon:
- Herman Pauling: Striving for a Better Life
- Belle Pauling: Hard Times
- Pauline and Lucile Pauling
- Pauling’s Adolescence
- Pauling’s Freshman Year at Oregon Agricultural College, 1917–1918
- Pauling’s Sophomore Year at Oregon Agricultural College, 1918–1919
- The Boy Professor, 1919–1920
- Pauling’s Junior Year at Oregon Agricultural College, 1920–1921
- Ava Helen in Oregon
- Pauling’s Senior Year at Oregon Agricultural College, 1921–1922
- An Honorary Doctorate from Oregon State Agricultural College
- The Story of Ralph Spitzer
- The Black Student Union Walkout
- A Sentimental Trip
- Caltech Administrator:
- Introduction
- Becoming Division Chair
- First Years in Charge
- Leading the Division During World War II
- Chairing the Division After the War
- A Cold War Division Chair
- Final Years as Division Chair
- Period of Wandering:
- The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions
- The University of California, San Diego
- Stanford University
- Travels:
- The Guggenheim Trip
- The Paulings Go to England
- Visiting Albert Schweitzer
- Pauling and the Soviet Union
- Travels in Latin America
- Japan and the Japanese
- Two Trips to China
- Sourcing
- Index