1962Linus Carl Pauling
Linus Carl Pauling – Biography
Linus Pauling (February 28, 1901- )*, the only person who has won two undivided Nobel Prizes,1 was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of a pharmacist, Henry H.W. Pauling, and Lucy (Darling) Pauling. He attended Washington High School in Portland but because of a technicality did not receive his diploma until 1962, long after he had received his bachelor's degree from Oregon State College in 1922, his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology in 1925, and honorary degrees from universities in seven countries. With the help of a National Research Council fellowship in 1925-1926 and a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship in 1926-1927, he studied with three physicists: Arnold Sommerfeld in Munich, Erwin Schrodinger in Zurich, and Niels Bohr in Copenhagen. From 1927 until 1964, he was a member of the professorial staff of California Institute of Technology, earning a reputation as a gifted teacher - articulate, enthusiastic, with a talent for simplification and a willingness to engage in controversy. For twenty-two of those thirty-seven years, he was chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, as well as director of the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry. From 1963 to 1967, Pauling was attached to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions at Santa Barbara, California, as a research professor; from 1967 to 1969, he was a professor of chemistry at the University of California at San Diego; since 1969 he has been on the professorial staff of Stanford University. From his graduate days until the mid-thirties, Pauling was interested primarily in physical chemistry, especially in molecular spatial configurations and their relevance to molecular behavior. In 1939 he published the results of over ten years of research in The Nature of the Chemical Bond and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals. When he won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for 1954, he was cited "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances."Pauling's interest in the "behavior" of molecules led him from physical chemistry to biological chemistry, from an absorption in the architecture of molecules to their functioning, especially in the human body. He began with proteins and their main constituents, the amino acids, which are called the "building blocks of life." He studied the abnormal in structure as well as the normal, even creating abnormalities in order to observe effects. From his creation of synthetic antibodies formed by altering molecules of globulin in the blood, came the development of a substitute for blood plasma.In 1950 he constructed the first satisfactory model of a protein molecule, a discovery which has implications for the understanding of the living cell. He has studied and published papers on the effects of certain blood cell abnormalities, the relationship between molecular abnormality and heredity, the possible chemical basis of mental retardation, the functioning of anesthetics. Looking to the future, he said in the last edition of The Nature of the Chemical Bond, "We may ask what the next step in the search for an understanding of the nature of life will be. I think that it will be the elucidation of the nature of the electromagnetic phenomena involved in mental activity in relation to the molecular structure of brain tissue. I believe that thinking, both conscious and unconscious, and short-term memory involve electromagnetic phenomena in the brain, interacting with the molecular (material) patterns of long-term memory, obtained from inheritance or experience." Pauling's latest chemical-medical-nutritional study has been published in a 1970 book entitled Vitamin C and the Common Cold, in which he maintains that the common cold can be controlled almost entirely in the United States and some other countries within a few years, through improvement of the nutrition of the people by an adequate intake of ascorbic acid [vitamin C].2During World War II, Pauling participated in scientific enterprises deemed vital to the protection of the country. Early in the war he was a consultant to the explosives division of the National Defense Research Commission and from 1945 to 1946 a member of the Research Board for National Security. For his contributions, which included work on rocket propellants, on an oxygen deficiency indicator for pressurized space, such as that in submarines and aircraft, and on a substitute for human serum in medical treatment, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Merit in 1948. The use of the atomic bomb near the end of the war turned Pauling in a new direction. As one who had long worked on the structure of molecules, both normal and abnormal, on their behavior in the human body, and on their transmission through heredity, he took an immediate and intense interest in the potentially malignant effects of nuclear fallout on human molecular structures, as well as in the forces of blast and fire released by an exploding bomb. From the late forties on, Pauling, as a member of Einstein's Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists, which was active from 1946 to 1950, as a supporter of many peace organizations, and as an individual, has waged a constant campaign against war and its now nuclear nature. He calculated estimates on the probable frequency of congenital deformity in future generations resulting from carbon 14 and radioactive fission products released by nuclear testing, and publicized them; protested the production of the hydrogen bomb; advocated the prevention of the spread of nuclear weapons; promoted the banning of tests of nuclear weapons as a first step toward multilateral disarmament.3In the early fifties and again in the early sixties, he encountered accusations of being pro-Soviet or Communist, allegations which he categorically denied. For a few years prior to 1954, he had restrictions placed by the Department of State on his eligibility to obtain a passport. In 1958, on January 15, he presented to the UN the celebrated petition signed by 9,235 scientists from many countries in the world protesting further nuclear testing. In that same year he published No More War!, a book which presents the rationale for abandoning not only further use and testing of nuclear weapons but also war itself, and which proposes the establishment of a World Peace Research Organization within the structure of the UN to "attack the problem of preserving the peace". When the Soviet Union announced a resumption of nuclear testing in August, 1961, after the nuclear powers had voluntarily withheld testing for three years, Pauling redoubled his efforts to convince the Russian, American, and British leaders of the necessity of a test ban treaty. He spoke as a man of science. His intellectual position is summarized in a communication published in Harper's Magazine4 in 1963: "I have said that my ethical principles have caused me to reach the conclusion that the evil of war should be abolished; but my conclusion that war must be abolished if the human race is to survive is based not on ethical principles but on my thorough and careful analysis, in relation to international affairs, of the facts about the changes that have taken place in the world during recent years, especially with respect to the nature of war." The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, outlawing all but underground nuclear testing, was signed in July, 1963, and went into effect on October 10, 1963, the same day on which the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that the Peace Prize reserved in the year 1962 was to be awarded to Linus Pauling.
Linus Carl Pauling – Nobel Lecture
Nobel Lecture*, December 11, 1963
Science and Peace
I believe that there will never again be a great world war - a war in which the terrible weapons involving nuclear fission and nuclear fusion would be used. And I believe that it is the discoveries of scientists upon which the development of these terrible weapons was based that is now forcing us to move into a new period in the history of the world, a period of peace and reason, when world problems are not solved by war or by force, but are solved in accordance with world law, in a way that does justice to all nations and that benefits all people.
Let me again remind you, as I did yesterday in my address of acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962, that Alfred Nobel wanted to invent "a substance or a machine with such terrible power of mass destruction that war would thereby be made impossible forever"1. Two thirds of a century later scientists discovered the explosive substances that Nobel wanted to invent the fissionable substances uranium and plutonium, with explosive energy ten million times that of Nobel's favorite explosive, nitroglycerine, and the fusionable substance lithium deuteride, with explosive energy fifty million times that of nitroglycerine. The first of the terrible machines incorporating these substances, the uranium-235 and plutonium-239 fission bombs, were exploded in 1945, at Alamogordo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki2. Then in 1954, nine years later, the first of the fission-fusion-fission superbombs was exploded, the 20-megaton Bikini bomb, with energy of explosion one thousand times greater than that of a 1945 fission bomb.
This one bomb, the 1954 superbomb, contained less than one ton of nuclear explosive. The energy released in the explosion of this bomb was greater than that of all of the explosives used in all of the wars that have taken place during the entire history of the world, including the First World War and the Second World War.
Thousands of these superbombs have now been fabricated; and today, eighteen years after the construction of the first atomic bomb, the nuclear powers have stockpiles of these weapons so great that if they were to be used in a war hundreds of millions of people would be killed, and our civilization itself might not survive the catastrophe.
Thus the machines envisaged by Nobel have come into existence, and war has been made impossible forever.
The world has now begun its metamorphosis from its primitive period of history, when disputes between nations were settled by war, to its period of maturity, in which war will be abolished and world law will take its place. The first great stage of this metamorphosis took place only a few months ago - the formulation by the governments of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, after years of discussion and negotiation, of a Treaty3 banning the testing of nuclear weapons on the surface of the earth, in the oceans, and in space, and the ratification and signing of this treaty by nearly all of the nations in the world.
I believe that the historians of the future may well describe the making of this treaty as the most important action ever taken by the governments of nations, in that it is the first of a series of treaties that will lead to the new world from which war has been abolished forever.
We see that science and peace are related. The world has been greatly changed, especially during the last century, by the discoveries of scientists. Our increased knowledge now provides the possibility of eliminating poverty and starvation, of decreasing significantly the suffering caused by disease, of using the resources of the world effectively for the benefit of humanity. But the greatest of all the changes has been in the nature of war the several million fold increase in the power of explosives and corresponding changes in methods of delivery of bombs.
These changes have resulted from the discoveries of scientists, and during the last two decades scientists have taken a leading part in bringing them to the attention of their fellow human beings and in urging that vigorous action be taken to prevent the use of the new weapons and to abolish war from the world.
The first scientists to take actions of this sort were those involved in the development of the atomic bomb. In March, 1945, before the first nuclear explosion had been carried out, Leo Szilard prepared a memorandum4 to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt5 in which he pointed out that a system of international control of nuclear weapons might give civilization a chance to survive. A committee of atomic scientists, with James Franck6 as chairman, on June 11, 1945, transmitted to the U.S. Secretary of War a report urging that nuclear bombs not be used in an unannounced attack against Japan, as this action would prejudice the possibility of reaching an international agreement on control of these weapons7.
In 1946 Albert Einstein, Harold Urey, and seven other scientists8 formed an organization to educate the American people about the nature of nuclear weapons and nuclear war. This organization, the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists (usually called the Einstein Committee), carried out an effective educational campaign over a five-year period. The nature of the campaign is indicated by the following sentences from the 1946 statement by Einstein:
"Today the atomic bomb has altered profoundly the nature of the world as we know it, and the human race consequently finds itself in a new habitat to which it must adapt its thinking... Never before was it possible for one nation to make war on another without sending armies across borders. Now with rockets and atomic bombs no center of population on the earth's surface is secure from surprise destruction in a single attack... Few men have ever seen the bomb. But all men if told a few facts can understand that this bomb and the danger of war is a very real thing, and not something far away. It directly concerns every person in the civilized world. We cannot leave it to generals, senators, and diplomats to work out a solution over a period of generations… There is no defense in science against the weapon which can destroy civilization. Our defense is not in armaments, nor in science, nor in going underground. Our defense is in law and order… Future thinking must prevent wars."9
During the same period and later years, many other organizations of scientists were active in the work of educating people about nuclear weapons and nuclear war; among them I may mention especially the Federation of American Scientists (in the United States)10, the Atomic Scientists' Association (Great Britain), and the World Federation of Scientific Workers (with membership covering many countries).
On July 15, 1955, a powerful statement, called the Mainau Declaration, was issued by fifty-two Nobel laureates11. This statement warned that a great war in the nuclear age would imperil the whole world, and ended with the sentences: "All nations must come to the decision to renounce force as a final resort of policy. If they are not prepared to do this, they will cease to exist."
A document of great consequence, the Russell-Einstein Appeal, was made public by Bertrand Russell12 on July 9, 1955. Russell, who for years remained one of the world's most active and effective workers for peace, had drafted this document some months earlier, and it had been signed by Einstein two days before his death, and also by nine other scientists. The Appeal began with the sentence: "In the tragic situation which confronts humanity, we feel that scientists should assemble in conference to appraise the perils that have arisen as a result of the development of weapons of mass destruction..." And it ended with the exhortation: "There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death."13
This Appeal led to the formation of the Pugwash Continuing Committee, with Bertrand Russell as chairman, and to the holding of a series of Pugwash Conferences (eleven during the years 1957 to 1963). Financial support for the first few conferences was provided by Mr. Cyrus Eaton14, and the first conference was held in his birthplace, the village of Pugwash, Nova Scotia.
Among the participants in some of the Pugwash Conferences have been scientists with a close connection with the governments of their countries, as well as scientists without government connection. The Conferences have permitted the scientific and practical aspects of disarmament to be discussed informally in a thorough, penetrating, and productive way and have led to some valuable proposals. It is my opinion that the Pugwash Conferences were significantly helpful in the formulation and ratification of the 1963 Bomb Test Ban Treaty.
Concern about the damage done to human beings and the human race by the radioactive substances produced in nuclear weapons tests was expressed with increasing vigor in the period following the first fission-fusion-fission bomb test at Bikini on March 1, 1954. Mention was made of radioactive fallout in the Russell-Einstein Appeal and also in the statement of the First Pugwash Conference. In his Declaration of Conscience issued in Oslo on April 24, 1957, Dr. Albert Schweitzer described the damage done by fallout and asked that the great nations cease their tests of nuclear weapons15. Then on May 15, 1957, with the help of some of the scientists in Washington University, St. Louis, I wrote the Scientists' Bomb Test Appeal, which within two weeks was signed by over two thousand American scientists and within a few months by 11,021 scientists, of forty-nine countries. On January 15, 1958, as I presented the Appeal to Dag Hammarskjöld16 as a petition to the United Nations, I said to him that in my opinion it represented the feelings of the great majority of the scientists of the world. The Bomb Test Appeal consists of five paragraphs. The first two are the following: