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"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. Celebrating the Nobel Chemistry Prize. (2:48)

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David Shoemaker: Well as my years at Caltech went on I had the feeling that all of us down there were thinking that one of the greatest things in our lives could be that Pauling's work would be recognized by the Nobel Prize. And it seemed like many years from 1940 to 1944 to 1948 when it didn't happen and we talked to each other about it sometimes as if it might never happen, that the Nobel Committee was interested in rewarding particular, definitive experimental discoveries or particular, definitive theories of a sort that didn't exactly characterize Pauling's work. His work concerned more this general development that I've perhaps exaggerated by calling a revolutionizing of chemistry, but that, that was what we felt, that possibly it wouldn't escape him or that he wouldn't...

When, when the Nobel Prize to Pauling was announced one of the things that came out that interested me a lot about it was Pauling's own remark that he was someplace or another on a trip and was called up by a newspaper reporter who asked for an interview or something and actually turned out, broke the news to Pauling about it. So Pauling said he asked what did I get it for, what does the citation say? And Pauling said he was very, very pleased to hear that the Committee had, that the citation had said "in a central way for researches in the nature of the chemical bond." Which I took by that to mean that Pauling had thought that was the important thing about his work, just as we had thought it was. I remember very fondly the, the celebration. Celebration perhaps is not the right term for the party that we had but it was in the old Culbertson Hall. And it, there was a skit of some sort that was written brilliantly by this young humanities professor at Caltech by the name of Kent Clark. And members of the, of the biology department and chemistry department got up and sang little songs that Kent had composed and went through little things, this and that, that celebrated some aspects of Pauling's brilliance and accomplishments and made fun of his difficulties with the State Department and getting a passport and all that.

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Date: 1977
Genre: sound
ID: 1977v.66
Copyright: More Information

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