Audio Clips

"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. Many Paths to Discovery. (1:08)

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Linus Pauling: Well, I work largely with ideas and not with mathematics. But I, I've of course published many papers that are highly mathematical. But, usually I do the mathematics to check up on the idea that I have had rather than to make the discovery itself. I have a friend, a distinguished physicist, who said that he had never discovered anything except by working on mathematical equations until he got some new result. I said I have never discovered anything by that method. My discoveries I make by thinking about what the atoms, it's usually atoms that I, what they are doing in space. And if I see them going into an arrangement that looks surprising to me then I ask "is it possible that they can actually do that?" And I may make some quantum mechanical calculations with the computer to check whether this idea is right or not.

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

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