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"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. How to Have Good Ideas. (1:43)

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Linus Pauling: Almost everything that we observe in nature, in the world, depends on the structure of molecules. And I started out by concentrating on the structure of molecules, learning more and more about their structure and getting a better and better understanding of properties and terms of molecules. This means that no matter what comes up I may have an idea about it because I keep thinking about what the molecules are doing. But then of course, part of it is, I'm almost sure, that part of it is that I think about problems more than many other people do. Back when I was sixty years old, I think it was, when there was a party for me on my sixtieth birthday, David Harker, one of my early students, told an anecdote, a story. He said that back in 1935 he asked me a question: "Dr. Pauling how do you have so many good ideas?" And I said: "Well, you just have lots of ideas and throw away the bad ones." And this I think is part of it, that you aren't going to have good ideas unless you have lots of ideas and some sort of principle of selection, some feeling based on experience, perhaps, as to what the ideas are that are apt to be good.

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

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