Special Collections

The Postwar Years (1946-1949) Part 1

1946

On February 4, Pauling delivers the first Harrison Howe Lecture, "Analogies between Antibodies and Simpler Chemical Substances," before the Rochester Section of the American Chemical Society in Rochester, New York. The lecture series is instituted to honor the late Harrison E. Howe, who was the longtime editor of Chemical and Engineering News and Industrial and Engineering Chemistry.

On March 24, G.N. Lewis dies while at work in his Berkeley laboratory.

Pauling publishes papers on the use of punched cards in molecular structure determinations (with Verner Schomaker) and on the oxygen meter (with Reuben Wood and J.H. Sturdivant), projects that were developed during the war years but able to be published only after the war’s end.

On June 14, Pauling receives the 35th Willard Gibbs Medal of the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Society. His acceptance talk is on modern structural chemistry.

At the request of Albert Einstein, Pauling and six other scientists form the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists. The task of this committee, of which Einstein is the chairman, is to bring to the notice of all people the great change that has taken place in the world after the discovery of nuclear weapons.

Lee DuBridge becomes president of CIT on September 1, 1946.

George W. Beadle becomes head of the Division of Biology at CIT. He and Pauling set up a fifteen-year joint program for the chemical and biological divisions to work on basic problems in biology and medicine. Pauling and Beadle receive a $300,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for a five-year study of the structure of organic proteins.

In the fall, Dr. Harvey Itano accepts a fellowship in chemistry from the American Chemical Society and goes to CIT. An American citizen born in California of Japanese heritage, Itano was one of the Nisei incarcerated for a short time after the onset of World War II. After obtaining his freedom, he attended St. Louis University School of Medicine, where he received an M.D. degree in 1945. He read Karl Landsteiner’s The Specificity of Serological Reactions and was stimulated by Pauling’s chapter at the end of the book.

Pauling gives him the research problem of studying the role of hemoglobin in the sickled red cells from sickle-cell-anemia patients.

Linus Pauling and Arthur Hill, Yale University, 1947.
LP Photographs, 1947i.8

1947

Pauling is still on his low-protein diet (about 40 grams of protein per day), which he gets from eggs, milk, and cheese as well as from cereals, vegetables, and fruits (he will remain on this diet until the mid-1950’s).

Pauling publishes his paper on atomic radii and interatomic distances in metals. He has made every calculation in this paper with his twenty-inch slide rule.

In May, Pauling receives the Theodore William Richards Medal of the Northeast Section of the American Chemical Society.

To help a fledgling West Coast publisher, Pauling brings out his textbook General Chemistry with W.H. Freeman and Company of San Francisco. It is the first book the house publishes, and it revolutionizes the teaching of college chemistry. It is immediately successful and brings the new company a great deal of prestige.

In the summer, Pauling travels to Long Island, New York to participate, with 25 other distinguished scientists, in a conference on the foundation of quantum mechanics. Linus and Ava Helen Pauling then fly to Europe to attend some international congresses, including the International Congress of Experimental Cytology, the International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the Centenary Celebration of The Chemical Society of London.

On June 12, Pauling receives an honorary degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Cambridge.

Lloyd A. Jeffress is Hixon visiting professor at CIT for the 1947-1948 academic year (Pauling helps to arrange this appointment).

Linus Pauling, Jr. marries Anita Oser on September 20 in Pasadena. Anita Oser is the great-granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller and Cyrus Hall McCormick.

In November Pauling receives the Davy Medal of the Royal Society of London.

Because of research, administration of the division, and family problems, Pauling is forced to miss the first term at Oxford, but he is able to lecture during the winter and spring terms. He, Ava Helen, Peter, Linda, and Crellin leave from New York City on the Queen Mary on December 26, the day of a big blizzard.

In late December, while on board the Queen Mary, Pauling writes a pledge on the back of a cardboard sign that had announced one of his lectures vowing to make mention of the need for world peace in every lecture that he would give.

Linus Pauling's peace pledge.
LP Peace, 6.012.1

On this trip, Pauling meets Erwin Chargaff, who is a First Class passenger, while he is in Third Class. Chargaff tells him about his results from analyzing DNA from various plant and animal sources, in particular, that the ratios of adenine to thymine, and guanine to cytosine are always close to one. Pauling is not very interested in these results and does not make the connection of them to the structure of DNA.