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Life of Roger Hayward Explored in New Web Exhibit
May 22, 2012The remarkable story of Roger Hayward's life and work is the subject of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center's newest web release, Roger Hayward: Renaissance Man. Hayward (1899-1979) is best remembered as a scientific illustrator of great influence, who collaborated for many years with both Linus Pauling and Scientific American magazine.
Born in New England just before the turn of the century, Hayward attended the Masschusetts Institute of Technology, where he graduated with honors in architecture. Despite having built a reputation in the Boston area as a talented fine artist as well, Hayward and his wife moved to southern California in the late 1920s, lured by the offer of a position as Chief Designer at the Los Angeles-based Cram & Ferguson architecture firm.
With the stock market collapse of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression, Hayward was forced to expand his skillset in order to make ends meet. His solutions to this dillema were an indication of the remarkable creativity that defined his professional life. For one, he crafted puppets and performed puppet shows in his home for a fee. He also built three looms for his wife Betty, whose resulting textiles were sold at local markets. Indeed, Hayward's ingenuity resulted in numerous patent applications over the course of his life for products ranging from fountain pens to nut crackers to baby bassinets.
Over time, Hayward's relationship with many scientists at the California Institute of Technology served to bolster his interest in the sciences. Hayward also worked on behalf of the United States government during World War II and became an expert on the subject of optics. He is now believed to have been a key contributor to the development of the Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope.
Following the war, Hayward built a reputation as a scientific illustrator of great import, providing visuals for Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist" column for nearly twenty-five years and collaborating with Linus Pauling on numerous publications including 1964's The Architecture of Molecules, for which Hayward served as co-author.
Roger Hayward: Renaissance Man recounts Hayward's story through a detailed narrative and more than 450 illustrations. Included among them are two galleries of original pastel drawings created by Hayward for use in The Architecture of Molecules. Most of the pastels presented on the website were not used in the book and are now freely available for the first time.
Roger Hayward: Renaissance Man is the seventh website created by the Special Collections & Archives Research Center using the Omeka web publishing platform. The exhibit relies heavily upon materials held in the Roger Hayward Papers, one of the Center's many history of science collections. The site is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/omeka/exhibits/show/hayward
Five Additional Years Added to Linus Pauling Day-by-Day
April 24, 2012The years 1963-1967 have been added to the Linus Pauling Day-by-Day project, which seeks to document every day of Pauling's life. This latest release includes 25,320 activity listings, 448 scanned documents and 534 full-text transcripts which provide unprecedented insight into Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's interactions, travels and work.
With this release, thirty-seven years of the Paulings' lives have been meticulously recorded in the Day-by-Day calendar, a mammoth resource now featuring an amazing 188,027 activity listings and supplemented with 2,299 scanned documents and 2,942 full-text transcripts. The website's transcripts include family letters as well as selected documents (mostly correspondence) used as illustrations for the Day-by-Day project and for the various Pauling Documentary Histories. As with Pauling's first Nobel year, 1954, an attempt has been made to provide an illustration for every day of 1963, while other years receive an illustration for every week.
The years 1963-1967 comprised a particularly tumultuous time for Pauling. In 1963 Pauling received the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in petitioning against the testing of nuclear weapons. Internationally, Pauling was celebrated for his activism, while at home in the United States he was attacked by for his leftist politics – a phenomenon that, in part, led to his move from the California Institute of Technology to the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The tumult of the era also led to his participation in several libel lawsuits filed against an array of American media outlets.
Pauling did not, however, allow the trouble at home to distract him from his activism. Instead, he used the fame afforded by the Peace Prize to draw attention to the question of nuclear disarmament. He traveled extensively through North America, Scandinavia, Western Europe, Australia, Latin America and India, lecturing on the need to achieve global nuclear disarmament and lasting peace, and cementing his relationships with fellow peace activists.
In the years following his receipt of the Peace Prize, Pauling returned to theoretical chemistry and, in 1965, he announced his close-packed-spheron theory of the structure of atomic nuclei. In the mid-1960s he also collaborated with Emile Zuckerkandl on a study of proteins as records of molecular evolution, published a revised and abridged edition of The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and continued serving as an informal bridge between the general public and the scientific community.
While naturally documenting the important moments in Pauling’s life, the Day-by-Day calendar also serves as a window into Pauling as a person – one which reveals the strain of conflicting political pressures, the effects of age on him and his wife, and his ever-exacting personality.
Begun in 1999, Linus Pauling Day-by-Day is an ongoing project with work on 1968-1970 already well underway. The website is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/calendar/index.html
Nobel Prizewinner Roald Hoffmann to Speak in Portland, April 19th
February 28, 2012Author, educator and Nobel laureate chemist Dr. Roald Hoffmann will deliver a free public lecture in Portland on Thursday, April 19th at 8:00 PM. The lecture, titled "Indigo - A Story of Craft, Religion, History, Science and Culture," will take place in the Colonel Lindbergh Room of the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown Portland.
Hoffmann, professor of chemistry at Cornell University and the co-recipient of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Chemistry (shared with Kenichi Fukui), is traveling to Portland to accept the Linus Pauling Legacy Award, sponsored by the Oregon State University Libraries. He is the seventh recipient of the Legacy Award, which is granted every other year to an individual who has achieved in an area once of interest to Linus Pauling. Past recipients have included Nobel laureates Joseph Rotblat, Roderick MacKinnon and Roger Kornberg, as well as Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson and Caltech chemist John D. Roberts.
A renowned speaker and writer, Hoffmann is best known within scientific circles for his work in applied theoretical chemistry. With Fukui, he received the 1981 Nobel Chemistry medal "for their theories, developed independently, concerning the course of chemical reactions." Like Linus Pauling before him, much of Hoffmann’s career as a chemist has been devoted to determining the structure and properties of large molecules and to communicating these characteristics to both professional colleagues and students alike.
Hoffmann has likewise contributed significantly to improving science education for the general public. He participated in the production of a popular television program titled "The World of Chemistry" (1990) and has published a number of books written for the lay science enthusiast. Hoffmann has also made his mark as an author of fiction through the release of numerous collections of poetry as well as three plays. One theatrical production, "Oxygen," was co-written with chemist Carl Djerassi and has been performed in ten languages worldwide.
Hoffmann's April 19th lecture has been tailored for a general audience. An abstract of the talk is as follows:
One way to see the role of a desirable blue pigment, indigo, in world culture, is that it has served remarkably to intertwine craft, fashion, religion, power, and science. Even if some people would like to keep them separate. The story begins with the prescription by the Hebrews in Numbers of a blue pigment for ritual use (and its role in a critical biblical rebellion), the parallel story of Tyrian purple and its uses in the Roman world, continues with the animal and plant sources of that pigment worldwide, the historical loss of the art of making snail indigo, on to chemistry and blue jeans. Some observations on the relationship of science and religion will emerge along the way.
Groups or individuals interested in attending Hoffmann's talk, which is free and open to the public, are encouraged to reserve seats by contacting the Oregon State University Libraries' Special Collections & Archives Research Center at 541-737-2075 or special.collections@oregonstate.edu. The Embassy Suites Hotel is located at 319 SW Pine Street in downtown Portland. More information on the Pauling Legacy Award event and on Hoffmann's talk is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2012hoffmann/index.html
Rare Books and Manuscripts Highlighted in New Digital Exhibit
February 7, 2012Online visitors have a chance to peruse one of OSU’s oldest and most intriguing resources with the OSU Libraries' Special Collections & Archives Research Center's newest exhibit, "Treasures of the McDonald Collection."
The exhibit offers a narrative history of text production and printing from more than 9,000 years ago to the mid-20th century. The site showcases more than 100 photographs of items from the McDonald Rare Book and Manuscript Collection including ancient cuneiform tablets, medieval manuscripts, and some of the earliest press-printed books in existence.
From the clay tablets of the ancient Middle East to the American industrial printing houses of the 1900s, "Treasures of the McDonald Collection" explores the evolution of information sharing through the lens of the OSU Libraries holdings.
The McDonald Rare Book and Manuscript Collection was established at OSU in 1932 by benefactor Mary McDonald, the widow of James McDonald, an early California timber and mining magnate. As a result of a professional relationship with George Peavy, dean of the Oregon Agricultural College (OAC) School of Forestry, Mary McDonald made several contributions to the university.
The McDonald Collection holdings are available to researchers at the Special Collections & Archives Research Center Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The center may be contacted at 541-737-2075 or special.collections@oregonstate.edu.
Resident Scholar Program Now Accepting Applicants for 2012
January 5, 2012The Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center (SCARC) is pleased to announce that applications are once again being solicited for the Resident Scholar Program. Stipends of $2,500 per month renewable for up to three months (for a total maximum grant award of $7,500) will be awarded to researchers whose proposals detail a compelling potential use of the materials held in the Center. Applications are due by April 30, 2012.
Now in its fifth year, the Resident Scholar Program provides research grants to scholars interested in conducting work in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center. Researchers will be expected to conduct their scholarly activities while in residence at Oregon State University. Historians, librarians, graduate, doctoral or post-doctoral students and independent scholars are welcome to apply. Grant monies can be used for any purpose.
It is anticipated that applicants would focus their work on one of the four main collecting themes of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center: the history of Oregon State University, natural resources in the Pacific Northwest, multiculturalism in the Pacific Northwest and/or the history of science and technology in the twentieth century. For 2012, proposals that focus on using the history of science and technology collections will receive highest consideration, though proposals can address use of any of the SCARC collections.
A full accounting of the collections held within the Center are available in two locations: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/index.html and http://archives.library.oregonstate.edu/collections
Detailed information outlining the qualifications necessary for application, as well as the selection process and the conditions under which awards will be made, is available at the following location (PDF link): http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.pdf. Additional information on the program is available at the Resident Scholar homepage and profiles of past award recipients are available here.
Revised and Expanded Pauling Awards Site Released
October 20, 2011An enhanced version of the website Linus Pauling: Awards, Honors and Medals is now available. The updated resource offers improved navigation as well as access to images of nearly all of the hundreds of awards that Pauling received over the course of his illustrious career.
Originally released in 2003, Linus Pauling: Awards, Honors and Medals has been updated to include many more awards that were previously available. All told, the site now features well over 600 images of Pauling's 460 medals, certificates, plaques and trophies. In addition, the functionality and feel of the website has been improved. Users are able to view a list of all awards, awards by decade or awards by subject and each image is available in higher resolution than was previously the case.
In a career spanning some seven decades, Linus Pauling received forty-seven honorary doctorates as well as virtually every important award that a scientist can receive. In addition, he was honored on numerous occasions for his work on behalf of peace, civil liberties and human rights. He remains the only person to have received two unshared Nobel Prizes.
The revised and expanded version of Linus Pauling: Awards, Honors and Medals is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/awards/index.html
Resident Scholars for 2011 Announced
June 1, 2011The OSU Libraries Special Collections has named four individuals as Resident Scholars for the 2011-2012 academic year. Recipients hail from as far away as Maine and Brazil, and will be utilizing a wide array of resources as they conduct research in Special Collections.
Chris Gray is a faculty member with The Union Institute and University and a lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is the author of Postmodern War (1997), Cyborg Citizen (2001) and Peace, War and Computers (2005), among other works. His project is an examination of the political and social implications of contemporary evolutionary theory. He plans to use components of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers as well as the Paul Lawrence Farber Papers.
Christopher O'Brien is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of Maine, Farmington. Dr. O'Brien will be using the History of Atomic Energy Collection and the Pauling Papers to study the effect on children of the Cold War nuclear build-up. O'Brien's research will be conducted in support of a forthcoming monograph on the subject.
Graciela de Souza Oliver is a faculty member at the Universidade Federal do ABC in Santo Andre, Brazil, where she lectures on the social history of Brazilian science and technology, agricultural history, and other areas. Dr. Oliver will use the Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogues and various monographs and dissertations held in the History of Science Collection. Her project focuses on the "visual and textual elements of advertisement and trade in plants and seeds, in view of the relationship between amateurs and science professionals."
Linda Richards is a Ph. D. candidate in the History of Science at Oregon State University. Her ongoing research for her dissertation compares the development of radiation health safety at Atoms for Peace research reactors with the experience of uranium mining workers and communities. She plans to utilize components of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers as she continues researching this topic.
The Resident Scholar Program, sponsored by Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections and supported by the Peter and Judith Freeman Fund, awards stipends of up to $2,500 per month, renewable up to three months, for a total maximum grant award of $7,500. To date, six researchers have carried out studies under the auspices of the program, traveling to Corvallis from as far away as Kentucky, New York and Germany.
For more information on the Resident Scholar Program, see http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.html
Pauling Documentary Available Online
May 31, 2011A one hour documentary on the life and work of Linus Pauling, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, is now freely available online. Oregon Experience: Linus Pauling may be viewed on the Oregon Experience website.
The documentary, which first aired on the stations of Oregon Public Broadcasting on May 30, 2011, features a wealth of archival material as well as interviews with numerous scholars commenting on Pauling's biography and legacy.
A companion website created by OPB includes both the documentary feature as well as video extras not used in the final production. The website also features an image gallery depicting Pauling and his family members at various points through the years.
Oregon Experience: Linus Pauling was developed in close collaboration with the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. The OPB website hosting the completed documentary is located at: http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/programs/player/35-Linus-Pauling
Now Accepting Applicants for 2011 Resident Scholar Program
January 14, 2011Research grants of up to $7,500 are being made available to scholars interested in conducting work in the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. Applications (PDF link) should be submitted by April 29, 2011.
Stipends of up to $2,500 per month, renewable for up to three months, (for a total maximum grant award of $7,500) will be awarded to researchers whose proposals detail a compelling potential use of the materials held in the OSU Libraries Special Collections. Grant monies can be used for any purpose.
Researchers will be expected to conduct their scholarly activities while in residence at Oregon State University. Historians, librarians, graduate, doctoral or post-doctoral students as well as independent scholars are welcome to apply. The deadline for submitting proposals is April 29, 2011.
Detailed information outlining the qualifications necessary for application, as well as the selection process and the conditions under which awards will be made, is available at the following location: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.html
Online Learning Curriculum Examines the History of Atomic Energy
October 13, 2010The Atomic Energy & Nuclear History Learning Curriculum, a condensed account of nuclear history in the 19th and 20th centuries, is the latest digital resource to be released by the OSU Libraries Special Collections.
Designed as an introduction to the OSU Libraries History of Atomic Energy Collection, the website's 10,000-word narrative provides a highly accessible, user-friendly examination of 20th century nuclear science. Each of the Curriculum's fifteen sections explores atomic history through a unique lens, allowing readers to examine the impact of nuclear science on international politics, religion and militarism, modern art, agriculture and more. Specific narrative chapters focus on subjects as varied as civil defense, atomic espionage and nuclear engineering while also providing a survey of those individuals who pioneered the scientific understanding of atomic structure and furthered its application in eras of both peace and wartime.
The project narrative is illustrated with nearly 400 images including numerous uncommon book and periodical covers, extraordinary photographs of mid-century bomb tests, rare atomic-era memorabilia, audio extracts and complete digitized duplications of Cold War-era government publications. Through use of the Omeka publishing platform, the Special Collections staff has enhanced each digital object with detailed Dublin Core metadata. In addition to this broad selection of visual resources, the narrative includes more than 100 footnote references to Special Collections holdings and a comprehensive bibliography for both casual and scholarly use.
The Atomic Energy & Nuclear History Learning Curriculum is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/omeka/exhibits/show/atomic.
New Website Chronicles Pauling's Scientific War Work
July 16, 2010The Scientific War Work of Linus C. Pauling, the fifth in the OSU Libraries Special Collections series of documentary history websites, provides a new perspective on an often-overlooked component of Pauling's life and career.
The centerpiece of The Scientific War Work of Linus C. Pauling is a forty-seven page Narrative consisting of original research compiled by the Special Collections staff. The site Narrative provides fresh insight into Pauling's war activities, as much of what is presented has not been published by previous biographers.
Contained within the Narrative is a full account of Pauling's vast program of work conducted on behalf of the United States government during World War II. In so doing, the site delves into Pauling's development of rocket propellants, an oxygen meter for use in Allied aircraft and submarines, a blood plasma substitute and invisible inks, among many other projects. An Interlude inserted in the midst of the Narrative likewise provides a glimpse into life during wartime. It is here that one learns of the hazards inherent to conducting laboratory research at a frenzied pace, the extraordinary secrecy required of scientists working on government contracts, and the interesting story of Linus Pauling, Jr.'s service in the United States military.
Augmenting the Narrative is a large repository of nearly three-hundred digitized letters, manuscripts, government documents, photographs and audio clips. In addition, the complete details of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's personal and professional activities during the war years are exhaustively chronicled in the unique Linus Pauling Day-by-Day calendar.
The Scientific War Work of Linus C. Pauling: A Documentary History is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/war/index.html
Unpublished Williams Novel Released Online
May 24, 2010The text of a previously unpublished novel written by historian William Appleman Williams is now available on the OSU Libraries Special Collections website.
Titled Ninety Days Inside the Empire, the novel, penned by Williams in the 1980s, touches upon several themes that were important to the author's life and work. Set in Corpus Christi, Texas, Williams's book tells the story of racial strife and civil rights mobilization through the eyes of military servicemen following the close of World War II. Williams, a veteran of the United States Navy, served as a line officer during the second world war. Following the close of hostilities, Williams was stationed in Corpus Christi where he joined the N.A.A.C.P. and participated in local civil rights activities.
The web version of Ninety Days Inside the Empire spans 125 pages over fourteen chapters. The text is enhanced by a number of illustrations and is introduced by Dr. Kerry Ahearn, chair of the Oregon State University English department.
Multiple New Pauling Digital Resources Now Available
April 22, 2010A Spanish-language translation of the Pauling Chronology, two new events videos and two additional years of data in Linus Pauling Day-by-Day comprise the latest materials released on the OSU Libraries Special Collections website.
La Cronología de Pauling, a painstaking translation of Robert Paradowski's twenty-seven chapter chronology of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's life, is the featured release for Spring 2010. Elegantly written and rigorously detailed, the Chronology is an accessible and informative summary version of the Paulings' biography. The translation project, which took more than one year to complete, is the first of several translation projects currently in the planning stages.
Transcribed video of The Essential Bond, a stageplay based on the Paulings' life story, is the first of two new videos to be released in 2010. First presented in 1999 by the Youth Division of Soka Gakkai International-USA, "The Essential Bond" was produced in conjunction with the traveling exhibit "Linus Pauling and the Twentieth Century," also developed by SGI-USA. The play was directed and co-written by Shan Serafin; its large cast featured Matthew Ashford in the role of young Linus Pauling and John Astin as Pauling's elder self.
A second video, this one of Dr. John D. Roberts' 2006 Pauling Legacy Award lecture, has also been added to the Events and Videos component of the Special Collections website. Titled "Useful Knowledge about Magnetic Resonance Imaging" the presentation details just one aspect of the Caltech chemist's broad and distinguished career in science.
Finally, two additional years worth of data have been added to the Linus Pauling Day-by-Day project. The years 1961 and 1962 bore witness to the Paulings' continuing tilt away from scientific research in favor of a pitched agenda of peace activism. Both were likewise incredibly busy years littered with international travel, worldwide acclaim and periods of heavy tumult. The richness and complexity of the Paulings' lives is spelled out in great detail through Linus Pauling Day-by-Day's unique calendar-based interface. The ever-expanding resource now includes summaries of over 92,000 documents and features 1,851 illustrations and 2,289 full-text transcripts.
Roger Kornberg, Nobel Laureate, to Speak in Portland on April 20th
January 21, 2010Dr. Roger Kornberg, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, will speak in Portland on Tuesday, April 20th. His lecture, entitled "The Molecular Basis of Eukaryotic Transcription," will be held at the Oregon Historical Society’s Miller Pavilion at 8:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public. Seats may be reserved ahead of time by calling the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections at 541-737-2075, or via email at special.collections@oregonstate.edu
A Stanford University biochemist, Roger Kornberg was awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his fundamental studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription - the process by which DNA is copied. Kornberg's 1974 discovery of the nucleosome - the basic protein-complex packaging of chromosomal DNA in the nucleus of eukaryotic cells - marked the beginning of his work on DNA. Coupled with his most recent discovery of "The Mediator" protein complex, Kornberg's impressive program of research has added substantially to the understanding of the mechanisms and regulation of eukaryotic transcription.
Dr. Kornberg received his B.A. in Chemistry from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Stanford University. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England before joining the Stanford faculty. He has since co-founded Stanford’s Department of Structural Biology, the first of its kind in the United States. In 1993 he was elected to membership of the National Academy of Sciences.
In addition to the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. Kornberg is the recipient of numerous scientific awards, including the 2006 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the 2002 Léopold Mayer Prize - the highest award in biomedical sciences granted by the French Academy of Science - and the 2001 Welch prize, among the most prestigious awards available to U.S. chemists.
Dr. Kornberg is visiting Oregon to receive the Linus Pauling Legacy Award, presented by the Oregon State University Libraries. This award is granted once every two years for oustanding achievement in any of Linus Pauling’s areas of research. Past recipients of the award include Daisaku Ikeda, founder of Soka Gakkai International; Nobel laureate physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat; Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson; Caltech chemist John D. Roberts; and Nobel laureate biophysicist Roderick MacKinnon.
For more information on Kornberg's lecture, please see the event website, available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2010kornberg/
New Website Details the History of Seed and Nursery Catalogues
January 7, 2010A lavishly illustrated history of European and U.S. seed and nursery trade catalogues is the first web release for 2010 from the OSU Libraries Special Collections.
A Short History of the Seed and Nursery Catalogue in Europe and the U. S., which features over 700 illustrations extracted from the Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogues Collection, traces the development of these fascinating documents from their earliest origins in the 1500s to the current digital age.
Written by former trial garden manager Alice Krinsky Formiga, the website narrative is divided into fifteen chapters and touches on the evolution of the seed trade as it progressed out of the nineteenth century, through two world wars and up to present day. Appendices focusing upon art and photography in catalogues are likewise included, as is an extensive bibliography and list of related exhibits.
A Short History is the first website to be built by the OSU Libraries Special Collections using the Omeka open source web publishing platform. Extensive Dublin Core metadata is included with each digital object used on the site and presented in a user-friendly format by the Omeka interface.
A Short History of the Seed and Nursery Catalogue in Europe and the U. S. is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/omeka/exhibits/show/seed
Now Accepting Applicants for 2010 Resident Scholar Program
January 4, 2010Research grants of up to $7,500 are being made available to scholars interested in conducting work in the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. Applications (PDF link) should be submitted by April 10, 2010.
Stipends of up to $2,500 per month, renewable for up to three months, (for a total maximum grant award of $7,500) will be awarded to researchers whose proposals detail a compelling potential use of the materials held in the OSU Libraries Special Collections. Grant monies can be used for any purpose.
Researchers will be expected to conduct their scholarly activities while in residence at Oregon State University. Historians, librarians, graduate, doctoral or post-doctoral students as well as independent scholars are welcome to apply. The deadline for submitting proposals is April 10, 2010.
Detailed information outlining the qualifications necessary for application, as well as the selection process and the conditions under which awards will be made, is available at the following location: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.pdf
Final Releases for 2009: Williams Finding Aid, Kelly and Arias Videos
December 29, 2009A busy year for the OSU Libraries Special Collections comes to a close with the release of the finding aid to the William Appleman Williams Papers, as well as Pauling Peace Lectureship presentations by renowned figures Petra Kelly and Óscar Arias Sánchez.
William Appleman Williams (1921-1990), an influential American historian and writer, was a member of the History faculty at Oregon State University from 1968-1986. He is regarded to be a founder of the "revisionist school" of American diplomatic history. A prolific author, Williams's The Contours of American History (1961), was named, by the Modern Library, one of the 100 best non-fiction books written in English in the twentieth century. The Williams Papers consist of correspondence, newspaper clippings, books, photographs and memorabilia.
German peace activist Petra Kelly (1947-1992) delivered the tenth annual Ava Helen Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace in 1991. Titled "Green Politics in New Europe: Hope for Change?" Kelly's presentation discussed the state of international socioeconomic and ecological affairs from her perspective as a founder of the German Green Party.
One year later, Nobel Peace laureate Óscar Arias Sánchez, twice elected President of Costa Rica, spoke on the topic "The Craftsmanship of Peace: Moving to Global Demilitarization." President Arias's remarks focused primarily upon the roots and consequences of economic dysfunction in Latin America, while emphasizing the crucial need for demilitarization throughout the region.
Hanford Finding Aid, Galtung and Gandhi Videos Now Available
November 13, 2009The finding aid to the Hanford Site Forty-Year Environmental Data Collection is the latest detailed collection description to be released by the OSU Libraries Special Collections. In addition, transcribed Pauling Peace Lectureship presentations by Johan Galtung and Arun Gandhi are now available on our Special Events and Videos page.
The Hanford Site Forty-Year Environmental Data materials comprise the fourth addition to our Atomic Energy and Nuclear History Collections. Consisting largely of technical reports spanning the years 1943-1986, the Hanford items document environmental monitoring at the Hanford Site, a nuclear production complex in southeast Washington that was constructed beginning in 1943 and fully decommissioned in 1987. Included among the collection's reports are accounts detailing effluent releases into the environment, both planned and unplanned.
Social scientist and author Johan Galtung delivered the seventh annual Ava Helen Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace in 1988. Titled "Is the U. S. Political Discourse Adequate to the Task of Peace?" Galtung's presentation discussed the impact that political rhetoric in the United States made upon the formulation of the country's foreign policy. A ten-minute response to Galtung's remarks by Seymour Melman of Columbia University was also included as part of the 1988 program.
Eight years after Galtung, Arun Gandhi of the M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence presented as the thirteenth Pauling Peace Lecturer. Titled "Fulfilling Gandhi's Dream at the End of the 20th Century," Gandhi's remarks included fascinating recollections of the many encounters that he enjoyed and lessons that he learned from his legendary grandfather, Mahatma Gandhi.
New Additions - Hayward Papers and Galbraith Video
October 22, 2009The complete finding aid to the Roger Hayward Papers and a 1986 Pauling Peace Lectureship talk by John Kenneth Galbraith are now available on the OSU Libraries Special Collections website.
Hayward (1899-1970), a renowned artist, architect, inventor and scientific investigator, is perhaps best remembered for his visual contributions to four books written by Linus Pauling, including 1964's The Architecture of Molecules, which Hayward co-authored. A long-time contributor to Scientific American's "Amateur Scientist" column, Hayward was awarded ten patents over the course of his life, most of them for his work in the field of optics. Hayward's architectural legacy can still be seen in buildings including the Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library at the University of Southern California and the Los Angeles Stock Exchange. Hayward's inventive mind was also the source of an improved fountain pen, a walnut cracking machine and a World War II-era device that measured the effects of gravity on bullet trajectories.
The Hayward Papers are comprised of correspondence, manuscripts, sketchbooks, loose art works and assorted biographical materials. The collection's finding aid is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/hayward/index.html
Titled "The Military Power and the Larger Complex," Dr. John Kenneth Galbraith's 1986 presentation was the fifth Ava Helen Pauling Memorial Lecture for World Peace. A decorated economist, respected diplomat and prolific author, Galbraith's talk focused on the roots of contemporary United States foreign policy, paying special attention to relations with the Soviet Union and the crucial issue of nuclear arms control.
Dr. Galbraith's lecture is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/1986galbraith/index.html. Other Pauling Peace Lectureship talks, including those delivered by Helen Caldicott, George W. Ball and Noam Chomsky can be found at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/index.html
Major Revision of the Special Collections Website Released
September 24, 2009The OSU Libraries Special Collections is pleased to present a major revision of its web presence that includes a fresh design, numerous content updates and the introduction of a powerful image search tool.
New Design
Graphically, the Special Collections website has been redesigned with the intent of easing use and adding features. To this end, access to all Pauling-related resources is now provided through the Linus Pauling Online portal. The new department homepage also incorporates a featured video and links to featured projects, all of which will be updated on a regular basis.
New Content
A large volume of new content is also included with this release. These additions include:
- More than eight hours of fully-transcribed events videos including the 2001 Pauling Centenary Conference, as well as Pauling Peace Lectureship presentations by Helen Caldicott and George W. Ball.
- New public records and finding aids for numerous collections, including the David and Clara Shoemaker Papers, the Tom Hager Papers, the Nursery and Seed Trade Catalogues Collection, the Wilson Room Collection, the Canine Research Collection, the Apollo Moon Missions Photographs, the Leonard Maki Nuclear Power Collection, the Barton C. and Sally L. Hacker Nuclear Affairs Collection and the Roger Hayward Papers.
- Updated finding aids for several additional collections including the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, the Eugene Starr Papers and the Fritz Marti Papers.
- Featured documents, photographs and videos for each of the archival collections.
- Biographical timelines, bibliographies and improved administrative metadata for each of the archival collections.
- A ten-minute behind the scenes video tour of our facilities.
Image Search Tool
For the first time the thousands of Pauling Papers photographs, letters and manuscripts that have been digitized over the years are now searchable using the Image Search tool powered by LibraryFind. Users are now able to conduct keyword searches for any item digitized for inclusion in the four Pauling Documentary History websites as well as the thirty years of scanned content now available in the Linus Pauling Day-by-Day project.
The revised Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections homepage is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/index.html
Document Summaries, Illustrations and Transcripts for 1960 Added to Linus Pauling Day-by-Day Site
May 12, 2009Descriptions of nearly 8,000 documents as well as fifty-four illustrations and eighty-eight full-text transcripts, all dating to the year 1960, are the latest addition to the growing "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" project.
1960 was a difficult year for Linus and Ava Helen Pauling, one marked by two especially-harrowing incidents.
At the end of January 1960, having become lost while walking near his coastal home, Pauling was forced to spend nearly twenty-four hours trapped on a cliff some 300-feet above the Pacific Ocean. Though not physically harmed, the experience shook Pauling deeply.
An even greater source of stress emerged in the early summer, when Pauling was summoned to testify before the United States Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. Suspicious of Pauling’s peace activities, the Subcommittee demanded that Pauling reveal the names of those individuals who assisted both he and his wife in their circulation of the famous United Nations Bomb Test Petition. Though threatened with imprisonment for contempt of Congress, Pauling refused to divulge the requested information. After two tense hearings and a great deal of media attention, the Subcommittee ultimately relented and Pauling was not penalized.
As with all of the years featured in "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day," the 1960 release is comprised of thousands of text summaries, multi-page illustrations and transcripts of items held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. With the inclusion of the 1960 content, the project now boasts of well-over 76,000 activities listings, 1,700 illustrations and 2,000 transcripts.
"Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/calendar/index.html
Illustrated Chronology Released in Honor of Pauling Birthday
February 27, 2009A detailed chronology of Linus Pauling's ancestry, life and work has been released in celebration of the 108th anniversary of Dr. Pauling's birth. Written by biographer Dr. Robert Paradowski of the Rochester Institute of Technology, the twenty-eight page Pauling Chronology is the most authoritative overview of Pauling's life available on the web.
Pauling was born on February 28, 1901 in Portland, Oregon. Paradowski's chronology traces Pauling's ancestry to his earliest known relatives in Germany before describing Pauling's development from his formative years in Oregon, through his early work as a young Ph.D. at the California Institute of Technology, his crowning achievements as history's only recipient of two unshared Nobel Prizes, and his attention-grabbing research on vitamin C.
Within his narrative, Paradowski also sheds light on some of the less-celebrated aspects of Pauling's career, including his extensive program of scientific war work, his residence at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and his subsequent moves to the University of California, San Diego and Stanford University.
The text of the Pauling Chronology is amplified through the inclusion of dozens of high-resolution images that illustrate key episodes in Pauling's biography. The resource also incorporates hundreds of links to primary source materials for those users interested in a deeper exploration of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's remarkable stories.
The Pauling Chronology is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/chronology/page1.html
OSU Libraries Special Collections Seeks Applicants for Resident Scholar Program
February 18, 2009Research grants are being made available to scholars interested in conducting work in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at OSU Libraries Special Collections. Stipends of $2,500 per month renewable for up to three months (for a total maximum grant award of $7,500) will be made available to researchers in the history of science whose proposals detail a compelling potential use of the materials held in the vast Pauling archive. Grant monies can be used for any purpose.
Researchers will be expected to conduct their scholarly activities while in residence at the OSU Libraries Special Collections. Historians, librarians, doctoral or post-doctoral students and independent scholars are welcome to apply. The deadline for applying for Resident Scholar Program support is April 30, 2009.
Detailed information outlining the qualifications necessary for application, the selection process and the conditions under which awards will be made is available at the following PDF: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.pdf
The Resident Scholar Program is generously supported by the Peter and Judith Freeman Fund.
Thirty Years of Data Now Accessible in Revamped "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" Website
January 30, 2009An unprecedented accounting of Linus Pauling's life from the years 1930 to 1959 is now available at the revised and enhanced "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" website. Comprised of more than 69,000 document summaries, nearly 1,700 illustrations and close to 2,000 full-text correspondence transcripts, "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" is a landmark resource for researchers interested in Linus Pauling, Ava Helen Pauling and their times.
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the "Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" project, and pieces of it have been released at different points in time over the past decade. Noteable new features of this latest incarnation include:
A homepage providing access to each of the thirty years worth of images, descriptions and data now available -- all of it presented in a searchable, user-friendly calendar format.
Index pages for each year that include an engaging overview of the major activities in which the world-renowned scientist and peace activist participated.
Access to thousands of pages of digitized photographs, drawings and documents that illustrate each week of Pauling's life from 1930-1959. (or, in the case of 1954, his first Nobel year, each day)
Full-text transcripts of nearly two-thousand letters, including scores of fascinating communications between members of the Pauling family.
Five years worth of content description (1955-1959) that had not been previously released. [Check out what Pauling was doing fifty years ago today!]
"Linus Pauling Day-by-Day" is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/calendar/index.html
Enhanced "It’s in the Blood!" Documentary History Website Now Available
October 22, 2008A revised and expanded version of the website "It’s in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia" has been released by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. Originally launched in March 2005, "It’s in the Blood!" details the body of work that has led many to now regard Pauling as "the father of molecular biology."
Beginning with a series of early investigations into the structure of hemoglobin, Pauling earned worldwide acclaim for his groundbreaking discoveries in immunochemistry, biological structure and the study of disease. Perhaps most importantly, Pauling was the first scientist to hypothesize the concept of a "molecular disease." Working with a brilliant group of colleagues at the California Institute of Technology, Pauling successfully isolated the root cause of sickle cell anemia as a molecular abnormality – a discovery of great import for scientists and medical doctors alike.
Pauling went on to develop a number of additional ideas important to the modern understanding of biology and medicine. Among those covered by "It’s in the Blood!" are his and Emile Zuckerkandl’s theory of the molecular evolutionary clock, Pauling’s sometimes controversial thinking on genetic counseling, and the roots of his passionate interest in the concept of orthomolecular medicine – a subject that dominated his research focus for the last two decades of his life
The foundation of "It’s in the Blood!" is a forty-six chapter narrative, written by historian Dr. Melinda Gormley, that details many of the fascinating and highly-varied contributions that Pauling made to the study of human health and functioning. Amplifying the narrative are over 800 pages of digitized letters, manuscripts and published papers, nearly 100 photographs and drawings, and dozens of audio excerpts and video clips. In addition, the bulk of Pauling’s personal and professional activities for the years 1930-1954 are detailed in calendar form through the unique and growing "Linus Pauling Day-By-Day" project.
Highlights of the enhanced "It’s in the Blood!" site include large troves of material related to Harvey Itano, Dan Campbell, Robert Corey, William Castle and many other key participants in Pauling’s biological investigations; nineteen published papers and official documents not previously released; and nearly fifteen minutes of new audio and video. The text of Dr. Gormley's masters thesis, from which the website narrative was adapted, is also available on the site as a downloadable PDF. (1.8 MB)
"It’s in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia" is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/blood/index.html
The Pauling Student Learning Curriculum
September 5, 2008A curriculum for use by high school- and college-age students is the latest web release from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. Meant to provide an introduction to Linus Pauling's scientific research, peace activism and family life, the Student Learning Curriculum is a valuable resource for teachers and students of science and history alike. The inclusion of numerous illustrations, hyperlinks to digitized primary sources and references for further study make this a helpful tool both for remote users as well as those students able to visit the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections reading room.
The curriculum walks its users through the high points of Pauling's life and career through a chronological interface that is divided into three broad sections: Early Years: Education, Teaching and the Chemical Bond; Middle Years: War Work, Peace Work and Protein Structure; and Later Years: Molecular Disease and Orthomolecular Medicine.
A bibliography of topical readings and a collection of links to numerous Pauling-related websites likewise provide a rich source of content for students interested in the history of twentieth century science.
An introduction to archival research is also built into the Student Learning Curriculum -- a perfect resource for aspiring young scholars in need of exposure to the unique aspects of doing work in primary source repositories.
The Pauling Student Learning Curriculum is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/curriculum/page1.html
Bernard Malamud Resources Updated: New Videos, Essay and Illustrations
August 15, 2008Transcribed video of an hour-long book reading by acclaimed author Janna Malamud Smith is the centerpiece of a major update to the collection of Bernard Malamud resources now available on the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections website. An illustrated biographical essay and a detailed finding aid to the Malamud Papers are also included in this release.
Malamud Smith, one of Bernard and Ann DeChiara Malamud's two children, is the author of My Father is a Book, a much-lauded memoir of her famous father. In November 2007 Malamud Smith visited OSU and read from both her memoir as well as a Threepenny Review essay that predated the book. The readings reflect movingly upon the qualities that defined Bernard Malamud, both as an internationally-acclaimed writer of fiction as well as a father and husband raising a young family in 1950s Corvallis – a location that often seemed many worlds away from the East Coast bustle that he had always known.
Malamud Smith's reading, and the Q & A session that followed, were delivered as part of the OSU Visiting Writers Series, sponsored by the OSU English Department, The Valley Library, the Office of the Provost, and Friends of the Benton-Corvallis County Library. The transcribed video of her talk is the latest addition to the Special Events content being released on the Special Collections website.
Also included in this release is an enhanced version of Chester Garrison's illuminating essay, "Bern Malamud: An Instinctive Friendship." Garrison, a former Oregon State College English professor and close colleague of Malamud's, writes with wit and poignancy of the multi-decade friendship that he shared with the gifted novelist – a relationship that spanned time zones and even continents. The enhancements made to this version of Garrison's essay include a number of new illustrations, most notably a striking 1961 Malamud portrait recently donated to the Bernard Malamud Papers by professional photographer Seymour Linden.
Since 1986 the OSU Libraries Special Collections has served as home to a major collection of materials related to the life and work of Bernard Malamud. The Malamud archive, which is described on the item level, includes over forty manuscript items, six-hundred newspaper clippings and 179 first edition and foreign language books authored by Malamud. The catalogue of this important collection is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/malamud/index.html
Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) taught at Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) from 1949-1961. A prolific author, he received numerous honors including a Pulitzer Prize (The Fixer, 1966) and two National Book Awards (The Magic Barrel, 1959; The Fixer, 1966) for his work.
New Videos Featuring Noam Chomsky
July 18, 2008Transcribed video of a two-hour lecture and Q & A session by Dr. Noam Chomsky is now available on the Special Events section of the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections website. Titled "Prospects for World Order" and delivered on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, the talk provides compelling analysis of international relations from the left-radical perspective.
This latest release from the OSU Libraries Special Collections video digitization program is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/1995chomsky/index.html
The Chomsky presentation, dated October 24, 1995, was sponsored by the Oregon State University College of Liberal Arts as part of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Lectureship for World Peace.
Dr. Chomsky, an internationally-known linguist and social critic, drew upon a wide diversity of historical and journalistic sources in detailing his thoughts on the often-tumultuous interaction of world powers, including the United Nations, throughout the course of the twentieth century. Following his lecture, which lasted for more than an hour, Chomsky engaged in a fifty-minute question and answer dialogue with the capacity crowd at OSU’s LaSells Stewart Center.
Video and Transcription of Roderick MacKinnon Lecture Now Available
June 3, 2008Fully-transcribed video of Dr. Roderick MacKinnon's 2008 Linus Pauling Legacy Award Lecture is now available on the Special Collections webpage. Titled "Ion Channel Chemistry: The Electrical System of Life," Dr. MacKinnon's talk provided a fascinating glimpse into the history of scientific inquiry into the human electrical system. The presentation also introduced recent developments in the study of the molecular principles of selectivity and gating in potassium channels -- a field of research that many feel will shed new light on potential cures for a wide range of neuromuscular diseases.
This latest addition to the growing cache of video being released on the department's Special Events page is found at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2008legacyaward/index.html
Winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, Dr. MacKinnon is the fifth recipient of the Linus Pauling Legacy Award, presented by the Oregon State University Libraries. The Legacy Award is granted once every two years for outstanding achievement in a field of study once of interest to Dr. Linus Pauling. Past recipients of the award include Daisaku Ikeda, founder of Soka Gakkai International; Nobel laureate physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat; Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson; and esteemed chemist John D. Roberts.
Now Available: Transcribed Video of Presentations by Francis Crick, Noted Historians and Friends of Linus Pauling.
May 13, 2008Almost nine hours of transcribed video featuring presentations by a number of famed scientists and historians is the latest addition to the Special Events website presented by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. Of particular note is a lecture by 1962 Nobel laureate Dr. Francis Crick titled "The Impact of Linus Pauling on Molecular Biology." Video of a talk by an additional Nobel Prize winner, Dr. William N. Lipscomb (Chemistry, 1976) is a further highlight of this release.
All of the new video is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/1995paulingconference/index.html
The presentations, which date to February and March 1995, were initially delivered and recorded on the Oregon State University campus as part of a major conference celebrating the life and work of Dr. Linus Pauling (1901-1994). Titled "A Discourse on the Art of Biography," the aim of the symposium was to convene three groups of speakers: scholars and journalists who had been writing about Linus Pauling as a biographical subject; friends and colleagues who knew Pauling personally; historians and archivists who had studied scientists as the subject of contemporary scientific biography.
Participants included Pauling’s youngest son Crellin, as well as a collection of Pauling’s former graduate students - including renowned molecular biologist Dr. Matthew Meselson and OSU Professors Emeritus Dr. Ken Hedberg and Dr. David Shoemaker - each of whom shared a number of often-humorous stories mined from their long associations with the famed scientist.
Three Pauling biographers likewise discussed their experiences writing on and interacting with their subject in a fascinating and information-packed session titled "The Biographer’s Picture of Linus Pauling." A number of major historians, including Sarton Medal winners Frederic Lawrence Holmes and John L. Heilbron, broadened the discussion to the larger issues facing all writers of biography in general, and writers of science biography in particular.
Annotated transcripts of each presentation are included along with the full video of the nineteen talks that comprised this historic gathering.
Dr. Roderick MacKinnon, Nobel laureate, to Receive Pauling Legacy Award and Speak in Portland, May 5, 2008.
March 27, 2008Dr. Roderick MacKinnon, winner of the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, will speak in Portland on Monday, May 5th. The lecture, entitled “Ion Channel Chemistry: The Electrical System of Life,” will be held at the Portland Hilton & Executive Tower at 8:00 PM. The event is free and open to the public. Seats may be reserved ahead of time.
Dr. MacKinnon is visiting Oregon to receive the Linus Pauling Legacy Award, presented by the Oregon State University Libraries. This award is granted once every two years to an outstanding individual in an area of study that Linus Pauling researched. Past recipients of the award include Daisaku Ikeda, founder of Soka Gakkai International; Nobel laureate physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat; Harvard University biologist Matthew Meselson; and esteemed chemist John D. Roberts.
A biophysicist and self-taught X-ray crystallographer, Dr. MacKinnon of Rockefeller University won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in ion channel imaging. His research focuses on the physical and chemical processes that produce electricity in cells, and the passage of inorganic ions (such as potassium and chloride) across cell membranes. In 1998, MacKinnon became the first scientist ever to capture a three-dimensional image of a potassium ion channel, thus solving the mystery of its structure. His achievements have advanced the fields of both biology and medicine.
Dr. MacKinnon received his B.A. in biochemistry from Brandeis University and his M.D. from Tufts University School of Medicine. He completed medical residency at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston before returning to Brandeis for postdoctoral studies. He joined the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1989 and in 1996 moved to Rockefeller University as a professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Biophysics.
In addition to the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Dr. MacKinnon is the recipient of numerous scientific awards, including the 2003 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the 2001 Gairdner Foundation International Award, the 2001 Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize, the 2000 Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award for Distinguished Work in Basic Medical Research and the 1999 Albert Lasker Basic Medical Research Award.
For more information, see our Special Events section at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2008legacyaward/index.html
A New Blog Devoted to the Life and Work of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling
March 13, 2008The Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections is pleased to announce the launch of its latest online venture, the PaulingBlog, available at http://paulingblog.wordpress.com.
The primary aim of the PaulingBlog is to present the stories of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's fascinating lives in a format that is accessible to a wide range of audiences. Drawing upon the seven major web portals developed by the OSU Special Collections since 2001, the PaulingBlog will highlight stories of interest that might otherwise go unnoticed by many users. The PaulingBlog will also be used to share news from within the OSU Libraries Special Collections -- be it upcoming events, new projects soon to be released or extra insight into projects already completed.
The PaulingBlog features full RSS compatibility and welcomes user comments.
In tandem with the development of the PaulingBlog, a new Flickr photo-sharing site has also been created to provide a visual glimpse of the OSU Libraries Special Collections and its holdings. A direct link to these images is as follows: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24628174@N04.
Expanded "Nature of the Chemical Bond" Website Launched in Celebration of Pauling Birthday
February 28, 2008A revised and dramatically expanded version of the website "Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History" is being released by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections in celebration of the 107th anniversary of Linus Pauling's birth.
Originally launched in December 2004, "Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond" examines the groundbreaking structural chemistry research conducted by Pauling from 1926-1939. By applying the new physics discipline of quantum mechanics to the study of structural chemistry, Pauling revolutionized the science world’s understanding of how atoms join together to form molecules. In 1954 the Nobel Foundation recognized the importance of these breakthroughs by awarding Pauling the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Today, Pauling’s work remains the foundation of contemporary structural chemistry, and his 1939 book The Nature of the Chemical Bond stands among the most frequently-cited scientific publications of the twentieth century.
The heart of "Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond" is a forty-nine chapter narrative, written by Pauling biographer Tom Hager, which details Pauling’s many vital contributions to the study of atoms and molecules. Amplifying the narrative are over 2,500 pages of digitized letters and manuscripts, nearly 100 photographs and drawings, and more than four hours of audio and video materials. In addition, the entirety of Pauling’s personal and professional activities for the years 1930-1939, and for his Nobel chemistry year of 1954, are detailed in calendar form through the unique and growing "Linus Pauling Day-By-Day" project.
New additions to and highlights of the expanded "Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond" website include:
Fully-transcribed video of three complete lectures titled "Valence and Molecular Structure," delivered by Pauling for the National Science Foundation in 1957; annotated, pre-publication proof sheets of the 1927 paper in which Nobel laureate physicist Werner Heisenberg first proposed his famous "uncertainty principle"; and twelve stunning pastel drawings of chemical structures created by the renowned artist and illustrator Roger Hayward.
Also included are four humorous audio clips of a stage production titled "The Road to Stockholm: The Appalling Life of Dr. Linus Pauling," presented by Pauling’s scientific colleagues at the California Institute of Technology just prior to his receipt of the Nobel chemistry prize; over nine-hundred pages of lecture notes used by Pauling to instruct his students and his peers on emerging topics in quantum mechanics and structural chemistry; and correspondence with many of the great scientists of the early twentieth century, including Sir William Lawrence Bragg, A.A. Noyes, John C. Slater and Arnold Sommerfeld.
The website is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/bond/index.html
OSU Libraries Special Collections Seeks Applicants for Resident Scholar Program
January 24, 2008Research grants are being made available to scholars interested in conducting work in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at OSU Libraries Special Collections. Stipends of $2,500 per month renewable for up to three months (for a total maximum grant award of $7,500) will be made available to researchers in the history of science whose proposals detail a compelling potential use of the materials held in the vast Pauling archive. Grant monies can be used for any purpose.
Researchers will be expected to conduct their scholarly activities while in residence at the OSU Libraries Special Collections. Historians, librarians, doctoral or post-doctoral students and independent scholars are welcome to apply. The deadline for applying for Resident Scholar Program support is April 10, 2008.
Detailed information outlining the qualifications necessary for application, the selection process and the conditions under which awards will be made is available at the following PDF: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/residentscholar.pdf
The Resident Scholar Program is generously supported by the Peter and Judith Freeman Fund.
Video and transcriptions now available from “The Scientist as Educator and Public Citizen: Linus Pauling and His Era” Conference, Oct. 29-30, 2007
January 16, 2008More than nine hours of fully-transcribed video from a recent major conference on Linus Pauling are now available via the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections website.
In late October 2007, OSU served as host to a two-day public conference titled "The Scientist as Educator and Public Citizen: Linus Pauling and His Era." Featuring presentations by fifteen major scholars from across the United States and Europe -- including 1986 Nobel chemistry laureate Dr. Dudley Herschbach -- the conference focused upon Linus Pauling's revolutionary impact on two decidedly different fields: textbook writing and public advocacy for science and peace.
The filmed proceedings of this conference have since been completely transcribed, and freely-accessible video of each presentation is now available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2007paulingconference/index.html
New Website Launched: "Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement: A Documentary History"
November 29, 2007Linus and Ava Helen Pauling’s legacy of peace activism is detailed in a major new website released today by the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections. Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement, the fourth in a series of documentary history websites created by the OSU Libraries Special Collections, utilizes over five-hundred digitized archival documents and nearly ninety-minutes of audio and video footage to illustrate the story of the Paulings’ life-long peace crusade.
The recipient of the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize, Linus Pauling (1901-1994) will forever be known as a courageous champion of peace and civil liberties. Alarmed by the use of atomic weapons at the end of World War II, Pauling, and his wife Ava Helen, spent countless hours over the next five decades raising their voices in protest against the dangers of radioactive fallout, weapons proliferation and the cultural effects of Cold War hysteria. Their efforts earned the Paulings both acclaim and enmity, though not always in equal measure. To some, the legacy of the Paulings’ peace work remains controversial, but few will deny the duo’s wide-ranging historical importance.
The centerpiece of Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement is a richly-illustrated, fifty-three chapter narrative, written by Pauling biographer Thomas Hager. Over five-hundred archival documents and more than fifty audio and video clips provide deeper context for the events and ideas discussed in this narrative. In addition, the complete details of the Paulings’ personal and professional activities for the years 1950 and 1951 are exhaustively chronicled in the unique Linus Pauling Day-by-Day calendar.
Highlights of Linus Pauling and the International Peace Movement include:
Selections from the famous United Nations Bomb Test Petition, circulated by the Paulings from 1957-1958, and bearing the signatures of over 9,000 scientists from fifty countries, demanding an end to above-ground nuclear weapons testing; A travel diary kept by Ava Helen which recounts the sites and sounds of life at Albert Schweitzer’s medical compound in central Africa; Correspondence between the Paulings and a host of notable figures including leaders of nations, (U.S. Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson; Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev; North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh) social activists, (Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Jr.) and fellow scientists engaged in the peace movement (J.D. Bernal, Dorothy Hodgkin); and over seventy photographs of the Paulings and their activist colleagues.
Visit the site at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/peace/index.html
“The Scientist as Educator and Public Citizen: Linus Pauling and His Era” 2-day Public Conference, Oct. 29-30, 2007
August 30, 2007Fourteen prominent scientists, historians, and educators from the United States and abroad will be speaking at the OSU campus LaSells Stewart Center, October 29-30, at a two-day conference on “The Scientist as Educator and Public Citizen: Linus Pauling and His Era.” Among the speakers are 1986 Chemistry Nobel laureate Dudley Herschbach, climate research scientist Warren Washington, science documentary writer and producer Steve Lyons, award-winning science educator Bassam Shakhashiri, former British Museum director Robert Anderson, and OSU scientists ecologist Jane Lubchenco and physicist Kenneth Krane.
As explained by conference co-organizers Horning Professor of the Humanities Mary Jo Nye and Head of OSU Special Collections Clifford Mead, the conference marks the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the publication of Linus Pauling’s General Chemistry textbook and the 50th anniversary of Pauling’s first public appeal for a ban on nuclear-weapons testing. Linus Pauling, a 1922 graduate of Oregon Agricultural College, received the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize. The conference is sponsored by the Oregon State University Horning Endowment in the Humanities, in collaboration with the History Department, and by the Valley Library’s Special Collections, which houses the papers of Ava Helen and Linus Pauling.
The Conference Schedule, Abstracts and a video clip of Linus Pauling lecturing in 1957 can be found at the conference website: http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/events/2007paulingconference/index.html
This conference is free and open to the public.
Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture on World Peace, Dr. Grace Lee Boggs, November 1, 2007
August 29, 2007The Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture on World Peace Committee is delighted to announce that our Distinguished Lecturer for 2007 will be Dr. Grace Lee Boggs. Dr. Boggs is a Chinese-American, whose husband of forty years was James “Jimmy” Boggs, the noted Afro-American labor and civil rights advocate. As activists, singly and together, they played a prominent role in the Labor, Feminist, and Civil Rights Movements for the greater part of the past century. As intellectuals, again both individually and in concert, they authored countless articles and essays as well as such important books as Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (1974), Women and the Movement to Build a New America (1977), and Conversations in Maine: Exploring Our Nation’s Future (1978).
It is entirely possible, however, that you might never have heard of Dr. Boggs (unless you are from Michigan), for she has personified Rene Dubos’s useful dictum: “Think globally, act locally.”
Dr. Boggs, who received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1935 and her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr in 1940, celebrated her 92nd birthday this June. In her interview on Bill Moyers Journal that month, she was a paragon of acuity, wisdom, tranquility, and loving kindness. As a tireless champion of equal rights for women, racial minorities, and workers, she has repeatedly demonstrated the depth of her commitment to justice, nonviolence, and human rights. Understandably, she declines most invitations to speak that involve traveling, but her friendship with Linus Pauling compelled her to accept ours.
Grace Lee Boggs’s lecture is November 1, 2007, at 7:30 p.m. at the LaSells Stewart Center, and is free an open to the public. See more Event Information. This marks the 25th year of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Memorial Lecture on World Peace.
Pauling Catalogue Reviewed
August 28, 2007A review of The Pauling Catalogue has been published in The Chemical Educator (Vol. 12, No. 4; online publication date of August 4, 2007). The article, written by George B. Kauffman, professor of chemistry at California State University, Fresno, is the first of several reviews of the six-volume reference work soon to appear in print.
In evaluating the nearly 1,800 pages of The Pauling Catalogue, Kauffman concludes that the work:
"...constitutes an invaluable resource for historians of science and chemistry, scholars of science policy, and advocates of the peace movement, along with practicing chemists and scientists interested in the history of their fields, especially during the 20th century. It belongs in every academic library."
The full text of Kauffman's article is available here: http://chemeducator.org/bibs/0012004/12070296mr.htm
The Pauling Catalogue is available for purchase at http://paulingcatalogue.org
Ann Malamud (1917-2007)
March 27, 2007Ann DeChiara Malamud, for forty-one years the wife of novelist Bernard Malamud, died on March 20, 2007 at the age of 89.
In 1949, after four years of marriage, Bernard and Ann Malamud, along with their young son Paul, moved from their native New York City to Corvallis, Oregon, where Bernard would join the English faculty at Oregon State College. The family remained in Oregon for twelve years, a time during which Bernard would compose much of his best-known work including the The Magic Barrel, for which he won the National Book Award in 1959. Likewise, it was in Corvallis where Ann Malamud gave birth to the family’s second child, a daughter named Janna, born in 1951.
In her memoir My Father is a Book, published in 2006, Janna Malamud Smith recounted memories of her mother’s experiences in the Pacific Northwest:
“Much about Corvallis life suited my mother. Her friends were always proposing outings or dropping by or phoning for long talks. She’d drive us to the town swimming pool or to friends’ houses; Paul to Cub Scouts, art classes, and cello lessons; me to Brownies and ballet. She liked reading and hunting for old furniture to refinish. She baked often – bread, cookies, cakes. She sometimes volunteered for the local Democratic Party and for the League of Women Voters. One winter she took a painting class and completed a self-portrait in oils. She read aloud a lot when we were little, and her multivoiced rendition of Winnie-the-Pooh delighted her and us; I giggled over Piglet’s and Roo’s squeaky concerns. After we bought a television in 1959, she, my brother, and I would watch The Phil Silvers Show (‘Sergeant Bilko’) and laugh ourselves silly. If she was restless for the East, it didn’t show.”
In 1997 the OSU Libraries Special Collections began the process of building the Bernard Malamud Papers at Oregon State University. One of three such collections nationwide, the OSU Malamud archive contains a substantial trove of correspondence, newspaper clippings, manuscript materials and administrative records related to the Malamud family’s life, work and residence in Oregon. Included among these holdings are a number of items written by Ann Malamud.
Additional information on the Malamud collection is available at http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/malamud/index.html
A complete obituary of Ann Malamud can be found at http://gazettetimes.com/articles/2007/03/27/news/obituaries/6obi03_malamud.prt
Happy Birthday Linus Pauling!
February 28, 2007February 28, 2007 marks the 106th anniversary of Dr. Linus Pauling’s birth. Pauling, who died in 1994, lived a long and remarkably fruitful life that touched upon many of the twentieth century’s most significant themes.
One-hundred years ago: In 1907 Linus Pauling, a shy but precocious six-year old, lived in the northeast Oregon farming hamlet of Condon. Pauling’s father, Herman, had opened the little town’s only drugstore two years earlier, in the process relocating his wife and three children from their residence in Portland.
Seventy-five years ago: In 1932 Pauling was establishing himself as a scientist of international renown due to his path-breaking research on the structure of molecules. Two papers written by Pauling in 1932 on the nature of the chemical bond would contribute to a body of work that culminated in Pauling’s receipt of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954.
Fifty years ago: On May 15, 1957 Pauling delivered a speech at Washington University on the health effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests. During the talk, Pauling declared that no human should be sacrificed to any nation’s program of perfecting nuclear weapons. Pauling’s ideas were well-received, so much so that Linus and Ava Helen Pauling were encouraged to compose a petition advocating against above-ground nuclear weapons tests. This petition was eventually signed by over nine-thousand international scientists and would result in Pauling’s receipt of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Peace.
Twenty-five years ago: By 1982 Pauling had become popularly known for his advocacy of the health benefits of vitamin C. At the age of 81, energetic as ever, Pauling traveled widely – across the United States, Canada, Europe and even Venezuela – delivering a total of fifty speeches, most of them on vitamin C.
The completed six-volume Pauling Catalogue, which details all aspects of Pauling's remarkable life, is available for sale at http://paulingcatalogue.org.
Pauling Catalogue Available for Sale.
January 30, 2007The six-volume and nearly 1,800 page Pauling Catalogue is now available for sale. Purchase of this ground-breaking reference work may be made online through a secure credit card transaction at http://paulingcatalogue.org or through the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections offices at 541-737-2075 or special.collections@oregonstate.edu
The product of nearly twenty years of work, The Pauling Catalogue describes in great detail the approximately 500,000 items that comprise the OSU Libraries Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. Richly illustrated with over 1,200 images, The Pauling Catalogue also includes six introductions written by noted historians of science and members of the Pauling family. A forty-five page illustrated timeline provides ample background information on the extraordinary lives led by Linus Pauling and his wife of nearly sixty years, Ava Helen. Likewise, an extensive reproduction of Linus Pauling’s 1917 personal diary affords a revealing glimpse into the personality of a scientific genius as he begins his higher education.
The Pauling Catalogue retails for $125.00 plus $15.00 shipping and handling. Sample pages, ordering information and additional details are available at http://paulingcatalogue.org
RSS News Feeds now available on our website.
December 22, 2006Special Collections now offers "Really Simple Syndication" (RSS) news feeds, in both RSS 2.0 and Atom 1.0 format. RSS feeds are free content that contain headlines, summaries, or full articles announcing our newest projects. When you subscribe to a news feed using a feed reader program, you get updates every time a new story or article is posted. It's an easy way to stay current with your favorite sites without having to check them all the time.
You can subscribe to RSS news feeds using a variety of programs, including modern web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer 7, etc.), a web-based reader (Bloglines, Google Reader, etc.), or a software program (FeedDemon, Awasu, etc.).
For more information on available feed readers, visit Wikipedia's Web Feed article.
17 video clips posted to Pauling Sickle Cell Anemia site.
October 200617 video clips have been added to our website It's in the Blood, A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia. Full transcripts are available.
Take a look at the videos: Video Clips, Sickle Cell Anemia site.
Linus Pauling Day-By-Day pages for 1940-1949 now available.
August 2006We've completed the initial work on the Linus Pauling Day-By-Day site for the years 1940-1949. Now online is 1930-1949, and 1952-1954. Each week through the 1940s has an image of a letter, photograph or document, all of which can be viewed at a larger size.
Check out the new years available: Linus Pauling Day-By-Day, 1940s.
Professor John D. Roberts to receive 2006 Pauling Legacy Award on May 4, 2006.
April 2006Professor John D. Roberts, Chemistry Professor Emeritus at the California Institute of Technology, has been selected as the recipient of the 2006 Pauling Legacy Award, to be conferred on May 4, 2006 at Oregon State University.
Professor Roberts was selected for this award because he is the person most responsible for the idea of “reaction mechanism” in American chemistry–that is, that chemists should understand how a reaction occurs, as well as what its products are and how to use it in synthesis. The concept of “mechanism” has, of course, provided to be an immensely durable one, and one that has given U.S. chemistry a compelling advantage over much of the rest of the world for 50 years.
In addition, Roberts’ work in NMR spectroscopy has been especially influential. He was a real pioneer with enormous influence in the broad field of NMR spectroscopy for organic chemistry. He was the first person to use fast-exchange methods for complex organic systems. He was the first to use 13C NMR, and the first to use 15N spectroscopy, and especially 15N spectroscopy for biological systems. His studies of protease structure and action using 15N NMR spectroscopy remains a great classic of biochemical research, an accomplishment that clearly pointed the way to the enormously more sophisticated methods now being employed as mainstays of the field using high-field spectrometers. His overall program in NMR spectroscopy–and especially heavy-atom NMR spectroscopy–was years ahead of its time in ambition and sophistication.
The title of Professor Roberts’ Pauling Legacy Award Lecture is “Useful Knowledge about Magnetic Resonance Imaging.”
The lecture will be presented in the Austin Auditorium at the LaSells Stewart Center at 4:30pm and is free and open to the public.
Major Advance on DNA Structure Published.
May 2005Oregon State University researchers have made significant new advances in determining the structure of all possible DNA sequences -- a discovery that in one sense takes up where Watson and Crick left off, after outlining in 1953 the double-helical structure of this biological blueprint for life. One of the fundamental problems in biochemistry is to predict the structure of a molecule from its sequence -- this has been referred to as the "Holy Grail" of protein chemistry. Today, the OSU scientists announced in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have used X-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of nearly all the possible sequences of a macromolecule, and thereby create a map of DNA structure. View the Website.
Diet and Optimum Health Conference May 18-21, 2005.
April 2005The Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University will hold its third international conference on "Diet and Optimum Health" on May 18-21, 2005, at the Portland Hilton & Executive Tower in Portland, Oregon. The Conference is co-sponsored by the Oxygen Club of California, Oregon Health & Science University and Oregon Public Broadcasting. View the Website.
Pauling, Sickle-Cell Anemia and Molecular Disease website launched.
March 2005Our newest website, It's in the Blood! A Documentary History of Linus Pauling, Hemoglobin and Sickle Cell Anemia, launched in March to commemorate the anniversary of Pauling's birthday on February 28. Linus Pauling began his professional life studying atoms, and ended it best known for his thoughts on medicine. Linking these two fields was a central body of work on the nature of human blood. During the most productive thirty years of his life, between the mid-1930s and mid-1960s, Pauling's research in this area not only advanced our understanding of how the blood works at the molecular level, but branched and blossomed into vital discoveries about immunology, sickle-cell anemia, genetics, evolution, and human health. Incorporating more than 300 scanned documents, photographs, audio clips and video excerpts, this web resource includes images of a number of very important and extremely rare items, most of which are held within The Valley Library's Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, many of which have not been previously displayed. The site is designed to serve as both an introduction to an important body of work and as a reference tool for students, teachers, physicians, scientists, and members of the general public interested in the history of modern medicine. View the Website.
Linus Pauling and the Chemical Bond website launched.
December 2004Linus Pauling and the Nature of the Chemical Bond: A Documentary History was launched in commemoration of December 10, the day of Linus Pauling's receipt of the 1954 Nobel prize for chemistry. This new website contains three large sub-sections: a forty-nine page Narrative that recounts the early years of chemical bond investigation and Pauling's research; access to hundreds of primary source materials, including letters, manuscripts, photographs, audio-visual materials and published papers; and a comprehensive account of all of Pauling's personal and professional endeavors in the years 1930 through 1939, when he was writing these seminal papers, and 1954, when he was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry for these efforts. View the Website.
Professor Matthew Meselson coming to OSU in May.
April 2004Professor Matthew Meselson, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences, Harvard University, will be visiting OSU on May 4th and 5th to deliver the Pauling Peace Lecture, participate in a roundtable discussion and to receive the Pauling Legacy Award.
The 2004 Pauling Peace Lecture, titled, "Averting the Hostile Exploitation of Biology," will be given on May 4th at 7:00 PM in the LaSells Stewart Center. This event is open to the public. Meselson has crusaded against the dangers of chemical and biological weapons for over forty years. An influential voice in U.S. weapons policy, Meselson has likewise conducted pioneering experiments measuring the after-effects of Soviet chemical and biological weapons tests conducted in secret throughout the 1970's.
As part of his time here in Corvallis, Dr. Meselson has agreed to take part in a round-table discussion that will feature Meselson and Professor Frank Stahl of the University of Oregon reflecting upon their pioneering DNA replication experiment, conducted in 1957. Meselson and Stahl’s breakthrough has since been dubbed the "most beautiful experiment in biology," and was revisited by Frederic Lawrence Holmes in his 2001 book Meselson, Stahl and the Replication of DNA. Horning Professor Dr. Mary Jo Nye, of the OSU History of Science department, and two OSU Biochemistry/Biophysics Distinguished Professors Emeritus, Dr. Chris Mathews and Dr. Ken VanHolde, will be members of the round-table, and will help moderate the discussion. The round-table is scheduled to take place on May 5th at 2:00 PM in the LaSells Stewart Center, Austin Auditorium. The event is open to the public.
The evening of May 5th, Meselson will be the third recipient of the Pauling Legacy Award. This award was established in the year 2001 in honor of Linus Pauling (1991-1994) and dedicated to recognition of outstanding achievement by an individual or organization in a subject of interest to Linus Pauling. The 2001 award was presented to Daisaku Ikeda, President of Soka Gakkai International; the 2003 award was presented to Nobel Laureate Sir Joseph Rotblat, Professor Emeritus of the University of London.
Please contact Special Collections at 541-737-2075 or special.collections@oregonstate.edu if you have questions or if you need further information.
New Pauling Honors, Medals and Awards website launched.
February 2004Linus Pauling's Honors, Medals and Awards was launched in commemoration of February 28, Linus Pauling's birthday. This new website features several hundred digital images of the many different medals, awards, honorary doctorates and other honors that Pauling received during his lifetime. View the Website.
Pauline Pauling Emmett dies at 101.
October 2003Pauline Pauling Emmett, sister to Linus Pauling and wife to Paul Emmett, passed away October 19th. A short obituary is available here.
New site design goes live.
September 2003Our website has been completely redesigned. Frames have been removed, more images have been included, new collections have been added and more content is online and up-to-date than ever before. In addition, Google's Site Search has been integrated as our search engine to provide you with some of the best search technology available, all while being optimized for our site. If you have any questions or problems with the new design please let us know.
New collections acquired and catalogued.
July 2003Three new collections have recently been catalogued. These include the Ewan Cameron Papers, the Fritz Marti Papers, and the Canine Research Collection.
Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History
February 2003This site was launched in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA. Highlights of the site include the famous x-ray photograph by Rosalind Franklin, multimedia content and original papers and documents. Read an Introduction to the site's three main sections, or start browsing away. http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/dna/index.html
Pauling Research Notebooks posted online.
February 2002As with many scientists, Linus Pauling utilized bound notebooks to keep track of the details of his research as it unfolded. A testament to the remarkable length and diversity of Dr. Pauling's career, the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers holdings include forty-six research notebooks spanning the years of 1922 to 1994 and covering any number of the scientific fields in which Dr. Pauling involved himself. In this regard, the notebooks contain many of Pauling's laboratory calculations and experimental data, as well as scientific conclusions, ideas for further research and numerous autobiographical musings. http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/rnb/index.html
3 incunabula donated.
July 2001The Valley Library's Special Collections recently received a donation of three incunabula (books printed before 1501) from Oregon State alumnus Mary Louise Gilfillan Simon. Simon, the daughter of former OSU dean, Francois Gilfillan, presented the books to Cliff Mead, head of Special Collections, during Alumni Weekend on June 1, 2001. Of the three books donated, Lilium medicinae, by Bernard de Gordon, (ca.1260-ca.1318) is by far the scarcest item in the donation. This is the first French edition and it had widespread circulation among European physicians due to the comprehensiveness of its subject matter, the orderly arrangement of its topics, lucid style, and, above all, by its practical usefulness to its readers (medical books being the most practical of books for the time period). It is one of only three known copies to exist in the United States, the other two being held at Yale University's Cushing/Whitney Medical Library and the Philadelphia College of Physicians library. Boethius' De consolatione philosophiae (Venice, 1491) was written by one of the most popular and widely read thinkers of the medieval period. This book was considered the second most popular text next to the Vulgate Bible during the middle ages. It was translated into Old English by King Alfred, into Old French by Jean de Meun, into Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer and into Elizabethan English by Queen Elizabeth I. Werner Rolevinck's Fasciculus temporum (Venice, Erhard Ratdolt, 1480) is a well-known illustrated book of the 15th century and one of the most read world chronicles of its time. It is also the earliest chronological work to be printed. The demand for the book was so strong it appeared in at least 33 editions and was translated into German, French and Dutch. In fact, the Fasciculus temporum could be called the world's first "best seller". The various editions were amended in the localities that they were printed at to bring them up to date or to add items of local interest or history. This edition ends with an account of the siege of the city of Rhodes by the Turks in 1480.
Pauling Centenary Exhibit posted online.
June 2001Linus Pauling: A Centenary Exhibit can now be viewed on the Web at http://pauling.library.oregonstate.edu/exhibit/index.htm. The exhibit was prepared by the staff of Special Collections and University Archives units of the Oregon State University Libraries. Materials are from the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers held by Special Collections and various photographic collections in the University Archives. This exhibit was originally on display in the Memorial Union at Oregon State University from January 22 to March 5, 2001.