LINUS PAULING A TRUE AMERICAN AND WORLD CLASS GENIUS

Linus Pauling, born in Condon Oregon in 1901, became one of the great scientists of history. He ranks with Einstein, Niels Bohr, Frances Crick, Enrico Fermi and so on. His reach into many scientific segments is legendary. We know him for many things…sickle cell anemia, molecular biology, discovery of the alpah helix, low temperature super conductivity, vitamin C studies. The list seems endless.
He was recognized world-wide with two Nobel prizes. The first was in 1954 for Chemistry. The second was the Nobel Peace prize. How diverse can you get! This second prize was for his activism on the world stage and for organizing the Oslo Peace Conference in 1961 against nuclear weapons. Ironically he had been called to contribute to the Mnahattan project in the early 1940’s.
Pauling spent all of his life challenging scientific orthodoxy with his customary surge of intellectual power. Before he was even 30 years old he was ranked among the great scientists of the world. He was often controversial even amongst his scientific peers.
But he persisted where others would have withered. We see his contributions everywhere today in basic research and real advances in so many of the sciences. Where would we be now without his inspirations for more than 60 years of the 20th century.