Linus+Pauling

= Linus Pauling, by Alexis Dibenedetto = Linus Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon on February 28, 1901 to Herman Henry William Pauling and Isabelle Darling. He was named Linus Carl because Lucy's father was named Linus and Herman's was named Carl. A year after he was born, they moved to Oswego where his father opened his own drugstore but business was poor so they moved to Codon in 1905. Linus first wanted to become a chemist after he was amazed by the experiments conducted with a small chemistry set with his friend Lloyd A Jeffers. He continued to conduct chemistry experiments in high school. By fall 19016 he was a 15 year old senior and had enough credits to go to Oregon State university. However, he was 2 history credits short of graduating from high school, and when his principal wouldn't let him take both high school and college courses at the same time, he decided to leave without a diploma. In his last 2 years of school, he discovered the work of Gilbert Lewis and Irving Langmuir on the electronic structure of atoms and their bonding to form molecules. He decided to focus on the physical and chemical properties and how they are related to the structures of the atoms when they are composed. Eventually, Pauling became one of the founders of the new science of quantum chemistry.

During the winter of his senior year, he was asked to teach a chemistry course for home economics major. He met his wife Ava Helen Miller in one of these classes. In 1922, he graduated from Oregon Agricultural College with a degree in chemical engineering and went to graduate school at California Institute of Technology (Caltech), and it was here that his research on X-ray diffraction to determine the structure of crystals expanded. He published 7 papers on the crystal structure of minerals and received his PhD in physical chemistry and mathematical physics summa cum laude.

In 1927, he took a position to be an assistant professor in theoretical chemistry at Caltech. He published approximately 50 papers in the next 5 years. He created 5 rules known now as "Pauling's Rules." In 1929 he was promoted to assistant professor and in 1930 full professor. In 1931 he was awarded the Langmuir's Prize for the most significant work in pure science by a person 30 or younger. The next year he published what he thought was his most important paper where he layer out the concept of hybridization of atomic orbitals and analyzed the tetra valency of the carbon atom. He found out that when an atom forms bonds with another atom, the clouds rearrange themselves into hybrid orbitals that cover the nuclei of both. Then he wrote a textbook in 1939 called the Nature of the Chemical Bond. Even today, chemists around the world consider it the greatest chemistry book ever written. He figured out that most proteins come in two shapes -corkscrews and zig-zags. He also studied proteins, like how enzymes work, and what causes sickle cell anaemia. It is because of his efforts that studying the structure of biomolecules is an important part of biology today. He claimed that vitamin C could help prevent and cure a cold or cancer. He was called 'the worlds greatest quack' by Paul Offit and others. However it was proven in 2009 that, if administered intravenously, vitamin c could possibly cure cancer. In 1954 he won a Nobel prize in chemistry, and a Nobel peace prize in 1962. This made him the only person to win 2 unshared novel prizes, one of 4 people to win more than 1, and one of 2 to win Nobel prizes indifferent fields.

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