In January 1962, Linus Pauling visited Chile in order to give an address at the Seventh International Summer School at the University of Concepción, and also to accept a certificate of honorary membership in the Chilean Society of Chemistry, one of many such honorary memberships that he received during his lifetime. While

[Part 1 of 5] Throughout his long career as a scientist and peace advocate, Linus Pauling’s work took him all over the world, not excluding Latin America, to which he traveled multiple times. In fact, of the nineteen countries which today constitute Latin America, the only ones which Pauling did not visit were Ecuador

“In my book I say you shouldn’t eat sweet desserts, but I also quote a professor who says that this doesn’t mean that if your hostess has made this wonderful dessert you should turn it down.  My wife used to say I always looked for that hostess.“ -Linus Pauling, 1987. Linus Pauling and John Yudkin [

[Ed Note: This is part one of a two part investigation into contemporary thinking on sugar.  Today's post focuses on recent discussions while part two will provide Linus Pauling's perspective as well as that of an important contemporary.] After watching Robert Lustig’s lecture “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” poste

The 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. Now in its fifth year, the Resident Scholar Program provides research grants to scholars interested in conducting work in

Ryoichi Sasakawa was among the most controversial of Linus Pauling’s many acquaintances.  To this day, opinions on Sasakawa tend to polarize: a politician, successful businessman and generous philanthropist, he was also considered by many to be a war criminal.  Many Japanese also referred to him as “kuromaku,&

A year before being introduced to Fukumi Morishige‘s work, Linus Pauling was paying close attention to research being conducted by another Japanese colleague, Dr. Akira Murata, who was studying the inactivation of viruses by vitamin C.  Over the coming years, Morishige and Murata often worked together on research rel

Dr. Fukumi Morishige, a chief surgeon of the Fukuoka Torikai Hospital for over thirty years, introduced himself to Linus Pauling via letter in 1975.  In this initial outreach, the Japanese physician informed Pauling of his own research on vitamin C, asking to meet with him when Pauling visited Japan later that year. Paulin

Sixteen years passed between Linus Pauling’s participation in the 1959 Hiroshima Conference and his next visit to Japan in Fall 1975.  And while the 1975 trip largely dealt with his findings and research on Vitamin C – a common theme for many of his travels to East Asia and elsewhere – some of his time [.

“As a scientist I am interested in Japan and primarily in the universities…[I am] greatly impressed by the natural and cultural richness of the country… [where] scientific work is of the highest quality…Science of the modern world has been accelerated here by the atom-bomb and radiation…Because

Dr. Chris Hables Gray, professor at the Union Institute and University and lecturer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is the fourth individual this year to complete a term as Resident Scholar in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center.  Dr. Gray is a self-described “anarchist, feminist, post

Linus and Ava Helen Pauling had a few encounters with the Middle East, traveling to Israel on three separate occasions, and to Iran and Uzbekistan once each. In the Fall of 1953, Pauling made his first trip to Israel for the purpose of dedicating the new Weizmann Institute, a large research institution centered in Rehovoth.

Last Friday night a group assembled in the fourth floor rotunda of the Valley Library to celebrate the convergence of two anniversaries: the University Archives turns 50 in 2011, while Special Collections celebrates its 25th birthday. The University Archives was established in 1961 as a component of what was then called the

It is with great pleasure that we announce the release of a revised and expanded version of the website Linus Pauling: Honors, Awards and Medals.   This new iteration of the site includes well over 600 images of nearly all of the 460 awards that Pauling received over the course of his 70+ years in [...]

Exciting news from the laboratories of Oregon State University: a group of researchers here have developed a method that simplifies the scientific understanding of electronegativity, a concept introduced and greatly advanced by Linus Pauling in the 1930s with his “electronegativity scale.”  We’ve written

(Video courtesy of Graham Kislingbury, Mid-Valley Newspapers) We were there when ground was broken in September 2009.  Now, just over two years later, it was our great pleasure to attend the grand opening of the magnificent Linus Pauling Science Center, new home to the Linus Pauling Institute and to components of the Depar

The third Resident Scholar to complete a term working with our collections this year definitely wins the longest-traveled award:  Dr. Graciela de Souza Oliver is Professor of Science and Technology at the Universidade Federal do ABC in Santo André, Brazil, where her research focus is the institutionalization of science, e

The blog has recently acquired an e-reader and is taking the opportunity to re-read Thomas Hager’s excellent 1995 biography, Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling, now available for download.  The Hager biography has long been out of print, so it’s especially good news that this valuable book has re-entere

In the summer of 1981, Linus Pauling participated in the First International Conference on Human Nutrition, which took place in Japan and China. The conference lasted from May 31 to June 8, and was sponsored by the China Medical Association and the Foundation for Nutritional Advancement, the latter of which Pauling was pres

In March 1973, little more than one year after Richard Nixon’s historic visit, Linus Pauling received a letter inviting him to travel to China for three weeks in the coming summer. He was invited by Wu Yu-hsun, Vice President of the Scientific and Technical Association of the People’s Republic of China, who informed

By the 1940s, Linus Pauling’s research interests had expanded to include many subjects generally outside the purview of a typical chemist. In particular, immunology was rapidly becoming a fascination of his – one that would come to devour more and more of his time both in and out of the lab. For Pauling, much of

Ava Helen Pauling’s childhood residence near Beavercreek, Oregon, now known as “The Miller House,” was built around 1907 and constructed so solidly that it still stands, albeit in a different location and with a different paint job than was originally the case. It has survived more than one-hundred years of we

“During the process of production of a fertilized ovum, half of the set of genes of the father and half of the set of genes of the mother, selected by a process that involves randomness, are passed on to the child.  Every child is a reincarnation, not a complete reincarnation of any one individual but [...]

Linus Pauling first made tentative plans to travel to India in 1951, but when he fell ill the proposed trip was called off. Pauling’s next attempt to visit the subcontinent was marked by a long struggle with the United States government to obtain a passport. The Indian Science Congress had invited him to partake in [.

Historian Chris O’Brien of the University of Maine – Farmington is this summer’s second Resident Scholar to complete a tenure in the OSU Libraries Special Collections.  For much of his career, the primary focus of Dr. O’Brien’s research and writing has been the experience of children, ages 6-1

In previous posts on the Pauling Blog, we’ve not only examined Linus Pauling’s role in stopping the atmospheric testing of nuclear bombs, but also the important part that Louise Reiss and the Baby Tooth Survey played. Today we will explore two more of the most crucial players in prompting the signing of the Part

[Part 2 of 2] Scandinavia Once all of the fanfare surrounding the Nobel ceremonies had ended, the Pauling family spent a few days sight-seeing around Sweden, Norway and the Netherlands. As part of this, they were able to experience the traditional Santa Lucia day festival in Stockholm, which takes place on the 13th of Decem

[Part 1 of 2] In 1953 Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited Linus Pauling to attend the Indian Science Congress and dedicate a new scientific research institute. It was a fantastic opportunity that Pauling was eager to seize. Prompted by the invitation, he made plans to set out on a broader world tour in late [...]

Dr. Ina Heumann, a historian of science affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, is the most recent individual to complete a term as Resident Scholar in the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections.  Heumann spent two months in Corvallis studying the Roger Hayward Papers a

[Part 4 of 4 in a series on Vitamin C and the Common Cold] Toward the end of his book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, Linus Pauling included a chapter on human biochemical individuality.  In it, he addressed the fact that every human is different, and as a result, each individual has a unique [...]