Linus Pauling Addresses MRS in San Diego
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Professor Linus C. Pauling
Pauling said he was very happy to be speaking at the MRS meeting because he was tired of answering questions about vitamin C... humor that promised that the "Pauling experience" was going to be a lot of fun. As we drove back from the airport, Pauling very politely laid the ground rules for his visit. He said that he was very happy to be speaking at the MRS meeting because he was tired of answering questions about vitamin C and nutrition. He noted that a member of his staff had said, "Now, Professor Pauling, you can get back to what you really enjoy." Because this was true, he told me that he didn't want any "special" treatment; he just wanted to be an ordinary attendee. And indeed he could be seen the next several days wandering from symposium to symposium like any other MRS'er. Having established the ground rules, he then began to reminisce about an earlier
time in San Diego spent with his wife (sister of the late Paul Emmett who was the leading figure in catalysis for many years). I couldn't resist asking one question about vitamin C (Question: why are its remarkable properties not accepted by the medical and drug establishment? Answer: conflict of interest); and one question about my own research (Question: why was it that a recent crystal structure refinement of MoS2 found no significant differences from his original structure done in the 1920s? Answer: it's an easy structure.) As we neared the hotel, Pauling gave me a taste of what he would say at his lecture the next day. First, he asked me, "Will Bobby Huggins be there? (Robert Huggins, MRS Councillor and a speaker at the cold fusion session). Yes, I replied and then he told me that he knew Huggins' father and "Bobby" when he was two years old. Next he said that he wanted to rest because on the previous night he was lying awake at 3:00 in the morning and he "found it difficult to just lie there without thinking about something." So he said that he began to think about cold fusion, which puzzled him. After thinking for several hours he had the answer, after which he got up and had breakfast. Having completed breakfast, he sent off a paper of about 300 words to Nature on cold fusion. I
MRS BULLETIN/JULY 1989
asked him what the answer was and he smiled as he closed the door to his hotel room and said, "Sorry you'll have to come to the lecture tomorrow at six." The next evening Pauling began his lecture by reviewing his lifelong study of metals. This interest started in 1917 when he was a freshman at Oregon State University at which he attended a course in practical metallurgy, forging a geologist's hammer from a high carbon steel ingot in a coke-fired furnace. By 1922 he had done some of the world's first crystal structures with the newly developing x-ray diffraction techniques, including the first structure of an intermetallic compound. He began to tell the story of the synthesis of this compound but thought better of it saying, "I'd better not go on with that because I'll use up my time. I'll try to move right along, in ord
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