Chemistry
Linus Pauling
Chemist, the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes
Born 1901 · Died 1994
Photo: Nobel Foundation · Public domain
«The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.»
Linus Pauling worked out how chemical bonds actually hold molecules together, applying quantum mechanics to chemistry for the first time. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962 for his campaign against nuclear weapons testing.
Key achievements
- Nobel Prize in Chemistry, 1954, on the chemical bond
- Nobel Peace Prize, 1962, against nuclear weapons testing
- Only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes
Universities
Pasadena, California
Took his PhD in physical chemistry in 1925 and then taught at Caltech for more than four decades.
Facts
- He discovered the alpha helix, one of the basic shapes protein chains fold into, while lying in bed with a cold and folding a paper strip to see what would fit.
- He narrowly missed the structure of DNA: his 1953 model put the phosphates on the inside and was wrong, and Watson and Crick beat him by weeks.
- The US government withheld his passport in 1952 over his political activity, which is part of why he was not in London to see the crucial X-ray images of DNA.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.