Linus Pauling Research Paper

Chemist, Humanitarian, and Two-Time Nobel

Prize Champion: Linus Carl Pauling

Linus Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon in 1901. In his adult life he became and internationally admired scientist, an educator, humanitarian and political activist. Through the study of chemical bonding and its application to the clarification of the structure of complex substances, he won the Nobel Prize in 1954. One Nobel Prize wasn’t enough for Pauling, and in 1962, he won the Nobel Peace Prize for the prohibition of nuclear clearing. Acquiring these two Nobel Prizes made Pauling the first scientist to receive two awards without having to share them. Pauling continued on his scientific journey, leading to the discovery of Sickle cell anemia; which helped create

This model said that chemical bonds form when the hook on one atom connects with the eye on another atom. For Pauling this method raised more questions than it answered and as he searched for answered he made many contributions to the understanding of chemical bonds. He began his research with nonliving compounds, but soon veered towards the structure of molecules. He took particular interest in the rules that govern these molecular structures. During his investigations he developed an electronegativity scale, which represented the power of attraction presented by a particular atom during a covenant bond (). This discovery opened the door to quantum mechanics for Pauling. He used quantum mechanics to help him calculate the strength of the four bonds surrounding a carbon. Ultimately he developed the valence bond theory in which he suggested that a molecule could be described by an intermediate structure that was a resonance combination, or hybrid, of other structures (). Pauling put his ideas into a book called The Nature of the Chemical Bond resulted in him being awarded the Langmuir Prize from the American Chemical Society for “the most noteworthy work in pure science done by a man thirty years of age or less”

Proteins are a chain of amino acids, and are found in all living things. Using the methods of x-ray crystallography, he solved the basic structure of proteins. His work with protein lead to the discovery of the Alpha helix, which is formed by hydrogen bonding and twists the protein shape into a spiral. The founding of molecular biology and protein structure sparked an interest in hemoglobin, and in no time Pauling was making discoveries with regards to hemoglobin. Hemoglobin is a protein found in red blood cells and is essential for the transport of oxygen throughout the human body (). Hemoglobin is also the protein that presents abnormal properties in people suffering from sickle cell anemia, a genetic blood disorder. Pauling along with his associated discovered that the change in shape of hemoglobin, making it abnormal, that occurs in people with sickle cell anemia is caused by DNA mutation (). This discovery anticipated a dramatic change in molecular genetics, because it was now clear that the change in shape of a specific protein could lead to human