Linus Pauling

As you know, Dr. Mallory knew Linus Pauling and there are several amusing stories that Dr. Mallory tells about Linus Pauling including the great one about when Linus came to Dr. Mallory's first colloquium at BMC. Anyway, I am sending you this bio in spite of your vast knowledge in this area in part because of the wonderful opening line. Recently, I was up for reappointment and I had to write a "self-evaluation". While writing this extensive document, I became somewhat reflective as I tried to articulate why I get little satisfaction from administrative-type work and why I love to study, do research and teach chemistry. I wrote the following....

"...... I see just about everything as being rooted in chemistry and every day that I pursue my studies, I know that I understand the world a little better. With each curiosity I resolve, question I answer or peculiar result I explain, I feel that I am chipping away at a giant mystery. I love to teach students because I truly thive on the interaction, which is so vital and stimulating. I also hope to infuse them with enthusiam or at least appreciation of the phenomena that underlie so much of their lives." blah, blah, blah

In other words as Dr. Pauling stated so succinctly, "I wanted to understand the world!"

And wow did he ever achieve that goal!!!! If only the rest of us could accomplish even a fraction of what he did, but if you want to have a day by day increase in your comprehension of the world, science is a great place to be.

The other reason we are thinking about him this week is that in his study of the X-ray structure of proteins such as hemoglobin, he discovered that the amide links between amino acids were completely flat - in other words the nitrogen which would ordinarily be viewed as tetrahedral due to its electron configuration, was assuming planar geometry. Now you know the reason. RESONANCE!!!! The nitrogen with its lone pair is ALLYLIC to the carbonyl in the amide link and it achieves the unexpected organization to take advantage of the benefits of p orbital overlap. Linus Pauling came up with much of the theory we now use to explain bonding in organic molecules such as hybridization and resonance.

There is good, one page bio at......

http://www.accessexcellence.org/AB/BC/Linus_Pauling.html

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