And now his fame is wide and everyone who knew him well shares a little pride. Ain't he a genius

Before we get to this week's person of the week, sorry for the weird rant yesterday. I wasn't upset about anything. Just tired and started typing without a game plan. I haven't reread it, I'm 99% sure I stand by what I said regardless.

The person of the week this week is Linus Pauling. Sure I just heard of him for the first time in my life the other day, but he is still a certified badass. So badass that after he won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1954 he was quoted as saying "I'll kill anyone who gets in my way of winning that peace thing too."* In 1965 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

*This quote is neither humorous or true.

If you have taken basic chemistry you know why Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Remember when you had to draw the structures of small molecules with balloon looking things? Well Pauling came up with the concept of orbital hybridization, the idea of the sp³ hybrid orbitals being the true mark of genius. At this time he also developed the idea of electronegativity of bonds and its relation to ionicity. He also first adequately and fully described aromatic rings developing the idea now known as resonence. Basically, three ideas that are integral to our understanding of bonding.

He was not near finished. He went on to develop a model of the nucleus that is so counter to standard models that it has been largely ignored by mainstream nuclear theorists. However, it was described in 2006 in a review of nuclear models by Norman D. Cook as a model which " leads to a rather common-sense molecular build-up of nuclei and has an internal logic that is hard to deny." So, to this day his model, which seems like it makes a lot of sense to people, has not been elaborated on. It also has not been disproven. It has more or less not been seriously challenged and ignored. Maybe one day that will be taught first day of chemistry too.

He was not done there either. When studying amino acids and peptides Pauling came up with the fact peptide bonds can form an alpha helix or a beta sheet. These peptides then foldon each other and are proteins. Kind of important. You may see the term "alpha helix" and think of DNA. Well Pauling then hyposthesized DNA was also an alpha helix. Sadly he, like all the rest of that time, made a few errors in what made up DNA. Though he was rather close. He was supposed to look at X-Ray diffraction pictures of DNA taken by Rosalind Franklin on a trip to England in 1952, but his passport was revoked due to McCarthyism and rumors of Communism. Of course Watson and Crick would use Franklin's pictures before they were publsihed (some say stole her research without asking) in order to beat Pauling and proposed the correct DNA structure in 1953. If Pauling had been able to travel there is a good chance he would have beaten Watson and Crick to the DNA model and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine that they won in 1962.

Basically ... he makes Watson and Crick look like high school jocks in chemistry class. That and Watson followed up his illustrious career by spearheading amzing cancer research, helping start the human genome, and always finding controversy whether in his autobiography or in interviews and speeches while Paulson won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. Suck on that Watson.

(I'm sure the 1962 Nobel Prize Ceremony wasn't awkward at all... Watson, Crick, and Franklin's lab partner taking the prize for a discovery they had beat out Pauling for and involved using Franklin's unpubished work and not giving her credit at the time. Franklin was not awarded the Prize with the group because she had passed away and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously. Then Pauling is there thinking, well you can have that one ... it is basically mine anyway, all I did was make everyone in the world healthier and part of me winning this kept me from beating you and you snuck around to beat me. I own you all)

Oh and he won the prize for his successful advocacy and work in getting above ground nuclear weapons tests banned. He had been offered a job as head of chemistry on the Manhattan Porject .. whcih built the first nuclea weapons ... during World War II but declined so as not to move his family. He did work for the war effort. In 1946 he joined Albert Einstein in raising awareness of the dangers of these type of weapons. This activism led to his passport being revoked. Though he got 11,000 scientists to sign a petition to the UN to stop above ground testing, and a treat was signed between the USA and USSR in 1963, his views were not weel received. His own school, Cal Tech, did not even formally congratulate him afterwards. Many viewed him as a naive spokesperson for the communists in Russia and Time magazing called his Nobel Peace Prize win "A Weird Insult from Norway". Needless to say, the Cold War was an interesting time to not fall in with the status quo in America.

Oh and in 1941 Pauling was diagnosed with a serious form of Bright's disease which was thought to be untreatable. Dr. Thomas Addis gave him a low-protein, salt free diet that allowed him to manage his disease. Dr. Addis also gave him vitamins and minerals. Pauling then went on the study vitamins, especially vitamin C. He controversialy claimed high doses of vitamin C could prevent colds and, when given as IV, was a good cancer treatment. The Mayo clinic failed to replicate his studies because they did not use IV vitamin C. This controversy and his "communistic" work winning a Nobel Peace Prize led Pauling to lose most of his funding. Oh, and he turned out to be completely right about vitamin C and the Mayo Clinic set the vitamin C movement back at least a decade.

He also discovered sickle cell anemia was a molecular disease.

He died at age 93 in 1994. He is considered one of the top 20 scientists of all time. He was one of two people from the 20th century on that list. The other was Albert Einstein. In summary, Linus Pauling was smarter than you. He was more creative than you. He was a better human being than you. I am pretty sure he wrote the song "Anything you can do I can do better" in a playful discussion in his head that he was able to telepathically deliver to some random song writer miles away.

The thing that amazes me the most is most times when scientific discoveries occur there is a race. Tons of people are on the same track. Someone barely gets there first. In the old days, people would independantly publish the same principle, idea, or system of math and not know the other person published or was working on the idea (see Calculus and evolution). The things Pauling did amazed other scientists. No one bats 1000%, but even his messups contain information that no one had thought of before and is considered valid and part of modern theory. For most discoverers or inventors, I imagine if they had never been born their discovery would be pushed back a decade at best. For Pauling it may be that we still wouldn't have some of the information his mind was able to perceive.