| 1950 |
• Publishes College Chemistry, a more popular treatment of basic chemistry than his General Chemistry.
• On November 13, testifying before the California Senate Investigating Committee on Education, Pauling explains for over two hours why he objects to loyalty oaths involving inquiry into a person's political beliefs.
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| 1951 |
• On February 28, his fiftieth birthday, Pauling communicates "The Structure of Proteins: Two Hydrogen-Bonded Helical Configurations of the Polypeptide Chain," to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Written with Corey and H.R. Branson, this paper appears in April.
• The USSR Academy of Sciences attacks Pauling's resonance theory of chemical bonding as antithetical to Marxism.
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| 1952 |
• Request for a passport is denied: "the [State] Department is of the opinion that your proposed travel would not be in the best interests of the United States". Pauling planned to visit England to take part in a meeting on the structure of proteins. He eventually receives a limited passport, but misses the England conference, where Rosalind Franklin's crystallographic photos of DNA are displayed for the first time.
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| 1953 |
• Pauling and Corey publish "Stable Configurations of Polypeptide Chains" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. It becomes one of his most heavily-cited publications.
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| 1954 |
• In October Pauling learns that he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances."
• Pauling and his family travel to Stockholm where, on December 10, Pauling receives the Nobel Prize from King Gustav Adolph VI.
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| 1955 |
• On July 15, Pauling and over fifty other Nobel laureates issue the Mainau Declaration, which calls for an end to all war, especially nuclear war.
• In November, Pauling appears before the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. He testifies that he is not and has never been a communist, open or concealed.
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| 1956 |
• Receives the Amadeo Avogadro Medal in Rome. He gives a speech on Avogadro in Italian.
• Heads a team of scientists exploring the molecular chemistry of mental disease.
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| 1957 |
• On May 15 Pauling speaks to students at Washington University, where he states that no human should be sacrificed to any nation's program of perfecting nuclear weapons. In lieu of the enthusiastic response to his speech, he composes an appeal to end atomic-bomb tests, which is promptly signed by over 100 members of the Washington University science department. The famous United Nations bomb test appeal is conceived.
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| 1958 |
• On January 15, Linus and Ava Helen Pauling present the petition to halt bomb tests, plus a list of over nine thousand signers, to Dag Hammarskjöld at the United Nations.
• In February Pauling debates, on television, issues of fallout and disarmament with Edward Teller.
• In April, Pauling and seventeen others file a lawsuit against the United States Defense Department and the Atomic Energy Commission to stop nuclear tests.
• Publishes No More War!
• Elected to the Soviet Academy of Sciences.
• Publishes a paper on the genetic and somatic effects of carbon-14. In this influential paper, he estimates the effect of one year of bomb tests on the next generation.
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| 1959 |
• Formulates hydrate microcrystal theory of anesthesia.
• The Paulings attend the Fifth World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in Hiroshima, Japan. Pauling is the guiding member of a drafting committee that writes the "Hiroshima Appeal", the principal document issued by the conference.
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