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Early 1900s-1920s
Linus Pauling on his early years: "I have always wanted to know as much as possible about the world. As a child, I enjoyed reading and going to school... Possibly I am a scientist because I was curious when I was young... When I was eleven, with no outside inspiration - just library books - I started collecting insects... When I was twelve I began reading about rocks and minerals and started collecting them." While a teenager, Pauling began experimenting with chemicals in a lab he set up in the basement of his home. Relatives of a high school friend who had interested him in chemistry encouraged Pauling to go to college. "I was sixteen years old when I went away to Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis. It was September of 1917 - the year the United States got into World War I..." "A great deal of theoretical physics work, along with experimental work to test it, had been going on in research institutions for a quarter of a century now. Five years before I was born, the existence of the electron was discovered... the nucleus of the atom itself... was not discovered until 1911, when I was ten years old." "Only when I began studying chemical engineering at Oregon Agricultural College did I realize that I myself might discover something new about the nature of the world." (Excerpts from Linus Pauling In His Own Words by Barbara Marinacci) |
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