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1940s
War Work Pauling did government work to assist the war effort during World War II. He, along with others in the laboratories that he headed at Caltech, worked on the synthesis of blood plasma and of antibodies, and on rocket propellants. Pauling also invented an oxygen meter to monitor air in submarines. At the same time, he maintained his other scientific interests. It is ironic to compare this activity with the suspicion of unpatriotic leaning which dogged him in later years. 
1946
Nuclear Bomb Test Atomic bombs were tested by the United States in the Pacific Ocean after the war. Near Bikini Atoll, from which native inhabitants had been removed, a bomb was exploded near an unmanned fleet of Japanese and obsolete American ships. Many ships were sunk, and extensive radioactivity was reported. It was this type of atmospheric testing that Pauling and other scientists opposed when signing the nuclear test-ban petition initiated by Pauling, Commoner, and Condon in 1958. |
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