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1948
Sketch of Alpha Helix As drawn by Pauling some years before he announced, with Robert Corey, the discovery of this molecular structure of a protein, achieved at a time when structural knowledge of proteins was in its infancy. 
1950s
Alpha Helix In the 1950s, Pauling again took up the study of protein molecules he had begun before the war. Protein molecules are enormously large and complex compared to inorganic molecules, and it was difficult to determine the structure of one. He found that molecules of keratin were linked in a chain coiled into a helix shape that had first occurred to him in 1948 - the alpha helix. This chain of amino acids stabilized by hydrogen bonds is the basic structure of many proteins. Reporting the alpha helix findings, Pauling and Robert Corey published "one of the most extraordinary sets of papers in the history of twentieth century science... The proposed [protein] structures were complete and extraordinarily detailed; in a field where nothing like this had ever appeared, suddenly everything had appeared.." [Excerpt from Force of Nature by Thomas Hager] |
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