The common imagining of archives characterizes these spaces as monolithic, hallowed sites of preserved truths, carefully catalogued and stored, static and frozen in history and waiting to be uncovered. My thesis works to dispel this myth and identify rhetorical elements of the archive’s structure in order to assess how the...
Linus Pauling incorporated hemoglobin and a disease of the blood, sickle cell anemia, into many of his researches between the mid-1930s and mid-1970s. In the early 1930s Pauling became interested in organic chemistry and named hemoglobin as one of the first biochemical substances that he planned to analyze. In 1935...
Oregon Biography Index is intended to serve primarily as a starting point in locating biographies of Oregonians. We have indexed 47 historical volumes which are either entirely devoted to biographies or have large self-contained biographical sections. The profiles in the books vary widely in accuracy and detail. Birth dates of...
An essay reflecting on the collection of molecular models held in the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, with particular mention made of specific models about which amusing or insightful anecdotes are known. Reference is made to Pauling's involvement in the development of CPK models; his use of models in...
A reflection on the significant personal cost incurred by Linus Pauling as a result of his anti-nuclear and anti-war activism. Specifically, this talk focuses on Pauling's harassment by the mainstream media and his receipt of death threats as a result of the public positions that he took as an activist.
Biography is one of the most popular categories of books—and indeed the most popular
category among nonfiction books, according to one British poll. Thus, biography offers
historians of science an opportunity to reach a potentially broad audience. This essay
examines approaches typical of different genres of scientific biography, including historians’...
Linus Pauling played a key role in creating valence-bond theory, one of two competing theories of the chemical bond that appeared in the first half of the 20th century. While the chemical community preferred his theory over molecular-orbital theory for a number of years, valence-bond theory began to fall into...