This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 64.26.98.48 (talk) at 07:11, 16 February 2002. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 07:11, 16 February 2002 by 64.26.98.48 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901-August 19, 1994) was an American physical chemist.
Pauling was born in Portland, Oregon. His father, an unsuccessful druggist, voved his family to a number of different cities in Oregon from 1903 to 1909, finally returning to Portland that year. When the elder Pauling died in 1910 of a perforated ulcer, Linus' mother was left to care for him and two younger siblings.
Pauling was a voracious reader as a child, and at one point his father wrote a letter to a local paper inviting suggestions of additional books that would occupy his time. A friend, Lloyd Jeffres, had a small chemistry laboratory in his bedroom when Pauling was in grammar school, and Jeffress' laboratory experimets inspired Pauling to plan to become a chemical engineer.
In high school, Pauling continued to experiment in chemistry, borrowing much of the equipment and materials from an abandoned steel company near which his grandfather worked as a night watchman.
He introduced the concept of electronegativity in 1932. Using the various properties of molecules such as, the energy required to break bonds and the dipole moments of molecules, he established a scale and an associated numerical value for most of the elements which is useful in predicting the nature of bonds between atoms in molecules. Pauling Electronegativity Scale (Another measure of electronegativity was defined by Robert S. Mulliken; his scale generally correlates with Pauling's, but not perfectly. The Pauling scale is the more frequently cited electronegativite scale.)
He received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 "for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances", and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is also well-known for his research into the therapeutic effects of vitamin C.