by Li, Shuzhao August 2002
This is a primer to the life of a most controversial and greatest scientist of 20th centry. I tried to write it accessible to lay audience, while there are certainly matters open to further investigation. Some further readings are listed in the end and comments are always welcome.
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On April 19, 1968, Science magazine published a paper that said “varying the concentration of substances normally present in the human body may control mental disease” (Pauling, 1968). This paper was titled “Orthomolecular Psychiatry”, by Linus Pauling, the only Nobel laureate with two unshared prizes in human history.
Thus began one of the greatest intellectual controversies in 20th century.
Linus Pauling was very much the man of the century, during which science has changed human life so fundamentally.
Born in 1901, Portland, USA, through a tough childhood of poverty, Pauling managed to get his Ph.D. in chemistry and mathematical physics in 1925. When he went to Europe for his postdoc, he was about to learn the most glory chapter of human knowledgeability, the finishing quantum mechanics, accredited to group efforts by many brilliant scientists represented by Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr. It’s the time to reconstruct the old chemistry with this daunting new tool and Pauling became the man. He published his seminar paper on “the nature of chemical bonds” in 1931. In his early thirties he became a member of National Academy of Sciences and then one of the privileged American Philosophical Society.
Along the paces of modern chemistry, a new era of biology was preparing to proceed. Shortly after World War II, Pauling determined the first molecular disease, sickle-cell anemia. But his more fundamental contribution was towards understanding protein structure, marked by the discovery of alpha helix. Watson and Crick’s following work on DNA double helix then pronounced the breakthrough and revolution of modern biology.
In 1954 Pauling’s work on chemical bonds was acknowledged with his first Nobel Prize.
By the end of World War II human society began to witness the massively destructive power of modern science. Many scientists felt the urge to educate the poorly informed public and politicians. Among them was Linus Pauling.
Pauling, with his wife Ava Helen, worked actively on promoting peace. A petition to end all nuclear-weapons tests, promoted by him, was submitted to U.N. with signatures of over eleven thousand scientists from forty-nine countries. His influential book, No More War! , was then published. He put so much time on these activities that even his researches were obviously retarded. In 1962 he was awarded another Nobel Price in Peace.
This award evoked many controversies in the US. Pauling had been criticized for his political activities for quite a while. But the clear importance of his peace work should not be distracted by other factors.
In the late 1960’s, Pauling began to propose orthomolecular medicine and advocate using large dose of Vitamin C. It seemed this man was going to surprise the world again. But unfortunately his last crusade later turned out to be wrong, and finally became a tragedy (Reviewed in Barrett’s article).
Anthony Serafini, one his biographical author, argued,
“even from a common-sense viewpoint, it is difficult to understand how someone who developed valid theories about proteins and cracked the secrets of sickle-cell anemia could be ‘outside of his field of competence’ in medicine […] Pauling, with his training in biochemistry, physics, chemistry, and biology was working in medicine with a far deeper understanding than the average medical-school-trained physician.” (Serafini, 242)
Pauling was. Many from the medical establishment were mad at Pauling rather because they regarded his efforts as undisciplined interferences, not that his conclusions were wrong. Actually their embarrassing errors in debates could have increased Pauling’s illusion on the subject.
These were the biggest mistakes made by a greatest mind, far more complicated than a term of “incompetence”. Why did these happen?
The original 1968 “Orthomolecular Psychiatry” paper was indeed an interesting reading.
Some microorganisms have been observed to grow faster through additional supply of a certain substance that is normally synthesized by themselves. From this fact Pauling inferred that the in vivo synthesized growth substance is not present at an optimum amount, rather less. Pauling also argued that optimum amounts (concentrations) of some substances in living bodies are not the necessary result of evolution.
Pauling had an undefined use of “optimum” here. For unicellular organisms, “optimum” could be equal to the best growth rate. But for higher species the overall regulations are considerably more important than the growth of single cells. If we look at evolution as an optimization process, from today’s understanding, the subject of this process is more likely on mechanisms than static concentrations.
Pauling’s view that living entities are a combination of chemical reactions in general is correct. However, the molecules involved are so multifarious and localized (compartmentalized) that routine chemical inspections would encounter fatal problems beyond the scale of often a few micrometers. Of course the perturbation of molecular concentrations and the use of Michaelis-Menten equation are fine, but the result won’t be interpretable unless the reactants and locations can be controlled.
The paper showed an over simplistic and optimistic view of life, which was resulted in lacking knowledge of molecular machineries by that time.
This type of mistakes happened all the time in the history of science. Most were overwritten automatically as time went on, as self-correction is a basic built-in function of science. But it was rare in the case of a figure as great as Pauling. And Pauling even went further. The theory of orthomolecular medicine, along with a collection of favoring evidences, grounded his following fever of vitamin C.
Pauling was out of his field.
He had successful work in several disciplines. He was incomparable to the average physicians. But he tangled with the least average questions in another field while he was still best in chemistry. The orthomolecular psychiatry paper was, say, clearly by the hand of a chemist. Each discipline still has its own tradition and concerns.
In their milestone paper of DNA double helix, Watson and Crick wrote, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism of the genetic material” (Watson and Crick, 1953). This was the deep concern of geneticists, which then immediately led to the establishment of central dogma of cell biology. It’s unlikely that this would appear in Pauling’s paper if he had discovered double helix.
He had a list of supportive evidences, which were enough to make a strong statement in either chemistry or physics, but not in medicine. Medicine was still an experimental science. And Pauling was a theoretician.
Even his position of a theoretician was too subtle.
He did not work on perfectly pure theories. In chemistry or biology there was no such a ground as unified as that in physics. He himself recounted his approach in chemical bonds as, “[…] to apply the ideas of quantum mechanics, in combination with empirical information about the structure and properties of substances, to develop an extended semiempirical theory of structural chemistry that helps all chemists in their thinking and in understanding their observations.” (Linus Pauling in His Own Words, 77)
That was a good timing. In chemistry there had accumulated enough facts for him to work on a grand theory. But in 1960’s biology and medicine were far from ready.
Now Pauling was fighting against a body of scientists and medical doctors. He had to face complicated social pressures.
These were nothing new to him. He had been often criticized for his untoward style. Once upon a time he had to convince people of his alpha helix structure.
He had also close encounters with politics.
During the McCarthy Era Pauling was bothered very much and called several times for hearings. In 1952, He was denied a passport for a conference in London. This situation continued for many years. When he was informed one day in 1954 that he won the Nobel Prize, his first reaction was: could he get a passport to receive it in person?
However, his forced absence in the 1952 London conference had a direct consequence.
He worked on DNA structure even before Watson and Crick. The latter obviously got inspirations from his success in alpha helix. In the pursuit of DNA structure Pauling was in such a supreme position that Watson and Crick had to cram Pauling’s book on chemical bonds during their work (Watson, 1997).
The discovery was based on some experimental data produced by a British lab and delivered in that 1952 conference. Had Pauling got the access, he could have made it before Watson and Crick.
He was used to hash realities. He was born as a fighter. He somehow developed political tactics and probably enjoyed them.
In 1970, he decided to go to public.
Pauling had been taking large dose of Vitamin C himself for many years. He was confident of his findings. But to push such an idea forward meant battling many impeding forces and acquiring supports, including research funding.
Another biographical author, Tomas Hager, commented, “He didn’t feel he could wait” (576). He was aging. This might be his last important contribution. If he didn’t get it through, how long would the society have to wait for such a health boon?
Soon his book Vitamin C and the Common Cold was published.
“The book sold widely, so did vitamin C” (Hager, 578). Pauling presented clearly the results of his literature research and formulation of orthomolecular medicine. But the public wouldn’t regard this as an untested scientific theory. They took it for granted as it’s by Linus Pauling.
This became probably what Pauling was most criticized for. However confident he was, releasing an unconfirmed important medical therapy to the public by a prominent scientist was not acceptable.
This time Pauling really broke the boundary.
One important element of the oriental Confucianism was the interpretation of limitations (TianMing). There is something beyond any human’s reach within a certain historical context. What one can accomplish is largely up to his personal efforts, but also to his sights of this boundary.
Pauling ran into many extremely challenging problems, while he was never as philosophical as somebody like Einstein.
In the following years Pauling was continuously stressed by the vitamin C debates, and got more problems.
In 1978 he broke with Arthur Robinson, his most important collaborator, after Robinson produced some experimental results unfavorable to his vitamin C theory. Arthur Robinson was thrown out of Linus Pauling Institute unfairly. Probably nobody knew what happened.
Linus Pauling died in 1994, California.
The world seems have left Linus Pauling behind. However, as science and society become more intertwined, with new subjects and patterns arising, we can still learn more from this man, besides his science.
Works Cited
Barrett, Stephen. The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy. 5 May 2001. 9 Aug. 2002. .
Hager, Tomas. Force of Nature: the life of Linus Pauling. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Pauling, Linus. “Orthomolecular Psychiatry.” Science 19 April 1968(160):265-271.
Pauling, Linus, and Marinacci, Barbara. Linus Pauling in His Own Words. New York, Simon & Schuster, 1995.
Serafini, Anthony. Linus Pauling: a man and his science. New York, Paragon House, 1989.
Watson, James. The Double Helix. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997.
Watson, James, and Crick, Francis. “Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids.” Nature 25 April 1953(171): 737-738.