Oregon State UniversitySpecial Collections & Archives Research Center

Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, 1873-2013

16. Personal Safe. 1912-1993.

The four drawers of Linus Pauling's personal safe contained an astonishingly rich and diverse collection of items which have yielded a much fuller portrait of Pauling's life and activities. Drawer 1 held over seven-hundred letters between Linus and Ava Helen Pauling, most of them love letters. Drawers 2 and 3 contained a number of items that Pauling had deemed to be either sensitive or important, including communications with world-historical figures as varied as John F. Kennedy and Ho Chi Minh. Drawer 4 served as repository for the dozens of pocket notebooks that Pauling carried throughout his life, as well as scores of Dictaphone belts on which Pauling had recorded chapters of a proposed autobiography.


42 boxes

4. Linus Pauling's Safe - Drawer 4.


Note: This drawer is inventoried in chronological order, as it contains mostly small journals and pocket planners from the late 1920's to the 1970's, except for items 4.058-4.100c, which are in a box marked "DIARIES Linus Pauling", and items 4.101-4.105, which were loose in the drawer and are in a file folder.

4.010 - 4.018 (Page: 11 - 20)



4.010.
Diary: 2x3" plain diary labeled "Address" on the cover, and "European and Eastern Trip 1939, June-September" on the front page in LP's writing.

4.011.
Diary: 2.5x4" labeled as "Reminder with Index" for 1940.

4.012.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" spiral pad labeled as "Guggenheim Applications for 1940".

4.013.
Diary: 2x3" blue cloth diary labeled as "Diary 1942".

4.014.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled as "June 194_" the year of W. Gibbs Medal [1946].

4.014a.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled "Westinghouse 1943 Diary" for 1943.

4.015.
Diary: 5x7" with LP notes from 1942.

4.016.
Notebook: 3x5" labeled "Highway School Series Note Book No. H-528", and in Verner Schomaker's hand, "Please Return To Verner Schomaker California Institute Of Technology, Pasadena", for 1943 [?].

4.017.
Diary: 3.75x6" labeled "Paragon S-7845", spiral bound containing LP war work notes on Powder, March 23, 1945 - April 21, 1945.

4.018.
Diary: 2.5x4" labeled inside by LP, "1945".