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.

4.102 - 4.106 (Page: 111 - 115)



4.102.
Letter from John C. Slater to LP, June 16, 1929. [3 pages each individually enclosed in mylar].

4.103.
Letter in German from K. Fajans to LP, February 3, 1928.

4.104.
Letter in German from Walter [marked by LP "HEITLER"], January 15, 1931.

4.105.
Manuscript: "Talk to Students", Stockholm, Sweden, December 10, 1954. [Telegram forms with LP speech notes written on the front and back, "Young men and women: On behalf of my colleagues..."].

4.106.
The empty 10"x10" box marked by LP "DIARIES Linus Pauling".