Linus Pauling: An English scientist, Dorothy Wrinch, had proposed structures for proteins in which
there were no polypeptide chains, no double bonds from carbon to oxygen in the carbonyl
groups which instead had opened up and formed single bonds and these were two dimensional
- well some three dimensional, but sort of planar structures bent around - they were
very interesting from the geometric or even topological point of view but, of course,
were wrong. They're just forgotten about now. But, back in 1939, Irving Langmuir,
the same one that I talked about on Monday, a great man. Irving Langmuir wrote a paper
with Dorothy Wrinch giving arguments as to why the cyclol structures were correct
for proteins and this disturbed a colleague of mine, Carl Niemann, a protein chemist,
enough so that we wrote a paper that was published in 1939 giving arguments for the
polypeptide chains. And, of course, they're overwhelming.
Clip
Creator: Linus Pauling Associated: Dorothy Wrinch, Irving Langmuir, Carl G. Niemann Clip ID: 1983v.1a-05
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Creator: Linus Pauling Associated: University of California, Berkeley
