Interview with Linus Pauling. October 14, 1992. Interview by Thomas Hager for use in "Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling,"
(Simon & Schuster, 1995).
Linus Pauling: I was trying to find why my models had 5.4 angstrom and the x-ray patterns said 5.1.
And I still didn't understand in 1951 when I published. Well 1950 was the first paper
by Dr. Corey and me and 1951 the longer papers. In the meantime, when I got back to
Pasadena, Herman Branson was there as a visiting professor with nothing to do, nothing
to work on. So I gave him the job of checking the dimensions. We knew the dimensions,
but checking ways of folding polypeptide chains to see if there were any that I had
missed. And the conclusion he reached was that the alpha helix and the gamma helix
are the helical structures. And of course I worked on the parallel chain and anti-parallel
pleated sheets. And so a year and a half about went by before we published our first
paper. And we were, I thought, forced into it by the Bragg, Kendrew and Perutz paper.
And that we were lucky, when they were working so hard, we were lucky that they hadn't
found the alpha helix themselves.
Clip
Creator: Thomas Hager, Linus Pauling Associated: Robert Corey, Herman Branson, W.L. Bragg, John Kendrew, Max Perutz Clip ID: hager2.006.6-lucky
