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Hitchcock Foundation Lectures: "Chemical Bonds in Biology" January 17, 1983. University of California, Berkeley. Early Investigations of the Structure and Properties of Hemoglobin. (1:49)

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Linus Pauling: Then Warren Weaver said, "the Rockefeller Foundation isn't really interested in the sulfide minerals, what we are interested in is biology." So that sank in for a while... I remember those beautiful red crystals of hemoglobin, and in fact I had written a paper on the sigmoid equilibrium constant of hemoglobin with oxygen -- a theoretical paper. That was my beginning in the protein field.

So I had an idea, and I applied for a grant to study the magnetic properties of hemoglobin. This was eighty-seven years, I think, after the last work had been done. Faraday wrote in his diary, "Have measured the magnetic susceptibility of old dried blood. Must try recent fluid blood." So, we got the grant. And Charles Coryell and I borrowed an old discarded balance from the sophomore analytical lab and drilled a hole in it and hung a tube from it; borrowed a magnet from Mt. Wilson Observatory, and measured the susceptibility of hemoglobin. Venous blood and arterial blood. And to our astonishment there was a big difference in susceptibility; magnetic properties of venous blood and arterial blood. Very interesting consequences of the magnetic properties significance for the structure of hemoglobin.

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Date: January 17, 1983
Genre: sound
ID: 1983v.1
Copyright: More Information

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