David Shoemaker: Well as my years at Caltech went on I had the feeling that all of us down there were
thinking that one of the greatest things in our lives could be that Pauling's work
would be recognized by the Nobel Prize. And it seemed like many years from 1940 to
1944 to 1948 when it didn't happen and we talked to each other about it sometimes
as if it might never happen, that the Nobel Committee was interested in rewarding
particular, definitive experimental discoveries or particular, definitive theories
of a sort that didn't exactly characterize Pauling's work. His work concerned more
this general development that I've perhaps exaggerated by calling a revolutionizing
of chemistry, but that, that was what we felt, that possibly it wouldn't escape him
or that he wouldn't...
When, when the Nobel Prize to Pauling was announced one of the things that came out
that interested me a lot about it was Pauling's own remark that he was someplace or
another on a trip and was called up by a newspaper reporter who asked for an interview
or something and actually turned out, broke the news to Pauling about it. So Pauling
said he asked what did I get it for, what does the citation say? And Pauling said
he was very, very pleased to hear that the Committee had, that the citation had said
"in a central way for researches in the nature of the chemical bond." Which I took
by that to mean that Pauling had thought that was the important thing about his work,
just as we had thought it was. I remember very fondly the, the celebration. Celebration
perhaps is not the right term for the party that we had but it was in the old Culbertson
Hall. And it, there was a skit of some sort that was written brilliantly by this young
humanities professor at Caltech by the name of Kent Clark. And members of the, of
the biology department and chemistry department got up and sang little songs that
Kent had composed and went through little things, this and that, that celebrated some
aspects of Pauling's brilliance and accomplishments and made fun of his difficulties
with the State Department and getting a passport and all that.
Clip
Creator: David Shoemaker Associated: Linus Pauling, Kent Clark Clip ID: 1977v.66-celebration
Full Work
Creator: Robert Richter, WGBH-Boston Associated: Linus Pauling, Ava Helen Pauling, David Shoemaker, E. Bright Wilson, Jr., Frank Catchpool
