Linus Pauling: Well, I work largely with ideas and not with mathematics. But I, I've of course published
many papers that are highly mathematical. But, usually I do the mathematics to check
up on the idea that I have had rather than to make the discovery itself. I have a
friend, a distinguished physicist, who said that he had never discovered anything
except by working on mathematical equations until he got some new result. I said I
have never discovered anything by that method. My discoveries I make by thinking about
what the atoms, it's usually atoms that I, what they are doing in space. And if I
see them going into an arrangement that looks surprising to me then I ask "is it possible
that they can actually do that?" And I may make some quantum mechanical calculations
with the computer to check whether this idea is right or not.
