Linus Pauling: Now, it was this 1919 paper that got me started on structural chemistry, the nature
of the chemical bond. I had been, up to 1918 let's see, 16, 17, 18, 17, 18, 19, 19,
I had had two years of chemistry and chemical engineering at Oregon State University,
Oregon Agricultural College. I didn't have money enough to come back the next year
and after a month when I was working as a, putting down blacktop pavement, paving
plant inspector in southern Oregon, I got a telegram offering me a job to teach sophomore
quantitative analysis at Oregon State. So I taught that 1919 to '20 and I had a desk
in the chemistry library, a small room, fifteen feet square with books and journals
in it. No one ever came into it. I read the journals, the Journal of the American Chemical Society. And when I read Irving Langmuir's papers I was pretty excited and I went back and
read G.N. Lewis's 1916 paper. So that, and Langmuir was, I think made important contributions.
