Jack Dunitz: Nineteen-forty-eight was still post-war Europe and going to Pasadena was like heaven.
Pauling and other scientists at Caltech had attracted a very large number of people
who wanted to get out of Europe, and Caltech was a magnet at the time. I think those
of us who had the privilege of being at Caltech as research fellows in the late '40s
and early '50s look back on this as the Golden Age of chemistry. He gave us a great
amount of freedom in what we chose to work on. One must remember, at the time he was
traveling a great deal. Even going to the east coast was a three day journey.
Peter Pauling: I asked him once, I asked him, "who runs the department when you're not there?" And
he said, "the same people who run it when I am there."
Jack Dunitz: He brought in a lot of people, allowed them to interact with each other, had some
general lines which we were following, but did not at all lay down a narrow course;
tomorrow you should do this and when that's done you should do something else, then
you check this and at the end of week's end we report. It was nothing like that.
