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"Linus Pauling, Crusading Scientist." 1977. Produced for NOVA by Robert Richter/WGBH-Boston. From War Work to the ECAS. (1:11)

Transcript

Narrator: During the second World War, Pauling worked on explosives and rocket propellants, and tried to develop artificial substitutes for blood. J. Robert Oppenheimer invited Pauling to join other leading scientists and run the chemistry section of the Manhattan Project, a secret atom bomb program. But he declined. He had his own war work to do.

Once the bomb was dropped, many scientists were appalled by what science had achieved. In 1946 a committee was formed to alert the world to the new dangers. Albert Einstein served as chairman, and asked Pauling to join.

Linus Pauling: Einstein had said, now that we can lob over rockets that can destroy an entire city and kill a million people, war has become so irrational that we have to replace it by a better system for settling disputes between nations. That seemed so sensible to me that I began saying the same thing in my lectures.

Clip

Full Work

Date: 1977
Genre: video
ID: 1977v.1
Copyright: More Information

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