by Thomas Hager
All of these criticisms, however, were overshadowed by the towering achievement of Pauling's alpha helix. Despite Astbury's continuing concern that Pauling had yet to explain the absence of the 5.1-angstrom repeat, the evidence for his proposed helix was overwhelming. The confounding x-ray reflection, it appeared, must be due to something unrelated to the basic structure itself. Pauling's extended versions of the alpha helix, the various pleated sheets, looked good as well. In England it began to be accepted that while Pauling may have moved a bit too fast on his other structures, he had solved the big one, the contracted and extended forms of keratin, the substance that Astbury believed was the progenitor of all proteins. As Pauling wrote at the time, "I am sure that these discoveries will introduce a new era in the protein field."
They did. Pauling's protein work changed the rules of the game. It was Pauling who had insisted on the importance of hydrogen bonding. It was Pauling who showed the power of model building based on precise chemical rules—the stochastic approach that allowed complex x-ray patterns to be solved by making a highly educated guess at the answer. It was Pauling who insisted on structural precision down to the hundredth of an angstrom, raising the level of play to a point where loose, general ideas about protein structures could no longer compete. From now on, any proposed structure would have to match Pauling's precision. And, importantly, it was Pauling who shattered the English preoccupation with integral patterns of symmetry, the formal crystallographic paradigm that insisted on symmetrical space groups, the sort of thinking that had led Bragg and Perutz astray. After the alpha helix, crystallographers studying biological molecules would be free to think in new ways about them, free to look for non-integral patterns—free to see their targets for what they were.
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It was an immense achievement, and Pauling made sure he was properly credited. In September 1951, eighteen thousand chemists from forty-two nations—the largest gathering of chemists in history—met in New York City for the World Chemical Conclave, the International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry, and the celebration of the American Chemical Society's Diamond Jubilee. The size of the meetings and their location in the heart of Manhattan ensured plenty of news coverage. Pauling was scheduled to give several talks, including a major speech on protein structures, and he prepared by helping the Caltech news department with a six-page release outlining the importance of his discoveries. This document was, for its day, a masterwork of scientific public relations, outlining Pauling's discoveries at some length, emphasizing the effort behind them and their impact on science and medicine. It was all presented in language reporters could understand, including eye-catching phrases like "the secret of life." The ACS public relations staff, eager to bring maximum coverage to their event and aware of Pauling's charisma and accessibility, helped promote his work.
As a result, Pauling stole the show. The most heavily attended presentation of the entire affair was his talk on protein structures, delivered in a large assembly room at the Roosevelt Hotel. Pauling spoke with his usual gusto to an overflow crowd, including reporters from several major papers and a Life magazine photographer. It was a flawless performance—until the end, during the question-and-answer session, when a balding, nondescript man in a gray suit stood up in the back of the room and said that it was he, not Pauling, who had first discovered the alpha helix. It was Maurice Huggins, the scientist who sent everyone off after helixes by proposing a spiral structure for proteins in 1943. There was an awkward moment as Pauling's mind raced, trying to come up with the details of Huggins's work. Then he recovered, pointing out that while Huggins's basic idea of a spiral shape was correct, he had, like Bragg, missed both the necessity of the planar peptide bond and the importance of a non-integral repeat pattern. Huggins was not mollified. He and Pauling went back a long way—in the 1920s he had helped Pauling with some early ideas about the chemical bond and also promoted the idea of hydrogen bonding—but in every case Pauling had gone on to fame and fortune, while Huggins's career, by comparison, languished. He did not want to see Pauling again steal his thunder. It took Pauling weeks to convince him that his model had been relatively vague and incorrect in some important respects.
Instead of casting doubt on Pauling's work, the brief verbal fireworks underlined the dramatic nature of his discoveries for the attending reporters. The next day, the New York Times headline read: "Chemists Unravel Protein's Secrets—Aid to Fight on Diseases—Discovery Marks First Inroads on Mysterious Protoplasm—May Solve Basic Riddles." The accompanying story, with its D-Day-flavored language describing this "first major beachhead on nature's major stronghold—the structure of protoplasm, physical basis of life—which until now had remained impregnable," was spread across the nation. Two weeks later, 5 million readers opened Life magazine to find an enormous photo of a grinning Pauling pointing to his space-filling model of the alpha helix, with the headline "Chemists Solve a Great Mystery." His success with proteins made him one of the world's most famous scientists.
The IERB
Two months later, he was hauled in front of the IERB to fight for his reputation.
Pauling's political stands had continued to come under attack from the right wing, both publicly and in a series of letters delivered to Lee DuBridge. DuBridge knew that distaste for Pauling among the most conservative—and in some cases wealthiest—backers of the school was costing him large amounts of money in lost gifts. His attitude toward Pauling—and that of many others at Caltech—was summarized in an FBI report that October: "None of the faculty at Cal Tech feel that Pauling is actually a Communist, but have characterized him as a diluted [sic] exhibitionist and pointed out that his constant desire to see his name in print has caused Cal Tech a great deal of grief," the agent wrote. "Cal Tech is very unhappy with Pauling's recent bad publicity, which has reflected on the Institute in general. [Blacked out] feel that he is an irreplaceable scientist, but are more convinced than ever that sooner or later something will have to be done in that it is costing the Institute millions of dollars in potential endowments." While he continued to defend Pauling publicly, privately DuBridge redoubled his efforts to convince Pauling to tone down his activities.
His ambivalence toward Pauling was demonstrated during preparations for the IERB hearing. Pauling had requested that DuBridge assign him a lawyer, but the Caltech president delayed so long in responding that Pauling felt it necessary to hire his own, local ACLU firebrand Abraham Lincoln Wirin. The Paulings knew Wirin from his work fighting anti-Japanese-American regulations during the war, and he had since earned a name for himself as an unusually combative radical lawyer, always ready to take the gloves off with investigating committees. Wirin's reputation was assured in civil libertarian circles when, at a HUAC hearing, he was grabbed by security guards and thrown out for refusing to stay quiet. On the Thursday before the hearing, DuBridge called Pauling, told him that Wirin would not be acceptable, and offered a substitute. Pauling replied that it was too late. "I shall try to represent the Institute as well as myself in a satisfactory manner, and I have confidence that Mr. Wirin will also do so," he said. He advised DuBridge to hire a lawyer to represent Caltech at the hearing.
On Monday, Pauling entered room 810 of the Federal Building in Los Angeles followed by Wirin and a group of character witnesses they had assembled. He sat down before the panel and, after the hearing was called to order, read a thirteen-page statement summarizing his life and political beliefs. He told the board how the incident with his Japanese-American gardener had made him more aware of social questions and how he had independently formed his political views by reading newspapers and historical studies. "I am free from commitment of any sort to any political party or other group," he told them. "I have never been a Communist. I am not a Communist. I have never been involved with the Communist Party."
He was, he said, an American. He believed in representative democracy, the preservation of peace between nations, the rights of man as expressed in the Constitution, and the acce
ptance of the highest ethical principles. He then outlined the price he had paid for his political activities. He told the board how he had lost the Eli Lilly consultantship and how "very strong pressure to cause me to cease my political activities has been applied by my present employer, the California Institute of Technology." He finished with a long recital of his many services to the nation, his receipt of a medal from Truman, a typically self-confident assessment of his skills as a scientist—"I have, I think, a broader grasp of science as a whole—mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and geology (mineralogy)—than any other man in the United States"—and a plea for clearance. "I recognize that my political activities and associations are such as to indicate unreliability as a repository of classified information," he told the board. "I myself feel that my personal character and integrity and the value of my possible services to the country are such as to permit clearance to be given to me."
The IERB spent two days questioning Pauling in Los Angeles in a routine that was now becoming depressingly familiar, trotting out the usual list of "suspect" groups, speeches, and endorsements. The only amusement came when the board's counsel asked, "Are you or are you not a member of the Save the Redwoods League?" Pauling could not help laughing aloud. Finally, after hearing the unqualified support of his character witnesses, the board decided to continue the hearings in Washington, D.C., early in December. This was a big case—Pauling was one of the most prominent scientists ever to come before the IERB— and they did not want to hurry it.
But the Washington hearings never happened. Again, it was DuBridge who found a way to extricate Pauling from what looked like another lengthy bout of bad publicity. The day after the Los Angeles hearing ended, DuBridge sent Pauling a surprising letter. He had discovered, he said, "a slip" in the way Pauling's request for clearance had been handled by the Caltech personnel office. It seemed that Pauling was appearing before the IERB because his name had, "through a misunderstanding," been included with a batch of top-secret clearance requests for scientists working on an H-bomb research program called Project Vista. It was all a mistake. The IERB was investigating him for the wrong thing. DuBridge had his personnel administrator write a mea culpa, and when Pauling presented it to the IERB in Washington, D.C., his case was dismissed.
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Pauling was deeply shaken. Being taken to task by a gaggle of local anti-Communist politicians, as he had been by the California education committee, was one thing. Having his ability to conduct his scientific work threatened at the national level was another. Losing his low-level security clearance would have crippled Pauling's ability to operate efficiently as a high-ranking Caltech administrator; he would not, for instance, have been able to review any classified grant requests made by his own faculty members. Added to his already shaky position at the institute, it might have been enough to persuade DuBridge and the anti-Pauling trustees that he should be stripped of some degree of power, perhaps demoted. His political work, it was now clear, was interfering in important ways with his ability to be a productive scientist.
Pauling had always maintained a careful balance between conformity and independence, between wanting to be liked and wanting to be right. The IERB hearing, with its bizarre climax, was enough to shift that balance. Now, he decided, it was clear that the importance of belonging to politically suspect groups was outweighed by the trouble they caused.
After a long talk with Ava Helen, he decided to pull back.
Within a few days of DuBridge's discovery of the clerical error, Pauling sent letters of resignation to the National Council of the Arts, Sciences and Professions and the American Association of Scientific Workers, two groups under attack for being Communist-dominated. He told the American Peace Crusade—a group he had helped start but which was also accused of being dominated by Communists—that he could not serve as an officer. A few months later he resigned from the World Federation of Scientific Workers, the international group headed by the French physicist and Communist Frederic Joliot-Curie, after having accepted a position as vice president the year before. He was "too busy," he said, "to devote proper attention" to their concerns. During the remainder of 1951 and most of 1952, Pauling would not give a strictly political talk, would not make political pronouncements to the press, would not participate in any group that was identified as pro-Communist. He would, like most liberals, lower his head and wait for better times.
Pauling's IERB hearing might have been aborted, but it had the desired effect. When it was over, Pauling had been made keenly aware of the saws and had sought out a safer place on the limb.
CHAPTER 17
The Triple Helix
The Pauling Point
Amazingly, Pauling seemed able to handle his political travails with no apparent effect on his scientific work. In 1951 and 1952 alone, forty-three of his scientific papers—-journal articles, popular pieces, notes, and reviews—reached print: his epochal series on protein structures, fundamental papers on the bonding of elementary phosphorus and the structure of oxygen acids, the borides of transition elements and the alloys of lead, the resonance of the hydrogen molecule and the nature of intermetallic compounds. He made a major advance in the field of hydrate chemistry by showing how water molecules could link to form elegant crystalline cages around a central kernel of a gas atom. He reviewed the structural chemistry of molybdenum. He began work on a new theory of ferromagnetism. He published an idea he had implemented at Caltech for modifying examinations for doctoral students. He began writing a new, heavily revised second edition of General Chemistry. Then he explained to readers of the popular magazine Science Digest why "It Pays to Understand Science."
Awards and honors continued to shower in: election as vice president of the illustrious American Philosophical Society, the intellectuals' club that Benjamin Franklin had started; first recipient of the G. N. Lewis Medal, awarded by the Berkeley chapter of the American Chemical Society (ACS); named to the Panel on Research of the President's Commission on the Health Needs of the Nation; featured in the "Half-Century Hall of Fame" of Popular Mechanics; a continuing string of honorary degrees. He even became a movie star in a small way, enduring the application of pancake makeup and the rigor of being directed by Frank Capra for a Caltech recruiting film.
Things were happy at home as well, at least as far as Pauling could see. The Sierra Madre house was often the site of the annual start-of-the-school-year divisional party, which Pauling would hold on his lawn, with simple food and plenty to drink, the punch, someone recalled, once served from the nose cone of a rocket. He and Ava Helen entertained a cavalcade of dinner guests, mostly faculty or visiting scholars, and Ava Helen held occasional teas at the house for faculty wives despite the fact that she did not get along well with most of them—too dowdy and domestic for her tastes—while they generally found her too sharp-tongued and politically opinionated. More to her liking was a monthly folk-dance group that met at the house in the years following their return from England. Ava Helen had always loved music, and with the furniture pushed back and the record player turned up, she and a group of friends and children would dance for hours—with such enthusiasm that on one occasion Ava Helen tripped and broke her wrist.
Folk art became a minor interest of hers, and because she chose her husband's wardrobe, it soon showed up in Pauling's style as well. In the early 1950s his tailored suits and ties often gave way to slacks and sport shirts, even at the office, some of the shirts outlandishly colorful, with boldly stated ethnic patterns. He wore his thinning gray hair longer now, more like Einstein, so that it formed a wispy corona around his head. Age led to another addition to his personal style as well: Ben Franklin-style half-frame spectacles that he would push up over his forehead when talking or down on his nose so that he could peer over them to make a point. Occasionally, he wore a beret. In the gray-suit 1950s, it all added to the image of a liberal rebel, a man so at ease with himself that he did not care what others thought about him.
His children seemed
to be thriving. After taking his residency in psychiatry at a hospital in Honolulu, firstborn Linus junior had decided to settle in Hawaii with his wife, partly because of the paradisiacal climate, partly to keep enough distance between him and his parents. There were grandchildren now, the first, Linus III, born in 1948. Because of the distance, Pauling and Ava Helen saw him and the siblings that followed only rarely.
Peter made up for his older brother's remoteness by modeling himself after his father, entering Caltech as an undergraduate and taking up the study of physics and chemistry, a development that made Pauling proud, although Peter's siblings worried about a too-obvious attempt to follow in his father’s footsteps. Peter seemed to do all right, however, making passing grades and developing a typical college-level interest in beer and parties. He became friends with a number of Pauling's graduate students and postdocs. In the early 1950s a social scene began developing at the Paulings' house, with a half-dozen young would-be scientists making their way up into the hills on warm afternoons for a beer, a dip in the pool, some jokes with Peter, and a chance to flirt with tall, slim, blond teenaged Linda.
