The two-time Nobel laureate, winner of prizes in chemistry in 1954 and peace in 1962, passed away at his home in Big Sur, Calif. He succumbed to prostate cancer, which he had been battling for about a year.
"He was, in my judgment at least, the greatest and most original scientist--especially in chemistry--in the 20th century," says Norman Davidson, a professor, emeritus, of biology and chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, where Pauling had spent the bulk of his career from 1922 to 1963. A longtime friend and colleague of Pauling's, Davidson recalls the days when he was a junior member of Caltech's faculty and teaching assistant to Pauling for a beginner-level chemistry course.
"I remember going to him before a lecture, and his announcing that he had just come up with an interpretation for the seemingly anomalous structure of hydrogen fluoride-- `sitting with my feet above my ...
