Linus Pauling: A Man and His Science

Linus Pauling (1901-1994), biochemist, peace activist, advocate of nuclear disarmament, champion of vitamin C as a remedy for colds and cancer, was a scientific genius who leaped the boundaries of physics, chemistry, biology and medicine, and in so doing helped to create whole new disciplines including molecular biology and chemical physics. The first person ever to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes (Chemistry, 1954; Peace, 1963), he was a preeminent personality in mid 20th-century science and intellectual politics. Drawing on scores of interviews with Pauling, his family and his colleagues, and on the two-time Nobel Prize-winner's papers, Serafini limns a fiercely competitive, emotionally constricted man, irreverent, audacious, sometimes self-righteous and bullying a more complex figure than his public persona of eccentric idealist. The influential currents in Pauling's intellect, personality and politics are well characterized in this definitive work, which lay readers and scientists alike will find enlightening and rigorous. Though a self-professed lover of humanity, Pauling practically ignored his own children. His father, an ambitious Oregon druggist, worked himself to death at the age of 32, and his widowed, worn-out, delusional mother was committed to a mental ward shortly before her death.

I've read all the biographies of Dr. Pauling and this is clearly the best. In my view it is destined to become the definitive biography of Linus Pauling. Unlike many of the others, this book is. justifiably, quite critical of Pauling while at the same time recognizing his accomplishments. It is an easy read, snappy and clearly explains scientific concepts. If you have to spend money on any pauling biography, buy this one. It is great!

Most of the reviews of this book have been VERY favorable: a couple of them however castigate the author merely because he showed that Pauling was,despite some contributions to science, mainly a cheater (the chapter where it describes a spurious fourth author on a Pauling paper e.g.) To right these wrongs, I'd like to quote from a long favorable review by the eminent MARTIN GARDNER: - This is the first book-length biography of [the] American scientist...and AN EXCELLENT BOOK it is ... . His fury at being labeled a fellow-traveler prompted numerous libel suits....Only one went to trial -- a million dollar claim against William F. Buckley's National Review. Serafini devotes a COLORFUL chapter to this 10-year battle that ended with Mr. Buckley's legal victory....His work on Vitamin C still has a chance of being his final triumph, but only a slim one. More likely, as Anthony Serafini writes, it will be a once-great man's Waterloo. - Martin Gardner