Linus Pauling Born: Only Double Unshared Nobel Laureate

Linus Pauling was subpoenaed by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee in 1960 for his anti-nuclear weapons activism, the same year he delivered a petition signed by 11,021 scientists from 49 countries to the United Nations calling for a ban on nuclear weapons testing. Born on February 28, 1901, in Portland, Oregon, Pauling was a chemist whose work on the nature of chemical bonds fundamentally reshaped how scientists understood molecular structure. He won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the understanding of complex substances. His work laid the foundation for molecular biology and influenced Watson and Crick's discovery of the structure of DNA. Pauling was, in fact, pursuing the same problem and came close to solving it, proposing a triple-helix model that was incorrect. Had he visited London and seen Rosalind Franklin's X-ray data, he might have beaten Watson and Crick to the double helix. His activism began in earnest after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He became one of the most prominent public advocates for nuclear disarmament, publishing "No More War!" in 1958 and using his scientific prestige to argue that radioactive fallout from atmospheric nuclear testing posed unacceptable health risks. The U.S. government monitored him extensively. The State Department denied him a passport in 1952, preventing him from attending a critical conference in London. The Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1963, the day it went into effect, the Nobel committee awarded Pauling the Peace Prize, making him the only person in history to receive two unshared Nobel Prizes. The same government that had monitored him for a decade watched him accept it.