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Was Linus Pauling a Revolutionary Chemist?

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Was Linus Pauling a Revolutionary Chemist? Bull. Hist. Chem., VOLUME 25, Number 2 (2000) 73 THE 1999 DEXTER AWARD ADDRESS A PLACE IN HISTORY: WAS LINUS PAULING A REVOLUTIONARY CHEMIST? Mr , Orn Stt Unvrt In 1998 the American Chemical Society published the 1975. That poll sought to assess readers' images and 75th anniversary issue of Chemical and Engineering stereotypes of scientists by asking open-ended questions News (l). In preparation for the anniversary issue, the such as, "When I think of a scientist, I think of ... - The journal provided the opportunity for approximately poll received approximately 1600 responses, of which 175,000 ACS members to 119 came from professional nominate their choices for the chemists. Of the scientists, "Top 75 Distinguished Con- past and present, who were tributors to the Chemical Enter- most frequently mentioned prise" since 1923, using a bal- in readers' responses, lot published in the magazine. Pauling's name was the fif- Readers could nominate up to teenth most cited. Others in- twenty people, living or dead, cluded Darwin and Einstein, American or non-American. Galileo, Newton and Pas- teur, and, among contempo- The result was a list of rary scientists, Jacob more than 1,200 individuals, Bronowski, Fred Hoyle, and giving a top-75 group in which Peter Medawar (4). four chemists far outpolled the next 71. The top four were In the Scientist Linus Pauling, Robert B. Wood- poll, professional and popu- ward, Glenn Seaborg, and lar-science readers seem to Wallace Carothers (2). The con- have mentioned Panting, tributions for which Linus like Bronowski and Pauling was cited in the poll Medawar, on the basis of were the nature of the chemical public image and public bond; valence bond theory; fame in the 1970s, whereas concepts of electronegativity, the Chem. Eng. News poll resonance and hybridization; Mary Jo Nye more clearly reflects judg- and the application of structural ments by Pauling's profes- chemistry to biological molecules (3). sional peers in the field of chemistry. Both polls point to a generalization that we hardly need to prove: that A different kind of poll was taken by the British Linus Pauling is perceived both among chemists and journals New Scientist and New Society some twenty among members of the general public as one of the most years earlier, using a questionnaire published in May important figures in twentieth-century science. 74 Bull. Hist. Chem., VOLUME 25, Number 2 (2000) Yet, we may ask, was Linus Pauling what may be Black for Black's theory of fixed air "that seems to pre- called a revolutionary figure in the history of chemistry, pare a revolution in physics and chemistry (9)." and in the history of science more generally? Is his role The next generations of chemists after Lavoisier in twentieth century science comparable to Galileo in certainly thought of him as a founding father of a new the seventeenth century or Lavoisier in the eighteenth chemistry, but the idea received a new twist from the century or Pasteur in the nineteenth century? What French Alsatian chemist Adolphe Wurtz in 1869, on the makes a revolutionary reputation in science and who de- eve of the Franco-Prussian War. In what became an un- fines it: scientists, historians, or the wider public? The derstandably controversial statement, Wurtz wrote that actors or the observers? "Chemistry is a French science. It was founded by By way of addressing these questions, I will begin Lavoisier, of immortal memory . he was at once the by describing some recent interpretations of the eigh- author of a new theory and the creator of the true method teenth-century Chemical Revolution and its embodiment in chemistry (10)." in the historical figure of Antoine Lavoisier. I then will As France's Third Republic was established in the turn to a discussion of the aims and achievements of mid-1870s, Lavoisier was reclaimed by French scien- Linus Pauling, beginning with his earliest plans and am- tists and politicians as a symbol explicitly of the mod- bitions in the 1920s. I shall conclude by re-opening the ern, moderate, and scientistic French Republic. Lavoisier question of Pauling's place in history, as defined by sci- had been a member of the liberal wing of civil servants entists, historians, and the public. and political activists in the ancien régime. Lavoisier had been a reformist member of Louis XVI's tax-col- Revolutions, Revolutionaries, and Lavoisier lecting agency, the Ferme Générale. He had been an in- novative administrator in charge of the nation's gunpow- In Bernard Cohen's book Revolution in Science, Profes- der Arsenal. He had been an alternate deputy to the States sor Cohen traces the changing meaning of the word General when it convened in 1789 (11). Yet, as a former "revolution," from the sense of "turn" or "return," as in member of the Ferme Générale and a prominent mem- "turn of the wheel" or "turn of Fortune," to the implica- ber of the academic elite, Lavoisier had been personally tion of a historical break and transformation. In the po- disliked and under suspicion by some members of the litical realm, eighteenth century writers used the new Revolutionary Committee. Arrested in 1793, he was meaning of "revolution" in reinterpreting England's re- executed in 1794. Letters removed from his home in- bellion or civil war of 1688 as a "Glorious Revolution," cluded an unsigned letter to Mme. Lavoisier with the and eighteenth-century Frenchmen soon applied the prescient and damning words, if evidence were needed word "revolution" to political events of the 1790s in of disloyalty: "This most beautiful revolution will make France (5). our streams run with blood and plunge us into total an- In the realm of the sciences, Bernard Le Bovier de archy (12)." Fontenelle wrote in the early 1700s of the recent revolu- By fortuitous coincidence, the 1889 centenary com- don in mathematics and mechanics associated with the memoration of the French Revolution was also the cen- name of Isaac Newton (6). More to our immediate con- tenary of the publication of Lavoisier's textbook, the cern, Antoine Baumé wrote in 1773 of a revolution in Elements of Chemistry. Edouard Grimaux, a chemist at chemistry which had begun with the discovery of fixed the Ecole Polytechnique, published a biography of air (7). That same year of Baumé's printed remark, Lavoisier (13), as did Marcellin Berthelot, chemist at Antoine Lavoisier wrote privately in a laboratory note- the College de France and member of the French Sen- book that his work on the fixation and release of airs ate. It was Berthelot who applied the phrase "chemical seemed "destined to bring about a revolution in physics revolution" to Lavoisier's achievements alone, attribut- and in chemistry (8)." At that moment, as Larry Holmes ing to one heroic figure what often had been described has stressed, Lavoisier likely thought of himself as par- as a collective transformation of ideas (14). ticipating in a revolutionary movement begun by oth- ers, not of himself as initiating a revolution. We have By the end of the nineteenth century, then, evidence of Lavoisier's view in a letter of 1774 that he Lavoisier's image had become firmly an image of sci- sent to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, along with a entific hero and political martyr. The latter image only gift of his Opuscules physiques et chymiques. In the enhanced the former one. The iconography of Lavoisier's letter, Lavoisier lauded the "illustrious savant" Joseph memory clearly demonstrates this double image (15). Bull. Hist. Chem., VOLUME 25, Number 2 (2000) 75 It includes sketches of Lavoisier in the laboratory and a on, Pauling rarely had the chemical bond far from his magnificent portrait by Jacques-Louis David of mind. Nor did he relinquish the fascination with mo- Lavoisier and Mme. Lavoisier. There is also a contem- lecular form and structure that first engaged him in a poraneous sketch made of Lavoisier while in prison and course on the crystallography of metals with Samuel a newer dramatic painting of 1876 by L. Langenmantel Graf. This focus on structure and on the chemical bond commemorating became perma- "The Arrest of nent leitmotifs Lavoisier (16)." for Pauling's chemical career. Further, the in- tegration of the sci- During the entific and the politi- summer of 1922 cal revolutions is ab- before entering solutely faithful to graduate school the historical record, at the California as registered in the Institute of Tech- well-known letter nology, Pauling from Lavoisier to worked for the Benjamin Franklin Oregon High- in February of 1790. way eame A "revolution ... has ea Asoia. By taken place in .. this time, he had human knowledge proposed mar- since your departure riage to Aa from Europe," ee Mie, a Lavoisier wrote to sue i is Franklin, describing "e Aes o aoisie" y . agemae (86. Couesy a cemisy class opposing camps of emissio o Secia Coecios, Uiesiy iaies, Uiesiy o of the previous phlogistonists and esyaia spring. anti-phlogistonists, Pauling's sum- but "having brought you up to date o what is going on mer letters to Aa ee gie isigs io e aims a in chemistry, it would be well to speak to you aou ou ambitions of the young chemical engineering graduate. oiica eouio (." Not surprisingly, he was "anxious to get to California in order to find how long it will take me to get my Ph.D. Linus Pauling and the Remaking of Modern and to see how well I'll get along with really good men Chemistry in the realm of science." Indeed, he wondered whether he might be a "second A.A. Noyes (2." (oyes was I will return to Lavoisier and the eighteenth-cen- ieco o Caecs chemistry division.) At summer's tury chemical revolution, but let me turn now to Linus end, Pauling wrote Ava Helen of his desire to live up to Pauling, the son of a pharmacist, born in Portland, Or- his ambitions and her expectations.
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