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Happy birthday, Linus Pauling. He was the only person to ever win two Nobel prizes, unrelated and not shared. One was for his research in molecular bonds and the second one to ban nuclear testing.

My two favorite Linus people in the world. The other one was a cartoon character who found inner peace with a blankie.

Spinliesel 9 Feb 28
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7 comments

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0

Not the only person to win 2 Nobels and not the 1st. That honour belongs to Madame Curie

True, but it was not her birthday.

1

I didn’t know this about Pauling. Thanks for posting.😉

2

I remember reading an interview with Dr. Pauling when I was much younger and sitting on the atheist fence. Pauling was an outspoken atheist. The interviewer asked him, "If you are an atheist, what do you believe in?" Pauling said this, "I believe that all complicated phenomena can be explained using simpler scientific principles." That answer opened the door for me, it galvanized all of my atheist thinking, I embraced it and never looked back. He was a human being with his imperfections, but he was and is one of my heroes. I repeat that quotation when someone asks me what I believe in.

3

He was awesome but also arrogant. He was the president of ACS and had a lot of pull when he was denying Dan Schethman's discovery of quasi crystals. He was inventing crazy 1000 atom unit cells just to deny the existence of quasi crystals, which were of course very new and confounded the crysrallographers. He infamously claimed that there were no quasi crystals, only quasi scientists. Dan Schettman received a Nobel prize for his discovery soon after. Highly educated smart people have the hardest blind spots.

That is so interesting. I would not consider digging so deeply into Dr. Pauling's life without your post. Thank you.

3

I doubt seriously that he has a happy birthday. He died in 1994. Birthdays are for the living and beyond that they are used as a reference point.

5

He was a proponent of Vitamin C Protocol for the common cold. It works. When I'm coming down with a cold, I take fistfuls of 1000mg C. I never get really sick. I don't think it would help for Covid, but it might

I use a double shot of lemon juice mixed in OJ or just plain old Sunny D. That works for me.

He went a bit crazy in his late days

@Spongebob He did not.

@DenoPenno That's not enough vitamin c. I was taking 5000mg. You'd have to drink 10 gallons of orange juice.

@barjoe vitamin c is great, but he exaggerated it I think. He considered it to be a panacea and would talk about it when he was invited to give lectures on chemistry, unrelated to ascorbic acid

EDIT- I read a bit more about it and I think Pauling probably wasn't crazy after all. Looks like NIH messed up some research on vitamin c

@Spongebob He lived to a ripe old age and he was brilliant to the end.

Garlic capsules help as well. Garlic is known by many to be nature’s antibiotic.😉

@Redheadedgammy Keeps vampires away as well.

@barjoe That sounds like a belief!

@Lucretia Whatever!

@barjoe My vitamin C is in the lemon juice concentrate or plain ascorbic acid.

@barjoe I always kept giant cloves of garlic around years ago and told my kids that was why we did not have vampires.

1

You might consider adding a third :

[en.wikipedia.org]

Oh, thank you! I am personally intimidated by software designers. They look quite normal but are wizards in reality.

Tell that to Richard Stallman 😂

@Spongebob You have his email address?

@Spinliesel I think rms@stallman.org would work 🙂

[stallman.org]

. . . this is prescient :

[gnu.org]

@FearlessFly Richard Stallman is awesome

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