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SIMPLE IS A RELATIVE WORD

During World War I, when the Govern-
ment requested scientific aid in combat-
ting the submarine menace, much advice
was received, One of these contributions
remains unique to this day. “The solution
of the submarine problem is simple,”
said this advisor. “All we have to do is
boil the ocean!”

Of course this is not a fair sample of
the scientific help received by the Gov-
ernment during 1917-18, but I think all
will agree that a better job was done dur-
ing the more recent conflict, The Office
of Scientific Research and Development
had at its disposal the best brains in the
country, both home-grown and imported.
And many valuable contributions to the
final victory were made by them:

Among the distinguished scientists
whose services were enlisted by the U. S.
Government was Linus Pauling of the
California Institute of Technology. Dur-
ing the war he carried on work for sev-
eral divisions of NDRC and for the Com-
mittee on Medical Research. This young
professor has ranged so widely and so
rapidly throughout the Elysian Fields of
learning that it is not easy for an ordi-
nary mortal to follow him, even for brief
descriptive purposes. He isa rara avis, a
child prodigy whose genius has grown
and strengthened with the years. He was
born in 1901, and his Baconian curiosity

_was first manifested when young Linus
was only thirteen years of age.

Beginning not long after that, he has
somehow found time to do important
work on the structure of crystals and
molecules, application of quantum me-
chanics to chemistry, rotation of mole-
eules in crystals, size of ions, theory of
stability of complex crystals, nature of
the chemical bond, line spectra, and on
immuno-chemistry. In the field of serol-
ogy alone, Dr, Pauling and his co-work-
ers have published since 1940 no fewer
than 14 papers concerned with the the-
ory of the structure and formation of
antibodies. He has the standing of an
eminent authority in all of these fields,
and in consequence his labors have been
rewarded with most of the major honors
in American chemistry. ,

As an illustration of this universality
and apparent ease, let us consider briefly
a paper recently published. “On October
3, 1940, at a meeting in Washington .. .
mention was made of the need for an in-
strument which could measure and indi-
cate the partial pressure of oxygen in a
gas. During the next few days we devised
and constructed a simple and effective
instrument for this purpose.”*

DR; LINUS PAULING

  
 

When put that way it sounds rather
easy—a simple problem solved in a few
days. But a closer examination of this
“simple device” reveals a new~ and
extremely ingenious instrument which
could not have been developed in a few
days at Government request, except by
a mind stored with scientific data and
guided by a disciplined imagination.

A brief description of this instrument
is in order. It is essentially an oxygen
meter which depends for its efficacy on
the fact that the magnetic susceptibility
of molecular oxygen is very much greater
than that of other common gases, A small
glass dumbbell with mirror attached is
suspended on a stretched fused-silica_fi-
ber in a inhomogeneous magnetic field.
The magnetic field is produced by a small
pair of Alnico V permanent magnets. The
gas under test is permitted to flow
around the dumbbell, which acts as a
test body.

How simple! How easy! And yet-witer-
one considers how tiny are the forces
that must be measured, how remarkable
that the thing should work! Even with a
gas of relatively strong magnetic suscep-
tibility like oxygen, the forces due to
easily-produced magnetic fields are very
small. Nevertheless, the instrument is so
cunningly constructed and calibrated
that it does work, Several hundred of
them have been produced, with un-
doubted usefulness to the war effort.

It is a pleasure to record that Professor
Pauling’s thoughts have in recent. years
been turning more and more in the direc-
tion of work that is of fundamental im-
portance to biology and medicine. The

.need for a clearer understanding of the
part played by molecular structure in
cancer and heart disease is urgent. Jt is
good to know that one of the keenest and
most energetic minds of our time has
joined the fight against them.

tAn Instrument for Determining the Partial Pressure’
of Oxygen in a Gas, by Linus Pauling, Reuben £.
Wood, and J. H. Stusdivant, J.A.C.S. 68 795 (1946).

THE INTERNATIONAL NICKEL COMPANY;,. ‘INC,
, 67 Wall St., New. York 5, N. Y.

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