Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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I did talk to him, and I tried to understand the problems he was worrying about. In fact, I was so fascinated by these problems that I began to work on them myself after I returned to California. By 1940, I had a very active group of people working with me at Cal Tech on problems of immunology ... that is, problems involving antibodies, antigens, antitoxins, allergies, things of that sort.

So that was one way in which I got into biological and medical fields.

PLOWBOY: Didn't you — at one time — do some pioneer work on sickle-cell anemia?

PAULING: Well in 1945, I had the idea that sickle-cell anemia — contrary to what other people thought — was not a disease of the red cells, but a disease of the hemoglobin molecule itself ... which — we now know — it is. In 1949, my students and I published a paper on that subject — "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease" — In Science. That paper led to a tremendous amount of work, involving hundreds of people, on the problem of abnormal hemoglobins.

PLOWBOY: How did you happen to go from this to problems of nutrition?

PAULING: One of the co-authors of the sickle-cell anemia paper — one of the students in my lab at Cal Tech — was a young medical doctor by the name of Harvey Itano. Dr. Itano, who was an officer of the U.S. Public Health Service, came to my lab in 1946. He took his Ph.D. with me and — afterwards — continued on in my lab as a postdoctoral fellow, supported by the Public Health Service.

Well, in 1954 I think it was, the Public Health Service called Dr. Itano back to Washington, and he had to leave Pasadena. Since he would be working on his own in Washington, I decided that I didn't want to compete with him in the field of the hereditary hemolytic anemias and that I should look for some other diseases that might well have a molecular basis. I remember thinking, too, that I might as well study some important diseases while I was at it.

Cancer, of course, was a possibility, and also mental illness. Ultimately, I chose to work on mental illness rather than cancer, on the grounds that almost everybody was doing research on cancer while practically nobody was doing anything in the area of mental illness. This was 23 years ago.

So in 1954, I got a grant from the Ford Foundation and set up a little group of people to work on the molecular basis of mental disease. This work went on for ten years, until — in 1964 — I left the California Institute of Technology.

At any rate, it was during this period that I learned of the work of Hoffer and Osmond. These two researchers —working in Canada— had found in the early 1950's that very large doses of niacin were often beneficial to patients suffering from schizophrenia. Eventually, Hoffer and Osmond began to administer massive doses of vitamin C to their patients, too. Both niacin and vitamin C were helpful in controlling the symptoms of schizophrenia.

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