Resources for Teachers and Students on Linus Pauling

Prepare: Linus Pauling, having won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954, leveraged his notoriety as a Nobel laureate to lead the opposition to atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. On October 10, 1963, when the first limited test ban went into effect, it was announced that Pauling would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize as well. His biography can be read on the website of Oregon State University's Linus Pauling Institute.

Read: Linus Pauling's Architects of Peace essay is excerpted from his 1958 book, No More War! In this short excerpt, Pauling speculates that the development of thermonuclear weaponry has moved civilization into a period when world problems can no longer be resolved through warfare.

Explore: The Center for Arms Control and Non-Nuclear Proliferation, located in Washington, D.C., monitors peace and security issues affected by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Their website, is a primary source of information about nuclear weapons, bio-chemical weapons, the military budget, missile defense systems, terrorism, and non-proliferation. Of major interest is the "featured resources" section of the center's homepage.

Write: Linus Pauling began his Nobel lecture, in 1963, with the statement, "I believe that there will never again be another great world war-a war in which the terrible weapons involving nuclear fission and nuclear fusion would be used." How much confidence, four decades later, should we have in Pauling's optimism? Specifically, what factors have changed in the world in the past four decades that have moved us closer to or farther away from Pauling's vision of "No more war!"? Support your stand on these questions in a two-to-three page paper.


Extend: The Arms Control Association, ACA, founded in 1971, is a non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting public understanding of and support for effective arms control policies. Members of the association receive a subscription to the magazine Arms Control Today, and student memberships are available for $30 per year. Internships and Peace Fellowships are also available through the ACA.

Additional Resource: The Harvard Square Library maintains a website of "Notable American Unitarians," which contains an interesting biography of Linus Pauling. It outlines the price Pauling paid because of his political views, including being forced out of his faculty position at Cal Tech, and being denied a US passport for two years because his "anti-communist statements" hadn't been strong enough. It also tells how Life magazine termed his Nobel Peace Prize a "weird insult from Norway."

Biography of Linus Pauling