by Thomas Hager
He and Ava Helen were married at her sister's home in Salem. It was a small family wedding, with both mothers putting aside their disapproval long enough to attend. Lloyd Jeffress, Pauling's high school friend, was best man. After a one-day honeymoon in the small Oregon town of Corvallis, Pauling started his summer job, again testing pavement. The newlyweds lived first with Pauling's mother in Portland, where Ava Helen worked hard to get Belle to like her—an effort that never fully succeeded. She then followed her husband through Washington State and Oregon, living in a series of rented rooms as the crew laid roads.
Ava Helen had already impressed Pauling with her intelligence. During their correspondence while he was at Caltech, for instance, Pauling had mentioned that acetic acid was present in sauerkraut; she wrote back, "Everybody knows there's no acetic acid in sauerkraut; it's lactic acid." Correcting her former professor in his field of specialty was nervy, and there was more to come. To help pass time in the evenings after his work with the road crew, he checked out a book on intelligence tests from the local library and, together with his spouse, worked the problems in it. "Much to my astonishment," he said years later in a joint interview with Ava Helen, "I found that my newly acquired wife could work these mathematical problems faster than I could, and get the right answer more often than I could. I thought afterward that it's a good thing that we didn't run across that book before we were married. ... It might have upset my amour-propre."
"You mean upset your ego," Ava Helen replied.
He brought his bride to Caltech in the fall of 1923, and they moved into a small apartment near campus. Pauling threw himself back into his old work habits, taking on a heavy class load and putting in most evenings and weekends in the lab. Ava Helen spent part of her time figuring ways to stretch their meager graduate student's stipend and the rest of it figuring ways to stay close to her hardworking husband. She had too much spirit to stay at home waiting for Pauling to finish his long hours at school. She went to school with him, accompanied him to Friday night physics lectures, assisted him in the lab, lent a hand with crystal models, drew gnomonic projections, helped make calculations, and noted diffraction measurements in a lab book as Pauling called out the numbers. Data written in Ava Helen's hand are scattered through Pauling's lab research book from 1923, including the notation "I love you" at the top of one page. Working in the laboratory was a way to be with her husband—perhaps the only way—and it also gave Ava Helen a familiarity with his work and its special vocabulary, an understanding she needed in order to talk with her husband about his deepest interests. She would not stand in the way of Pauling's pleasure in his work and his ambition to succeed. But neither would she allow that ambition to come between them.
In any case, it wasn't all work. The Paulings attended concerts and watched movies, camped with the Dickinsons, and relaxed at the seashore. They had their first baby—a boy, Linus junior, born on March 10, 1925. They even got involved in intrigue together, helping to arrange the secret marriage of Pauling's old friend Lloyd Jeffress to a woman whose parents disapproved. Jeffress was then a graduate student in psychology at Berkeley, and the Paulings would occasionally visit him there.
On one of those visits, in 1924, Pauling walked over to the College of Chemistry and introduced himself to the man whose paper about the shared electron bond had so impressed him, Gilbert Newton Lewis. Lewis, then nearing fifty, was a scientific dynamo at the peak of his powers. Since deserting Noyes in 1912 to take over the Berkeley chemistry program, Lewis had proved himself equally adept at both research and academic management. In 1923, just before Pauling first met him, he had published both a classic text on thermodynamics (Lewis was responsible for popularizing the now-common concept of free energies) and an influential monograph summarizing his thoughts on the shared electron chemical bond. With the blessings of the school's administration, he had, during the past decade, reorganized and greatly enlarged the Berkeley chemistry program, building it into one of the most influential programs in the nation.
Although they were both leading figures in physical chemistry in America, and had similar pedigrees—both descendants of English stock that came to America in the seventeenth century, both sons of scholarly-minded lawyers—Lewis and Noyes were otherwise a study in contrasts. Noyes was a New Englander steeped in Puritan tradition; Lewis was raised in the Midwest, schooled at home, and taught to think independently. Noyes, quiet and watchful, liked to operate in the background; Lewis, blunt and argumentative, pushed to the forefront. Noyes recited poetry; Lewis told jokes. He ran his department like a debating society, reveling in challenge and confrontation, "taking a boyish delight in shocking conservative prejudice," a colleague remembered. An ever-present cigar clenched beneath his walrus mustache, the Berkeley chemist was, "with or without the stimulus of ethyl alcohol, in any company . . . the focus of the liveliest discussion, and the center of the merriest group." Lewis and Pauling hit it off immediately. At their first meeting, Pauling told him of his work with crystals and then asked him if it might be possible to come to Berkeley after graduation to do postdoctoral work under his supervision. Lewis, with an eye for talent equal to Noyes's, was happy to consider it.
As soon as word reached Noyes, he began worrying. He had his own plans for Pauling. As early as Pauling's first year at Caltech, Noyes had written Hale, "One of our Fellows, who came from Oregon, is already proving quite exceptional." By the time Pauling was completing his graduate career, Noyes was touting him as "the ablest candidate for the doctor's degree in chemistry who has yet attended this Institute." Offering jobs to his own best students directly after graduation was not uncommon with Noyes—he had done it with Dickinson and other early Caltech graduates—and Noyes had decided well before Pauling received his degree that he wanted to keep him on. But it was becoming de rigueur for the best of the newly minted Ph.D.s to spend a year or two on postdoctoral fellowships at other places, learning new techniques from other masters. The most prestigious and well paid fellowships were those awarded by the National Research Council (NRC); it would be a natural next step for someone of Pauling's ability to win an NRC fellowship after graduation, go away for a time, and return to Caltech ready to take a faculty position.
The only problem was G. N. Lewis. Noyes, unwilling to take a chance on Pauling's spending months in close collaboration with as strong a program as Berkeley's and as attractive a personality as Lewis's, advised Pauling to apply to the NRC, with the unusual request that he be allowed to spend his fellowship year at his home institution. Pauling's proposed research was in x-ray crystallography, and in his letter of support Noyes stressed the fact that there were no decent facilities for that kind of research other than Caltech, threw in the offer of several graduate students to help Pauling during his fellowship, and hinted at a probable staff appointment following. "I fear that if Pauling now goes to another institution it will result in separating a rather exceptional young investigator . . . from what would be for himself an unusual research opportunity," Noyes wrote the NRC.
In the meantime, he began making backup plans. It was unlikely that the NRC would change its long-standing policy for Pauling; if they didn't, he would go to Berkeley and might possibly be lost. In the spring of 1925, Noyes heard about a new program of international fellowships just being started by the Guggenheim family foundation. Although the first official Guggenheim fellows would not be selected until April 1926, there was talk of a special-needs early group being funded for the summer of 1925. Noyes made sure his favorite student was notified, and he and Millikan advised Pauling strongly to apply so that he could go to Europe to study with the masters of quantum physics.
But Pauling was in no hurry to go to Europe. He had plenty of work to finish at Caltech and was looking forward to some time with Lewis at Berkeley. As soon as he found out he had won an NRC fellowship—which stipulated that he had to go to another institution within six months of finishing his doctorate—Pauling informed the Guggenheim Foundation that he would wait for a year
before considering an international trip.
Europe was a logical destination for Pauling. In the quarter century before he received his doctorate, America had made great strides in the basic sciences, to the point where American chemistry, thanks to the work of Noyes and men like him, was as good as—and in some ways better than—that found in Europe. The same was true in experimental physics, the hands-on part of the discipline, where the expanded funding of private enterprise coupled with the skill of technologically savvy home-grown products like Millikan had made America the equal of the world. But theoretical physics, the area of thought experiments, paper-and-pencil calculations, and the discovery of new laws, remained a European hegemony. Nothing underlined that more than work in quantum theory. By 1925 it was evident that the "old" quantum theory of Bohr and Sommerfeld was breaking down as a new generation of young theorists began to make a complete break with classical physics. And virtually all of the new generation was European—primarily from Germany, France, and England. Recognizing the importance of this new wave, an increasing number of U.S. universities were sending their newly minted Ph.D.s to study at the European quantum centers: Bohr's institute in Copenhagen, Born's in Goettingen, Sommerfeld's in Munich, Schroedinger's in Zurich.
Noyes had only six months before Pauling would go to Berkeley, perhaps never to return.
Luckily for Noyes, during the summer of 1925, Pauling narrowed his attention to the great prize: the nature of the chemical bond. He began writing an ambitious theoretical paper directly linking quantum theory to the bond question, starting by marshaling crystallographic and other chemical data to reject Lewis's old model of the static atom in favor of the dynamic Bohr atom. Then, to account for the structure of benzene, he expanded the idea that pairs of rotating electrons could circle around not just one but two nuclei, thus creating a shared electron bond. Advances in quantum physics would quickly prove this a dead-end approach, but at the time, the paper was important in showing not only that Pauling could combine structural chemistry and modern physics fruitfully, but also that the newly minted Ph.D. thought about science in terms of the big picture.
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Noyes, meanwhile, was busy arranging Pauling's future. He knew the man at the top of the Guggenheim hierarchy, Frank Aydelotte, and he arranged to bring Pauling and Aydelotte together at a dinner at the Caltech faculty club in the fall of 1925. By then Pauling was growing increasingly interested in the new developments in quantum physics in Europe. There was talk of an entirely new theoretical approach, an odd sort of mathematics, "matrix mechanics," that appeared to clear up some of the old problems with the Bohr-Sommerfeld atom. Even G. N. Lewis advised Pauling to go to Europe at some point to study with the founders of the quantum revolution. So Pauling sent in his application for a Guggenheim in December, proposing to study "the topology of the interior of the atom and the structure of molecules, with especial reference to the nature of the chemical bond." He wrote to both Bohr's institute in Copenhagen and Sommerfeld's in Munich asking about opportunities for study.
Although after the Aydelotte dinner Noyes had been privately assured that his boy would be among the fellows named that coming April, that still left several months during which Pauling could study with Lewis. As Pauling and Ava Helen packed their bags for Berkeley, Noyes stepped in again. He invited the Paulings to his house for Christmas dinner, a social honor that Pauling remembered came as "quite a surprise." An additional surprise came when Noyes said they should bring their nine-month-old son. The old bachelor was charming and considerate at dinner, showing a paternal side of himself that Pauling had never seen. Linus junior was asleep when they arrived, and Noyes had him put in a room near the dining room. "Every few minutes Noyes would get up from the dining table to see if the baby was asleep," Pauling remembered. "He showed great interest in him." He also showed great interest in the Paulings' leaving for Europe as quickly as possible. "You are sure to get a Guggenheim fellowship," he told Pauling, but why wait until the official notice? If the Paulings left early, he proposed, they would have time for stopovers in Madeira, Algiers, and Gibraltar before docking in Naples, plus a few weeks for touring Italy. Italy! Noyes spoke glowingly of the glories of Rome, the fabulous ruins at Paestum. "I'll give you enough money to pay the fare to Europe," he said, "and support you from the end of March until the beginning of the Guggenheim fellowship." It was a fantastic Christmas present, and the Paulings couldn't say no. Then Noyes dropped the other shoe. Of course, he told Pauling, "It really isn't worthwhile for you to move to Berkeley and then to make another move to Europe." It was a choice between G. N. Lewis or the excitement of the Continent. Lewis lost.
Later, Pauling would say, "After many years I have decided that Noyes was quite clever in getting any result that he had decided upon."
Pauling did as Noyes suggested and resigned the remainder of his NRC fellowship. His decision to toss aside one fellowship in favor of a better one led to what Pauling remembered as "a very critical letter" from the NRC in reply.
Europe it would be, but at which scientific center? The answer came by default: Bohr never answered Pauling's letter of inquiry, and Sommerfeld did. Pauling would go to Munich. There was one final question before leaving: What would they do with the baby? Pauling had assumed that Linus junior would come along on the European trip and was "shocked," he remembered, when Ava Helen proposed that they leave the boy at home. At first he argued against it. But after thinking it over he saw it made sense. He and Ava Helen would be traveling extensively and living on the cheap; they would have little room for privacy, little money for baby-sitters, little time for dealing with an infant's demands. Bringing the baby would be a strain on Ava Helen and might possibly interfere with his work. They arranged to leave him with Ava Helen's mother—a logical decision, given the deteriorating state of Linus's mother's health—providing twenty-five dollars per month for his support. They said good-bye to Linus junior at the station in Portland as they boarded an eastbound train on March 4, 1926—six days before the boy's first birthday. It would be more than a year and a half before they saw him again.
CHAPTER 5
Munich
An Old Hussar Officer
Noyes, a romantic at heart, may have hoped that Pauling's Italian tour would bring to flower a latent aesthetic sensibility. But Pauling wasn't Noyes. He and Ava Helen enjoyed traveling, but he found Naples "not spotless," Rome "a terribly crowded place," and as for the rich religious heritage of Italy, "We liked seeing St. Peter's and some other wonderful churches; but we haven't sufficient liking for the structures in general to visit the myriads mentioned by Baedeker." Pauling cut the holiday short and hurried to Munich. "We have come to the end of a very pleasant trip, and I am glad," he wrote Noyes, "for even though Italy is wonderful, and everything was new to us, traveling becomes tiresome. Moreover, I am very anxious to get back to work after nearly two months of idleness."
Munich was itself a tourist attraction, a green and famously friendly trading center on the Isar River, rich with museums and palaces built during the days of the old kingdom of Bavaria. Before World War I it was known for its great lagers, large parks, avant-garde artists' community, and general atmosphere of tolerance—a sort of San Francisco of southern Germany. Munich was home to Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, and the huge Lowenbrau brewery. Germans called it the City of Beer and Art.
But World War I changed it. In 1918, as Germany was preparing to surrender, a violent revolution, led by radical socialists, swept through Munich. It became, briefly, the capital of the Bavarian People's Republic; then, for a few weeks, the first city of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Finally, remnants of the German national army, guided by locals weary of the tyranny of artists and bolshevists, fought its way in and returned Munich to the fatherland, replacing Red terror with White. These wrenching political upheavals were followed by the monstrous inflation of the early 1920s, with prices rising 400 percent in a few months.
Inflation-fed pessi
mism and uncertainty replaced Munich's traditional Gemuetlichkeit. The city's shop owners and tradesmen, fearful of inflation sucking them into the ranks of the working class, began talking of how they had been betrayed in the war, sold out by Communists and Jews. A paramilitary right-wing movement crystallized around the discontent in Munich. Two and a half years before Pauling arrived, an old army general named Ludendorff and a frustrated artist and former army corporal named Adolf Hitler tried to lead the group in a swift overthrow of the local government from headquarters in a Munich beer hall.
The takeover failed, and when the Paulings arrived in late April 1926—just in time to receive the official news that Linus had gotten his Guggenheim fellowship—the city had regained a surface sheen of normalcy. Inflation had been stabilized, and a short period of relative prosperity helped ease the political tension. But beneath the exterior calm there was still class and race friction, still enough Brownshirts to drive artists like Brecht out of the city. After years of war, inflation, revolution, counterrevolution, and attempted revolution, Munich was still uneasy. It was a city where life had changed and was going to change again, where anything was possible.
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The Paulings settled into a tiny one-room apartment on Adelbert et Bahrerstrasse, a few blocks from the University of Munich, and Pauling immediately arranged to see Sommerfeld. He was ushered into the director's light-filled study overlooking a pleasant courtyard in the Institute of Theoretical Physics. Sommerfeld was a short man, slightly built and balding. But he commanded respect. Partly as a reflection of his upper-class family background and partly to compensate for his size, he carried himself like a Prussian aristocrat, dressing meticulously, standing ramrod straight, sporting a large, waxed mustache and a dueling scar. "Doesn't he look the old Hussar officer," one of his students remembered thinking when Sommerfeld walked into class.