by Thomas Hager
Dulles decided to give Pauling his passport.
Herbert Hoover, Jr., was not happy about it. This meant bypassing the appeals process that had been set up in great part specifically because of Pauling, a move that could expose the department to criticism. He called a friend in the FBI later that day, asking the agency to review the letter of issuance he planned to send. Venting his anger, Hoover told his FBI friend that he had been trying to have Pauling ousted from Caltech for the past ten years and that it grated on him to give him a passport without an appeal being mounted. Soon after, Hoover resigned from the Caltech board of trustees, citing Pauling as a major sore point.
J. Edgar Hoover took one look at Dulles's public relations problem and told his FBI staff, "We should most certainly not get into it."
A short letter notifying Pauling that he would be allowed to go to Stockholm was sent later that day by the undersecretary for administration.
The same day, the State Department's legal adviser, whether by chance or design, sat down with Ruth Shipley when he found her sitting alone in the cafeteria. They had a long talk about Pauling, Communists, and the importance of proper procedure. Shipley, the counsel noted, was downcast at being overruled again, very disappointed in the way things had gone. She repeated that Pauling's passport should be refused.
Within a few weeks, Ruth Shipley announced that she was retiring as head of the passport division.
Scott McLeod developed something of a sense of humor about the Pauling affair. Asked shortly afterward by a congressional committee how Pauling had managed to get a passport without going through the appeals process, he answered that the issuance was the result of a "self-generating appeal." Asked to interpret that phrase, he smiled. It meant, he said, that "the State Department reads the papers, too."
- - -
Pauling was given a passport valid not only for Sweden, but for the world.
As happy as he had ever been in his life, he, Ava Helen, Crellin, and Linus junior and his wife, Anita, flew out of Los Angeles on December 5. They met Peter and Linda in Copenhagen. Then the entire family, "a joyous crowd," Ava Helen remembered, traveled together to Stockholm.
Pauling had never seen anything like the Nobel ceremonies. They started on December 9 with a reception for the winners held by the royal high chamberlain of Sweden. Here Pauling chatted briefly with the winners in physics—Max Born, the mathematical sage of Goettingen he had met on his first trip to Europe, being honored belatedly for his contributions to quantum mechanics, sharing the prize with Walther Bothe, a German experimental physicist whose best work was also done in the late 1920s—and members of the three-man American team who shared the prize in medicine for their research on polio. Ernest Hemingway, winner in literature, was eagerly awaited by the European press but was unable to make it to Stockholm because of injuries sustained during an African safari.
The next day, the awards were presented before two thousand people in the Stockholm Concert Hall in a ceremony that Pauling called "one of the most impressive . . . held in the modern world." Each new Nobelist was lauded in a speech outlining his work. Pauling's was delivered by a long-winded Swedish crystallographer who took the opportunity to present an overview of chemical history from Berzelius onward, ending with Pauling's interpretation of the chemical bond and its application to all of chemistry and much of biology and medicine. When he was done and the applause had died down, King Gustavus VI of Sweden handed Pauling his gold Nobel medal and accompanying scroll. Instead of accepting it with the stiff formality common to the occasion, Pauling, dressed in tails and white tie and obviously enjoying the moment, gave the king one of his ear-to-ear grins, evidencing "such beaming pleasure," the European papers reported, "that everyone in the hall rejoiced with him."
The ceremony was followed by the Nobel dinner in the Gold Room of Stockholm's city hall, a spacious turn-of-the-century room named because of the twenty-four-carat gold mosaics lining its walls. Here the ritual continued as the king proposed a toast to each new laureate and each responded with a short speech of appreciation. Pauling's—in which he expressed his long-standing admiration for Sweden and his desire to be thought of as an "honorary Swede"—earned enthusiastic applause. After dinner, the king led the Nobelists to the top of a marble staircase overlooking a crowd of hundreds of cheering Swedish university students carrying torches and waving flags. After the students serenaded the winners with a song, it was customary for one Nobelist to address them with a few words of inspiration. Pauling was elected to speak by his fellow laureates. His address was reprinted in all the papers in Sweden:
"Perhaps as one of the older generation, I should preach a little sermon to you, but I do not propose to do so," he called out to the crowd. "I shall, instead, give you a word of advice about how to behave toward your elders. When an old and distinguished person speaks to you, listen to him carefully and with respect—but do not believe him. Never put your trust in anything but your own intellect. Your elder, no matter whether he has gray hair or has lost his hair, no matter whether he is a Nobel Laureate, may be wrong. ... So you must always be skeptical—always think for yourself."
The students cheered wildly.
The next day Pauling delivered his Nobel lecture, a review of his work in which he focused especially on the concept of resonance. He spoke confidently about valence-bond concepts that were under increasing critical attack, using his Nobel address to validate his approach to chemistry.
That evening came the grand finale of the Nobel celebration, a formal dinner at the royal palace at the invitation of the king and queen. Pauling entered the dining room looking tall and elegant in his black evening clothes; on his arm was Princess Margaretha of Sweden. Ava Helen, escorted by the prime minister of Sweden, was happy to find herself seated at the left hand of the king. She was happy, but in her down-to-earth socialist fashion, not overly impressed. "I discussed politics with the Prime Minister—and gardening with the King," she wrote in her diary that night. "Very interesting."
As a final honor, Pauling and the three American winners in medicine were feted at a party thrown by the American embassy—an encouraging sign, Pauling thought, that perhaps the U.S. government was ready to accept him as a worthwhile citizen.
After it was over, the embassy counsel wired Washington, D.C., that Pauling's visit had passed without incident. "The Stockholm press has given him much publicity, both because of his own cheerful and attractive personality and the photogenic qualities of his family," the counsel wrote with an almost audible sigh of relief. "Neither in his press conference following his arrival nor in his remarks at the banquet . . . did Professor Pauling make any remarks which could be objected to."
Far from being objectionable, Pauling earned America a new level of respect. It accrued in part from the fact that he had been allowed to travel to Stockholm at all, demonstrating that even in the USA individual achievement could overcome the tensions of the Cold War. Just as important was his personal charm and warmth. "There has rarely been a Nobel Prize winner who knew so well how to captivate the whole world as this modest, cordial and cosmopolitan savant," one European paper reported, calling the Nobel ceremonies "a 'festive performance' whose 'principal actor,' Hemingway, did not attend. But nevertheless it had a 'star' in the modest professor from Pasadena."
The same feeling of goodwill followed Pauling around the globe. After two weeks of sightseeing with the family in Sweden and Norway, Pauling and Ava Helen flew to Israel for a week, where they visited universities and talked to researchers in Haifa and Jerusalem. They spent Christmas in Bethlehem, an experience that did nothing to alter Pauling's atheism, then flew to India for several weeks. This long-delayed visit became a high point of their trip. As guests of the Indian government they toured the nation's leading universities and laboratories, traveling from New Delhi to Calcutta to Allahabad, visiting the Taj Mahal, the caves at Ajanta, and the temples at Benares.
In Baroda, Pauling attended the Indian Science Congress, where he f
ound scientific diplomacy in full flower, with large delegations of Russian and Chinese scientists bearing gifts of minerals and equipment. The American presence was limited to him and a few nonsponsored Yankees. As the only American invited to address the full congress, Pauling gave a talk on hemoglobin and sickle-cell anemia, then ended it with some broader concerns. He made reference to the need for world peace and then reminded the international audience that the majority of American researchers were working not on atomic and hydrogen bombs and the means of delivering them, as many in the Russian orbit were saying, but on problems like sickle-cell anemia, investigations related to the peaceful development and welfare of all people on earth. He added, as a pointed barb aimed at the Communist-bloc delegates, that American scientists were also lucky enough to work freely.
Pauling's talk was greeted with wild applause. Afterward, an Indian scientist told a friend from the United States, "Your Dr. Pauling has done more tonight to dispel the notion that Americans are international war-mongers than have all the official releases through your State Department."
The Paulings also shared a dinner and conversation about politics, bombs, and peace with Nehru, a man whom Pauling thought extraordinary, graced with "great mental powers, excellent judgment and complete sincerity. ... In my opinion, Nehru is one of the greatest men in the world."
After a few days in Bangkok, the Paulings flew to Japan. Pauling was known there not only for his scientific work but for his work against the bomb. He was mobbed. In Tokyo and Kyoto his lectures were so popular that hundreds of people had to be turned away—in two cases leading to damage as people tried to force their way in. Away from the cities, however, the Paulings were able to visit Buddhist temples, take long walks in the snow, tour a number of universities and industrial plants, try out a Japanese bath, and enjoy a few days in a private home by the sea. Pauling became interested in the country's economics and politics. Japan was still impoverished, its universities quite poor compared with those in the United States, and Pauling was impressed by the popular support he saw for opening trade with the USSR and the People's Republic of China.
He also heard a great deal about radioactive fallout. The crew of the Lucky Dragon was still under observation, and Japanese scientists analyzing the radioactive elements that fell to earth after the Bikini bomb test were finding some unexpected isotopes. There was talk that the unusually high levels of radioactivity released by the test were due not only to the power of the bomb, its ability to push fallout up into the stratosphere for wider distribution, but also to its very nature. It appeared that it might involve a new combination of fission and fusion. Pauling listened closely.
Only one incident marred their visit. Professor Mizushima, a Japanese chemist who had helped arrange some of Pauling's lectures, was also in charge of educating the emperor's second son, Yoshi. Through his contacts with the imperial household, Mizushima had received permission to arrange an audience between Pauling and the emperor, provided that it was approved through official channels on the U.S. side. This was a very great distinction, and Mizushima immediately wrote the U.S. embassy for guidance. The request was forwarded up the ladder to Washington, D.C., where it ended up on the desk of security head Scott McLeod. "This Bureau is of the opinion that it is ridiculous for the Department to entertain ideas of official sanction or to pave the way for an individual of Pauling's background to be accorded such privileges by various chiefs of state in different parts of the world," McLeod responded. The U.S. embassy in Japan refused to cooperate. Pauling's imperial audience never materialized.
That was, however, a relatively minor matter. By the time Pauling flew back to Pasadena after nearly five months of world travel, he was a slightly different man. From the time he learned of the Nobel Prize until he returned home in April, Pauling had been honored and feted, applauded and attended. He had dined with kings and prime ministers. He had delivered more than fifty speeches to enthusiastic audiences.
And he had learned that his concerns were the world's concerns. Once outside the United States, he could see the dismay with which the rest of the world viewed nuclear weapons testing, the degree of anxiety about fallout, the depth of worry over the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, the extent to which his ideas were mirrored throughout the globe. He returned home secure in his beliefs. He returned home ready to fight.
CHAPTER 19
Fallout
The U-bomb
The Nobel Prize changes scientists. For some it marks a sudden leap from nonentity to international fame. For others it represents a ticket to explore new areas. For almost all, it means a period of disruption, a lessening of output, a loss of focus.
Pauling was accustomed to fame and pleased by the piles of mail, stacks of invitations, and calls from the media that greeted him when he returned home. But there were deeper effects. Winning the Prize at long last officially launched Pauling to the pinnacle of scientific achievement; he no longer needed to worry about proving himself professionally. The thirty-five thousand dollars that accompanied it also helped make him more financially independent.
Freed of some of the need to prove himself scientifically, he was able to throw himself more fully into political activism. He had muzzled himself politically in part because he did not want to lose his job and in part because DuBridge had convinced him that his activism was bad for Caltech. The great prestige of the Prize now made these, in Pauling's mind, moot points. Caltech did not fire Nobelists. The generous praise he had received from his school during the previous few months made it seem that the old wounds might be healed.
For the next six years antibomb politics would dominate Pauling's thoughts and actions. As Caltech president Lee DuBridge later put it, "For a while there he lost touch with science."
The shift in emphasis started when he returned to California. In a statement released to radio and television stations, Pauling said that his trip around the world had convinced him that there would never be another world war. The people of the world loved peace, and the hydrogen bomb made war unthinkable. The danger now was not war, Pauling wrote, but radiation released by bomb tests. "Are we justified in willfully producing a deterioration in the human race?" he asked, pointing out that slight increases in radiation might increase the rates of disease and the number of births of defective children. "The time has come when it is essential that international negotiations be carried out with the aim of limiting or stopping all atomic bomb tests."
He believed his statement reasonable, given what he had been learning about the dangers of radiation. Experiments on various plants and animals had proved to his satisfaction that radiation, even low-level radiation, damaged genes. It appeared that the greater the exposure, the greater the damage. The best evidence showed that the damage did not cease until the radiation did. Very small increases in radiation exposure, therefore, were probably associated with very small but real increases in the risk of health problems.
That was what the data seemed to indicate, although the real-world health effects of low-level radiation, especially for humans, remained a point of debate among scientists. No conclusive studies had been done directly examining the effects of very slight increases in radiation exposure, such as those caused by fallout, on human health. Still, there was enough troubling evidence to persuade Pauling and a great many other scientists that fallout was a danger to human health, damaging the DNA in egg and sperm cells, causing birth defects, and increasing the rates of diseases like cancer.
In his public remarks, Pauling did not reflect any uncertainty. He received national attention by asserting in an NBC interview that "leukemia is one of the great dangers" from fallout.
During the spring of 1955, what Pauling had heard in Japan became more widely known. Japanese researchers made it clear that the Bikini test involved no ordinary hydrogen bomb. Not only was it several times more powerful than a standard hydrogen bomb—strong enough to break through the lower reaches of the atmosphere and pump fallout into the stra
tosphere, where it remained suspended, able to spread around the world—but it produced a great deal more fallout than any previously tested bomb.
The Bikini bomb, it appeared, represented something new. More evidence came from an analysis of the fallout done by the Japanese. Among the strange mix of radioactive isotopes in the dust were some that could be made only as a by-product of splitting apart common uranium. This was confusing because common uranium was not volatile enough to use in a standard atomic bomb, which was why scientists during the war had spent so much time and money purifying a rare and more explosive isotope. According to physicists, common uranium could only enter into an explosive reaction if it was set off by an enormous input of energy.
And that, it now appeared, was what had occurred at Bikini. The bomb tested there, it became clear, was a new type of three-stage device: A Hiroshima-style fission bomb was used to set off a fusion-type H-bomb, which in turn provided the energy needed to fission a coating of common uranium. This fission-fusion-fission design was ingenious, a way of enormously increasing the power of an H-bomb for very little money. In theory—and this was part of what frightened observers like Pauling—such a bomb could be made as powerful as desired by simply packing on more cheap, easily available uranium.
The resulting "U-bomb," as it became known, was both incredibly powerful and incredibly dirty. Its appearance spurred a new period of worldwide activism against the development of nuclear weapons.