Force of Nature- The Life of Linus Pauling

by Thomas Hager

  Pauling fired back as he was leaving for Europe on June 11. "My conscience will not permit me to remain silent when Dr. Libby and other representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission make misleading statements about these superlatively important questions." He informed reporters that he would be seeking contacts to help him with a new petition—this one to be signed by scientists from around the world.

  His petition, it appeared, had put the entire U.S. government on the defensive. Talks were under way in London at which for the first time the USSR and the United States were seriously discussing a test ban, a development unthinkable a year or two earlier. Public opinion had shifted squarely to his side. Perhaps, Pauling began to hope, the summer of 1957 might see a test ban agreement.

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  The Paulings' European trip was highlighted by their first visit to the Soviet Union. Pauling had for years wanted to observe the Soviet experiment firsthand, and when he was invited to attend an international conference on biochemistry in Moscow, along with nine other American scientists, he eagerly said yes. During his visit, Pauling was as outspoken as ever. He planned in his biochemical presentations to review the Mendel-Morgan theory of genetics—still in disfavor in Russia, where Lysenko's ideas were official dogma—and indignantly refused to back down when a translator tried to convince him that promoting Western genetics would be a mistake. On the contrary, he found that his Russian audience did not seem to mind even when he attacked Lysenko's ideas directly. In addition to his professional lectures, he gave a popular talk in a Moscow auditorium on molecular disease, taped a radio address on peace, and spoke against nuclear testing. He and Ava Helen were able to travel a bit and found that the vast reaches of farm land outside the major cities seemed strangely familiar. "I was astonished by the memories it brought back of my life in Eastern Oregon when I was seven or eight years old," Pauling said. "The Russian people seemed to be much like Americans—not those Easterners, you know, from New York and those places, but like real Americans from the West. . .just like us, only more eager for peace."

  There also appeared to be no crime. A German virologist Pauling met at the Moscow conference, for instance, was distraught at losing his bag and all his money in a cab until the cabbie showed up the next day and returned it, money and all, with apologies for not having done so earlier. The Paulings were impressed by that display of honesty and impressed as well with the way scientists were treated in the USSR. They were "top dogs," Pauling found, the most highly respected and handsomely paid professionals in the nation. This was the mark of a good, rational society.

  His tour was guided, of course. He did not see the "psychiatric hospitals" for political dissidents, for instance, nor was he invited to review conditions in the Gulag.

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  When he returned to the United States in the fall, things had changed. The anti-test momentum that seemed so strong a few months earlier had suddenly dissipated.

  Pauling knew at least one reason why. While he had been touring the Soviet Union, the Hungarian-born physicist and media-proclaimed "Father of the H-bomb," Edward Teller, speaking for the AEC, had convinced a great many people that more tests were needed in order to perfect a "clean bomb." Teller was a committed anti-Communist whose family had suffered under the Reds in Hungary. He was certain that without the development of atomic weapons, the Russians would not hesitate to take over the world. He saw it as his personal duty to prevent it. A clean bomb, Teller said, would be almost entirely fusion in its action, eliminating almost all radioactive fallout. Such a bomb, he told Eisenhower, was a perfect battlefield tool, allowing the destruction of enemy soldiers without the danger of drifting radioactivity, without even damaging equipment or buildings. Such a bomb, he said, could be perfected within four or five years if testing was allowed to continue.

  Teller's "clean bomb" idea in the summer of 1957 "seemed to serve effectively as propaganda to stop, for awhile, the growing concern about the horrors of nuclear weapons and nuclear war," Pauling said. The combined vision of this low-fallout nuclear weapon and the intransigence of the Soviet negotiators derailed the London weapons talks, which fell apart entirely in September. The public's attention turned to new issues—the race riots in Little Rock, the launching of Sputnik—and away from concerns about nuclear testing.

  The major powers took advantage of the situation to start an orgy of bomb testing in the fall, blasting more than twice as many bombs in a few months as they had the entire previous year. Sputnik jarred the American government into a new level of respect for its competitors by showing that the Soviets knew enough about rockets to shoot nuclear warheads into America. The arms race heated up, with America announcing another major series of bomb tests for 1958.

  Pauling, deeply disappointed by the shift , responded by trying to write popular articles on the dangers of fallout—he was turned down, however, by both the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post "because there are so many grey areas involved in such a discussion"—and continued working on his worldwide antitesting petition.

  In the fall of 1957 the names began pouring in. When he saw how large the response was among European scientists, Pauling began combing through scientific directories for more likely signatories. He hired a part-time secretary, paid from his own pocket, to oversee the job of typing, making copies, getting translations done, and mailing the petitions. Together with Ava Helen and the help of a few friends, he made certain that the petition was circulated properly both in the United States and internationally—Pauling wanted to make sure that at least one scientist from each of the forty-eight states was included, for instance—and that the names were tallied correctly.

  The results were heartening. By early January 1958 more than nine thousand signatures had been collected from scientists in forty-three nations, including many in the Eastern bloc. Not everyone signed. Pauling’s erstwhile competitor Sir Lawrence Bragg, for instance, wrote that he did not sign simply because "I had not got enough knowledge." That reluctance was echoed by a number of other scientists. Others were more direct. One university president wrote, "Dear Linus: In reference to your letter of November 6, and to the enclosed petition, as you probably imagine, I couldn't disagree with you more heartily. I, therefore, have high hopes that you will fail completely in your undertaking!!!" But a great many did sign, including thirty-five Nobelists and hundreds of members of the world’s most august scientific societies.

  On January 13, 1958, in New York to attend a Nobelists' banquet, he handed a copy of his petition with 9,235 signatures (from researchers in forty-three nations) to Dag Hammarskjold, the secretary-general of the United Nations. He then held a press conference telling the world about the scientists' desire for peace and an end to fallout.

  It proved to be another great publicity coup. Pauling appeared to have single-handedly mobilized the bulk of world scientific opinion behind the need for a test ban. His effort underlined the essential harmony of the global research community, made headlines around the world, and gave renewed heart to anti-bomb activists.

  Again, there was a swift reaction.

  Teller

  To J. Edgar Hoover, Pauling had long been prominent among those "creating fear, misunderstanding, and confusion in the minds of the public" on the fallout issue. As the controversy continued, he made certain that Pauling's Communist-front associations were made available to conservative columnists, who in turn began asking how Pauling had raised all the money needed to circulate such a huge petition. As one newspaper editor wrote, "Anybody who has tried to get a dozen or two names for a local school board petition knows that an operation of the Pauling scale takes thousands of man hours and tens of thousands of dollars." Pauling answered the first round of attacks by explaining that he had organized his petition drive over the kitchen table in his home and that total costs came to about $250, mostly for postage. "When people understand an important question and are eager to do something about it, as the scientists of the world are about this most important q
uestion, it is easy to obtain thousands of signatures," he said.

  The most serious attack, however, came from Edward Teller, who responded to Pauling's petitions by writing a piece for Life magazine entitled "The Compelling Need for Nuclear Tests." The editors added their own cover line in the February issue: "Dr. Teller Refutes 9,000 Scientists." Pauling was incensed when he read it. There was nothing in the article showing that any statement in his petition was wrong; instead, it was a rambling rehash of the AEC's dismissals of fallout fears coupled with a strong argument for continued testing in order to perfect "clean bombs" to hold the Communists at bay.

  Pauling had known Teller slightly since his first days in Munich, where both he and the young Hungarian were learning the ABCs of quantum physics, and he admired Teller as a scientist. But as Teller became the world's most visible scientific proponent of bomb development, Pauling lost his respect for him as a person. It was Teller who pushed for the development of the hydrogen bomb when others advised caution; Teller whose testimony helped strip Oppenheimer of his security clearance; Teller whose close advisory relationship with Lewis Strauss and Eisenhower made him the nation's most powerful scientist in deciding the direction of the U.S. bomb program; passionate, obsessive, tenacious Teller, with his hints of omnipotent knowledge gleaned from highly classified files, who came up with the "clean bomb" idea just in time to derail history's first test-ban negotiations. Einstein might have been ashamed of the bombs his colleagues created, but Teller was proud of them. "To my mind, the distinction between a nuclear weapon and a conventional weapon," he said, "is the distinction between an effective weapon and an outmoded weapon."

  Somewhat surprisingly, given his eminence in science and his noticeable Hungarian accent, Teller was also a compelling communicator, able to speak and write in media-friendly sound bites that resonated with the public. "If we renounce nuclear weapons,” Teller said, “we open the door to aggression." And, later, “Had we not pursued the hydrogen bomb, there is a very real threat that we would now all be speaking Russian. I have no regrets.”

  Teller and Pauling were at once diametrically opposed and much alike. Both held tight to a simplified political vision, both were dogged in their quests, both seemed to enjoy public speaking, and both marshaled impressive scientific facts to support their political positions. They went to war with each other in the spring of 1958.

  The arena was the studio of an educational TV station in San Francisco, where the management had arranged a one-hour televised debate between the two men. On camera Pauling looked tall and thin, tailored and immaculate in an expensive suit. Teller, compact and dark, with prominent, bushy eyebrows, looked by comparison like someone's rumpled old uncle.

  Both men were allowed an opening statement, Pauling first. He went on the offensive, tearing at Teller's Life article for its "many statements that are not true and many statements that are seriously misleading." For instance, Teller had accused Pauling of saying that the development of a clean bomb was impossible when he would certainly never have said that because he did not know enough about the topic.

  Teller, his voice a soothing, gravelly rumble, used his opening time to calmly answer Pauling's points. He had seen Pauling's comments about the clean bomb in the New York Times, he said. Perhaps the reporters had misunderstood Pauling. (The Times did report that Pauling had termed the production of a clean bomb "impossible.") But these points are minor, Teller said. Everyone agrees on the need for peace but not on how to achieve it. World War II, after all, was caused when the decent nations disarmed, allowing Hitler to flourish. The Russians have said they want to bury us, Teller said, and we can't stop them without developing bombs. With more testing we can develop clean bombs for digging canals and excavating mines; we can put the atom to work for mankind. "This alleged damage which the small radioactivity is causing—supposedly cancer and leukemia—has not been proved, to the best of my knowledge, by any decent and clear statistics," Teller concluded. "It is possible that there is damage. It is even possible, to my mind, that there is no damage; and there is the possibility, further, that very small amounts of radioactivity are helpful." How, after all, would evolution occur without mutation?

  "If we proceeded with everything with as great a caution as we are proceeding in the case of nuclear testing, there would be very little progress in the world," he concluded, a smile playing across his face. "Dr. Pauling, as a great progressive, surely does not want that."

  Thrown off guard by Teller's calm and wit, Pauling's responses began sounding shrill, his voice high-pitched and piping compared to Teller's. He made the tactical error of trying to defend Khrushchev's use of the phrase "We will bury you," explaining that the Russian premier was talking about political evolution, not warfare. He then pointed out that Teller and his associates themselves had estimated that fallout might cause fifteen hundred defective mutations a year— one-tenth of Pauling's own current estimate but a recognition of danger nonetheless.

  Teller shot back that this divergence in estimates highlighted the extent of their current ignorance, that with such wide swings in numbers it was not unreasonable to think that there may not even be a single case. Even if there is a risk from testing, Teller said reassuringly, we take risks all the time. Spewing more smog into the air or adding a new food additives to our diet exposes us to a much greater risk. He had even seen a story about how tight pants might cause a significant number of mutations by increasing the temperature in the sperm plasm. According to this, the pants we wear might be far more dangerous than fallout.

  The debate went on this pattern: Pauling raising specific criticisms based on statistical analysis, Teller countering with witticisms, irrelevant comparisons, and visions of bomb-dredged harbors. Pauling ended up sounding humorless and critical; Teller, relaxed and funny.

  When it was over, Pauling felt as though he had debated the devil. Teller had deflected real issues and used public relations tricks to make everything sound fine and fool the American people into a false sense of complacency. Teller exemplified everything that was wrong about the AEC and the military-industrial complex, he was one of the group who believed that atomic war was somehow thinkable, who were making plans for tactical nuclear attacks and calculating how many millions would die, who would willingly sacrifice thousands of children in future generations to push their political and economic agendas instead of putting a fraction of that time or money into the study of peace.

  But Teller was worse than most of them, Pauling thought, because he was a scientist. Scientists in general, his petitions showed, favored curtailing the arms race. Scientists were supposed to lead the way to a rational, peaceful future. Now Pauling realized what kind of scientist Teller was. "Dr. Teller argues in support of continuing nuclear tests because he believes in war, nuclear war," Pauling wrote, almost with a sense of disbelief, after the debate. This ran contrary to everything Pauling believed about the positive role scientists could play in the world, in his schemes for scientific parliaments and a world run happily along scientific lines. In Pauling's mind, Teller was a dark angel fallen from the firmament of science.

  It was the only time the two most public opponents in the nuclear-test-ban controversy would debate face-to-face. "Since that time I have refused to meet or debate [Teller] further because I consider his debating methods improper," Pauling said.

  Instead, Pauling tried to battle Teller in the press. And here, too, he found himself outmaneuvered. While Teller could get an article published in mainstream magazines like Life almost at will, Pauling was denied entry on the grounds that the entire field was too controversial and hazy. When Pauling wrote a piece for Life to rebut Teller's, it was rejected, as his pieces were by a number of other mass-market magazines. The only place he saw his rebuttal published was in the left-wing journal I. F. Stone's Weekly.

  He tried another route. The media might be able to keep him out, but what if he published a book? Teller was just about to release a book, Our Nuclear Future; Pauling thought he
could write one that would help counter whatever influence that had as well as serving as a full public answer to Teller's Life article. Dictating, madly, from dawn to dusk, over two long weekends in March 1958, he completed the bulk of the manuscript, a distillation of everything he had learned over the past years about nuclear bombs and fallout.

  The book, No More War!, was an uneasy mix of science, politics, and moralizing. The opening chapters were flat and straightforward, a lecture by Professor Pauling on atomic fission and fusion, the creation of fallout, and the link between genetic mutations and radiation. There were occasional eye-openers, such as the fact that all 100,000 genes from all 3 billion people on earth—the entire gene pool of the human race—would form a ball 1/25 inch in diameter, but generally Pauling was careful to avoid controversy, couching all of his estimates of genetic damage moderately and meticulously outlining his reasoning in each case. Only occasional barbs were thrown at Teller and the AEC crowd. For instance, Pauling answered Teller's comment that a little radiation might be good for you by paraphrasing, J. B. S. Haldane: My clock is not keeping perfect time. It is conceivable that it will run better if I shoot a bullet through it, but it is much more probable that it will stop altogether.

  Then, halfway through, the book changed gears to become a frontal attack on Teller, Strauss, the AEC, and the arms race. "The public has been given the impression that there is a great disagreement among scientists about the facts," Pauling wrote. "I think that the explanation of this situation is that the spokesmen for the Atomic Energy Commission have often made statements that seem to be misleading. Though many of the statements are true, they may convey the wrong impression. Sometimes the statements have turned out to be wrong." He then stated each misleading statement and, one by one, demolished them.