Linus pauling awards

[Introductory remarks by Cliff Mead]

Tom Hager: Although our topic is "The Biographer's Picture of Linus Pauling," I am going to talk less about the picture that I have formed in the course of writing my book than I am about how I formed it -- how one creates a biography -- and how, in this endeavor, I was helped by Pauling himself.

I will start by outlining three pitfalls that await any biographer rash enough to attempt a life of someone as productive, brilliant, and long-lived as Linus Pauling.

The first comes from a story Pauling told me during one of my interviews.

When he was a small boy in Condon, Pauling said, just after the turn of the century he was exploring a building under construction when he was caught by a workman and whipped for trespassing. Pauling remembered that he went home crying, and that his father, incensed when he heard the story, marched down to the local restaurant, found the workman, exchanged words with him, and knocked him down.

For disturbing the pe