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viii Acknowledgments Writing the life of Ava Helen Miller Pauling has been a peculiarly local and unexpectedly personal project. Every day I walk past the building whereAva Helen and Linus Pauling first met. Every day I look out over the quadrangle through which they strolled or hurried to get to their classes. My History Department office is in the old Home Economics Building, where Ava Helen took many of her courses at Oregon Agricultural College. Living and working in Corvallis since 1989, I had heard of Linus Pauling many times. He is a beloved and honored alumnus, as well as a native son of Oregon. Early in my years at Oregon State University, I served on the Ava Helen Pauling Peace Lecture committee. Until several years ago, that was my only contact with the woman whose life I have the privilege to narrate in this book. Then one day, Linda Richards, a gifted graduate student in the History of Science, mentioned to me in passing that nobody had yet used the Ava Helen Pauling portion of the Pauling Papers. Aha! Working in the OSU Special Collections, which houses the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, is as close to archival heaven as any scholar is likely to reach. Cliff Mead, Chris Petersen, and other staff members and students over the years have created a model environment to house the sprawling archive and host visiting researchers. My own visits have been frequent and simple: just a stroll across the campus. And because these professionals are pioneers of the digitized archive, anybody with a computer connection can access in most cases document-level records in the collections. In addition, the website offers narratives and chronologies, hundreds of photos, scanned and transcribed documents, and video records of special events celebrating Pauling’s and other researchers’ places in the history of science. Special Collections at OSU is a gift to the curious. Cliff Mead presided over the creation of this collection, collaborating with Linus Pauling to deliver, house, and catalogue the thousands of shelf feet of documents, books, and memorabilia that Linus and his family so generously gave to OSU. Cliff introduced me to the archive and became my guide and cheerleader in writing about Ava Helen. When he retired, Acknowledgments ix Chris Petersen took on day-to-day leadership during the year that I was finishing my research. Besides profiting from his knowledge about the Paulings, I have been lucky enough to collaborate with Chris on several oral history interviews and a day of talking with and filming Linus Pauling, Jr., interacting with the students at Linus Pauling Middle School in Corvallis. Trevor Sandgathe, also on the Special Collections staff, wrote the first narrative of Ava Helen Pauling’s life, an invaluable orientation as I plunged into the papers. Thanks also to Larry Landis, Karyle Butcher, Faye Chadwell, and Anne Bahde of the Valley Library. I have built up many debts and friendships at the library over the years, and I would prefer to name more names, but I will resist. The Pauling family personifies generosity. Dr. Linus Pauling, Jr., flies from Honolulu to Oregon to participate in events that carry his father’s name. In this, he follows a practice of selflessly honoring his father begun several decades ago when he stepped in and helped stabilize the Linus Pauling Institute when it was floundering. Now the institute is flourishing in a new building integrated with science teaching and research programs on the Oregon State University campus. I have been privileged to meet Linus on at least four occasions over the last few years. He has generously shared his memories of his parents and his own early life. His participation has enriched this account immeasurably. He and I have different perspectives on his mother, appropriately, but his intimate knowledge has pushed me to complicate my picture of her place in the world. He responded immediately and at length to my plea for additional details about his mother’s last days, though the memories had to be painful. He is an extraordinary person; I have deep affection for him and gratitude for the opportunity to get to know him a bit. I was also fortunate enough to talk with Cheryl Pauling, Kay Pauling, and Grace Pauling in the course of preparing this biography, and I owe them thanks not just for their time, but for their honesty and insights. Thanks also to Therese Graf Tanalski, who wrote to me about her memories of Linus...

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