Thousands of students the world over learn principles and equations, constants and laws from Maxwell relations to Plank's constant without an acquaintance with the history behind the chemists and physicists who spent their lives in dedication to these particular aspects of science. Science, in the student's mind, becomes reduced and distant, an obscure set of laws developed in an irrelevant time by chemists far removed from the modern situation. A legacy is forgotten, a sense of ancestral pride lost. In an attempt to combat these losses, this essay will be concerned with the history of two famous chemists, Justus von Liebig and Linus Pauling. This paper is written in the spirit of which Aeneas must have felt as described in the above quotation as he views the history of Rome laid out upon a bronze shield crafted by the god of metal forgery, Vulcan. I encourage the reader to let this essay be a historical shield of sorts depicting two famous scientists and their decedents who have left an indelible mark not only upon the scientific community, but the global one as well. This paper will first provide a brief biography of each chemist and then proceed to explore their relationship to each other, the field of chemistry, and history as a whole. An academic genealogy diagram is also provided at the end of this report.

Justus von Liebig was born in Darmstadt, Germany on the disputed date of May 10, 1803, according to A. W. Hofmann, Liebig's most famous student. (1) Liebig's father, Johann Georg Liebig (1175-185) was a dry salter and merchant and manufacturer of household chemicals such as varnishes and paints. He also wished to expand his business into the realm of pharmacy. Liebig's mother, Maria Caroline Moser (1781-1855) was an illegitimate child of probable Jewish ancestry who managed the hardware portion of the Liebig family business. (2) Justus von Liebig had an older brother, who would die an early death in 1822, three younger brothers, only two of whom would live to see Liebig reach his pinnacle of fame in the 1830's, and five younger sisters, only one of whom lived through infancy. (3) Justus was sent to the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt at the age of eight, two years ahead of the average student, but left at the age of fourteen without receiving his Abitur, or degree. Liebig writes that this was because his classes were not to his liking, but it is also believed that his father could no longer afford tuition as heavy taxes were leveed against Hessen-Darmstadt for allegiances to the French before Napoleon's defeat in 1815. (4) Liebig was then apprenticed to a pharmacist, but once again was forced to leave his education due to his father's financial impairments. From 1817-1819, Liebig studied independently at home in Darmstadt while helping his father with the family business. In 1809, Liebig entered studies in pharmacy at the University of Bonn. He would then follow K.W.G. Kastner, one of his professors, to the University of Erlangen where he would form a militant student group, the Korps Rhenia, who pushed for democracy. His involvement with this unruly group led to his interrogation by the German government. Luckily for Liebig, he would receive no formal punishment for his activity with this now illegal underground society. Throughout his life he would have no other association with politics, save for his enrollment in the Giessen home militia in 1848. (5) Also, luckily for Liebig, his homosexual relationship with the poet Count August Graf von Platen was so disguised that accounts of this relationship were not available to the world until the publishing of a thorough biography of Platen by Peter Buum. (6) Homosexuality was largely unaccepted during this time period; disclosure of this information would have greatly hindered his academic career. The Lutheran Liebig would later come to marry a devout catholic, Henriette Moldenhauer, in May of 1826 and have two sons, Georg and Hermann, and three daughters, Agnes, Johanna, and Marie. (7) Liebig received his degree in chemistry from the University of Erlangen in 1824 after completing his graduate work in Paris under the famous pneumatic chemist, Gay-Lussac. He then returned to Germany to a professorship at the University of Giessen under the government's wishes after such a strong recommendation by Alexander von Humboldt. (7) It was here that he would establish what is heralded as the "first proper teaching laboratory." (8) This led to the vast increase in the number of laboratory trained chemists and laboratory training schools which would cause nineteenth century Germany to be so strongly associated with the study of organic chemistry. (9) He would develop the methods and techniques which would change how the chemical community studied its science. While it took Berzelius eighteen months to analytically study seven substances, Liebig could have it done in one week. His improvements were not through ground-breaking discovery, but through refinement of the existing processes of research. (10) Liebig would also make various other contributions to the science of organic chemistry, especially in the areas of physiology and agricultural chemistry. Liebig would meet his death at 5:30 P.M. on April 18th, 1873 of a common cold which turned into pneumonia. He was buried on April 20^th in Sudfriedshof Cemetery in Bavaria. (12)

Liebig's importance as the mentor of a generation of chemists is easily seen through a search of a database such as the Chemical Genealogy Database. It is no surprise, then, to find that Linus Pauling is the academic descendent of Liebig. C. Schmidt, who studied under Liebig, would become the advisor to one of the most important men in physical chemistry, F.W. Ostwald (13), whose early work on chemical affinity would inspire Pauling to explore the nature of the chemical bond. (14) It should be noted that the academic genealogy tree provided at the end of this paper branches at this point with one limb leading through Luther, Bray, and Taube to Augustana College's physical chemistry professor, Dr. Arlen Viste. Ostwald also became the advisor to Arthur Amos Noyes (15), the CalTech chemistry department chair who would offer Pauling a fellowship. (16) It was finally R.G. Dickinson, Noyes's student, who would become Pauling's graduate school advisor. (17) Let us move, then, to a brief history of Linus Pauling, academic descendant of the great chemist, Justus von Liebig.

Linus Pauling was born on February 28, 1901 in Portland, Oregon to Herman Henry William Pauling, a pharmacist, and Lucy Isabelle Pauling, a dedicated housewife. (18) Later, Pauling would gain two sisters, Pauline and Lucile. The Pauling family moved several times during Linus's childhood eventually leaving the rural town of Condon for the city of Portland. (19) Linus was also introduced to death at an early age, but unlike Liebig, this death was not of a sibling but that of his father on June 11, 1911 of peritonitis while Pauling was only 9 years old. (20)

Linus Pauling grew up as a fairly nondescript boy, neither being recognized by others as exceptional nor gifted, even though he obtained the status of a high school senior at the age of fifteen. (21) Pauling's love of science and natural aptitude for this study went largely unnoticed. Pauling was unfettered, though; he preferred his solitude and independence from others, including his family. (22) Linus recalls some of his early independent scientific endeavors as he collected insects using potassium cyanide and plaster of paris for the active ingredients in an insect killing jar. (23) It was his only close childhood friend, though, that would introduce him formally to the world of chemical experimentation. Lloyd Alexander Jeffress sparked Pauling's interest in chemistry as he reacted sugar, potassium chlorate, and sulfuric acid in a ceramic bowl in his bedroom. Pauling was astounded at the resulting steam and pile of black carbon. It was at this moment that Pauling states in an autobiographical account that he exclaimed, "I am going to be a chemist!" (24) His religious beliefs were also developed through his interest in logical science, and at the age of twelve he had discounted most of the Biblical miracles as scientific phenomena. (25)

In a striking parallel to Liebig, Pauling did not receive a high school diploma. He dropped out of school at the age of fifteen two courses short of graduation requirements. Linus's mother convinced Pauling to take a job as a machinist to provide the now struggling family with a source of income besides his mother's boarding house. Linus left this job upon admittance to the Oregon Agricultural College (OAC) (26), now Oregon State University (27), in Corvallis. It was here that Pauling would intensely study mathematics and chemistry, become a teacher, and meet his wife, then Ava Helen Miller. Linus fell in love with this bright home economics student after she gave her more than adequate response to a question regarding ammonium hydroxide. Ava Helen reciprocated Linus's feelings and they became married in Salem on June 1, 1923 after Pauling's first year at CalTech as a graduate student. (28) They both lived in Pasadena, where Linus received his graduate degree in 1925 after many difficulties including the year during his undergraduate work in which he could not study due to financial reasons. Pauling now would travel to Germany to perform graduate research with Arnold Sommerfeld at the University of Munich, one of the schools to develop a superb chemistry program out of Liebig's nurturing of the study in Germany in the early nineteenth century. He then returned to CalTech to become to a professor until 1963, upon which he would depart to other endeavors, ultimately founding the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1973. (29) During this time, Pauling's life would be filled with excitement and controversy. He would work on various aspects of molecular biology and structural chemistry such as the model of the alpha helix, the nature of sickle-cell anemia, x-ray crystallography (30), which Pauling's student, James Holmes Sturdivant would further develop (31), and his unifying work on the nature of the chemical bond which would earn him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on December 10^th, 1954. (32) This would not be the only Nobel Prize Pauling would win, though. He received the Nobel Peace Prize on October 10^th, 1963, the day The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty went into effect. It was for his work in backing this treaty that he received the prize. His stance on nuclear weapons led to much of the controversy surrounding this great man's life as he was denied passports out of the country on several occasions due to the rampant McCarthyism of the times. (33)

In the December of 1981, Linus would suffer the loss of his wife to cancer which she had been battling with vitamin C instead of the standard treatment of chemotherapy. Pauling spent the last years of his life campaigning the benefits of vitamin C, and developing the Linus Pauling Heart Foundation. Linus would also sadly succumb to cancer at the age of 93 as he died at his ranch at Big Sur on August 19, 1994. (34)

Both Liebig and Pauling have had similar effects upon the scientific community. Both were instrumental in influencing and proliferating scientific research in each chemist's century. Liebig opened the doors of laboratory research and education of thousands of European chemists, while Pauling was influential in the development of x-ray crystallography and the study of the chemical bond and also founded such institutions as the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine and the Linus Pauling Heart foundation. Both chemists persevered through early schooling difficulties and delays at precocious ages to eventually obtain their degrees which would allow them to achieve their scientific legacies. Liebig's descendants have been listed above as was Pauling's pupil, James Holmes Sturdivant. Pauling was also an advisor to Edgar William Bright and the Nobel prize winning chemist, William Nunn Lipscomb as well as a father of all modern thought concerning the nature of the chemical bond.

Liebig and Pauling definitely differ, though, in their relationships to the global community. As was mentioned above, Liebig, except for a few minor isolated cases, was largely unconcerned with politics or the non-scientific world. His contributions to the global community came solely through his achievements in scientific education. Liebig writes quite eloquently in a letter to The British Association for The Advancement of Science, that "all mankind have a claim to the blessings and benefits which accrue from [science's] cultivation," and that this "influence upon mental culture...enable[s] the mind to recognise, in the phenomena of nature, proofs of an Infinite Wisdom." (35) On the other hand, there is Pauling, who is most well-known for his anti-nuclear activities which led to his Nobel Peace Prize rather than his many enormous contributions to the fields of chemistry. Pauling is also remembered for his many lectures on the positive attributes of vitamin C given in his later life. (36)

It is is easily derived from the academic genealogy from Liebig to Pauling that Pauling's education was definitely effected by the achievements of Liebig. One must question whether Pauling's scientific activities, as well as those of the scientific community, would have come this far without the great educational contributions of Liebig. During the century between 1830 and 1930, scientific achievements boomed as well as the field of physical chemistry. The aforementioned Ostwald and other chemists such as Arrhenius, Boltzmann, and Kohlrausch would begin to develop this study in Europe. (37) More specifically, the writings and works of G.N. Lewis inspired and spurred on Pauling (38) as well as guest lectures at CalTech from such notable scientists as Niels Bohr, Arthur Sommerfeld, Albert Einstein, Peter Debye, and Paul Ehrenfest. These were the scientists who would provide the knowledge base from which Pauling would work. (39) Also, since Pauling's reputation as a truly outstanding scientist, which can be seen through the wonderful reception with which the announcement of his Nobel Prize in chemistry was received (40), gave him a "bully pulpit" from which to attack nuclear arms, one must question whether the vast strides he made for peace could have been achieved otherwise.

It is obviously shown through the above report and analysis how important a sense of scientific heritage is. Through the tracing of academic genealogy, one becomes aware of the importance and role of chemistry in today's world. The chemist finds himself/herself with almost, this author dares to say, a feeling of scientific destiny. Where then will the academic genealogy diagram branch next? Will any of the students in Dr. Arlen Viste's Fall 1998 History of Chemistry class continue this tree? That is obviously an impossible question to answer as we have no access to a history such as Virgil's Aeneas was provided. Though, it seems that the great chemists have chosen their own destinies, as shown through the perseverence of Justus von Liebig and Linus Pauling. These chemists always seemed to have a faith in their abilities to reach their goals even when their earliest experiences in academia worked to persuade them otherwise. They saw their futures through the readings and works of their academic ancestry which became their effective Vulcan's shields. Justus von Liebig and Linus Pauling joyfully chose to lift their destinies upon their shoulders to become the great chemists they were and academic ancestors for generations to come. Liebig and Pauling called upon the world to take notice; the world eventually and emphatically responded.

References

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