Volume 42, Number 18 · November 16, 1995
Odd Man In
By Jeremy Bernstein
Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling
by Thomas Hager
Simon and Schuster, 721 pp., $35.00
Sometime in the 1970s I began wondering whether Linus Pauling, winner of two Nobel Prizes, for chemistry in 1954 and for peace in 1962, had become a crank. In 1970 he had published a best-selling monograph entitled Vitamin C and the Common Cold, whose thesis was that daily megadoses of vitamin C could prevent or help to cure many diseases—the common cold being the prime example. But Pauling was not content simply to publish his views, which were seen as unsound by many authorities. One could often find him on television with his somewhat high-pitched voice, his aureole of white hair, and his faintly rictal grin, promoting the virtues of vitamin C. He was also giving interviews to publications like the National Enquirer and Midnight, and he was suing various other publications that disagreed with him. In short, he appeared to many people to have become unhinged.
Review, 4397 words
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