Meet the Scientist: Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. His contributions to the theory of the chemical bond as well as his work on the structures of biological molecules inspired the work of James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins and Rosalind Franklin on the structure of DNA; making it possible for geneticists to crack the DNA code. Pauling's approach combined methods and results from X-ray crystallography, molecular model building, and quantum chemistry.