"He Believes ..."

Personally, halo-haired Linus Pauling, "59, is regarded by those who know him as a gracious gentleman. Professionally, Nobel Prizewinner Pauling, professor of chemistry at Caltech, is recognized as one of the world's most eminent scientists. Politically, Pauling's naive flirtation with the left has made him a highly controversial figure, viewed by many as a kind of kook.

Pauling's scientific credentials are of unalloyed gold. He won his 1954 Nobel Prize for his explanation of the chemical forces that make atoms stick together as the molecules that are the stuff of all matter. His book, The Nature of the Chemical Bond (condemned for "idealism" in Stalin's Russia), is a scientific classic. Pauling has branched into other fields of science, including biochemistry and genetics, with distinguished results. Even now, his attempt to find the hereditary chemical causes of mental deficiencies is beginning to show exciting progress.

Long Lists. But if Linus Pauling's list of scientific honors is as long as his arm, so is the list of way-out political organizations he has supported. Pauling is a signer and, with all the zeal of a highbrowed Babbitt, a joiner. He will put his name on most anything presented to him with even a faint humanitarian argument. Many of the outfits he has endorsed were merely odd. But some were undeniably Communist fronts, and they have got him in trouble.

None of Pauling's ventures has landed him in more controversy than his crusade for ending nuclear test explosions. In 1957 Pauling circulated a petition eventually signed by 11,021 scientists from 49 countries, including more than 200 from the Soviet Union. It demanded "that immediate action be taken to effect an international agreement to stop the testing of all nuclear weapons," but it made no mention of any control or inspection safeguards. Although the genetic effect of test fallout is still a wide-open scientific question, Pauling, backed by his prestige in genetics, nonetheless said without qualification that continuing the tests would lead "to an increase in the number of seriously defective children that will be born in future generations."

High-Minded. Last week the U.S. Senate's Internal Security Subcommittee, temporarily chaired by Connecticut's Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd, called upon Pauling to testify about his petition. Pauling clashed with the subcommittee when it asked him to name the people who had helped him circulate the petition. Standing on "conscience, morality and justice" rather than invoking constitutional privilege, Pauling refused. Said he: "I am convinced that these names would be used for reprisals against idealistic, high-minded workers for peace." It apparently did not occur to him that perhaps some of his co-petitioners might like to be identified by name as high-minded workers for peace.

Having thus risked contempt of Congress charges, Pauling spent the rest of the week in debate. Arguing that the New York Times account of his testimony had made him appear a Communist sympathizer, Pauling wrote to the paper: "Your very poor article about me has strengthened my opinion that the Times is rapidly becoming an unreliable newspaper." Appearing at Johns Hopkins University for a speech, Pauling called the Senate subcommittee's Tom Dodd a "militarist."

Replied Dodd, who has in fact made a Senate name for himself as an articulate advocate of international law and order:

"He believes he is working for peace. I know I am working for peace. But I am one of those who believe that our negotiations for disarmament must be based on effective inspection, and until we have that kind of agreement, American strength and firmness offer the only guarantee of a stable peace."

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