Dr. Linus Pauling, Nobel Laureate
Born in 1901 in Portland, Oregon, Linus Pauling was a chemist, biologist, physicist , and professor at the California Institute of Technology. Prior to the Baby Tooth Survey, he won the 1954 Nobel Prize in chemistry. With this recognition, Pauling was given a little more leeway in terms of his speaking out against the government. After creating a petition against nuclear testing in 1957, on which he collected the signatures of 9,000 scientists from forty-nine different countries, and presenting it to the United Nations, he was called to a court hearing before Congress . However, as a reporter for the New York Times wrote, “the committee has decided to drop it rather than prosecute a Nobel scientist who commands considerable public sympathy” (Unknown Author, Pauling on Stand). Unlike most scientists of the time, he defied the reckless ways of the bureaucracy, but did it in a way that was non-violent and made him a pacifist as well.