Linus Pauling

Coined the term "orthomolecular" in 1968 and gave the vitamin argument its most credentialed advocate — the only person to win two unshared Nobel Prizes.

Pauling came to nutrition late and from the most credentialed position imaginable — a Nobel in chemistry, a second in peace, and a career that had already reshaped structural biology. When he began arguing in 1968 that the right molecules in the right concentrations could treat disease, he gave a lay movement something it had never had: an unimpeachable scientist willing to say it out loud.

He founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1973 and co-founded the Orthomolecular Medical Society with Richard Kunin in 1976.

The contested part. The vitamin C and cancer work, done with Ewan Cameron, did not replicate. Mayo Clinic trials found no benefit, and mainstream oncology treated the claim as discredited. Pauling disputed the trial design — the Mayo studies used oral dosing where his own protocol used intravenous — and that specific objection has aged better than the rest of the argument. Both things are true, and a serious archive says both.

Any Pauling recording is the single highest-value item that could surface in this collection.

Selected books

• Vitamin C and the Common Cold (1970)
• Cancer and Vitamin C, with Ewan Cameron (1979)
• How to Live Longer and Feel Better (1986)

Rights

Estate or foundation: Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University. Clearance requests for this speaker's recordings go here.