Prospects and Retrospects in Chemical Education
Linus Pauling Linus Pauling Institute of Science and
Medicine 2700 Sand Hill Road. Menlo Park, CA 94025
While listenine to the ~recedina I have been trying - speaker . . . to rernll what 1 thwght rhemistry was, baek in 1924. I have a covy of the letter that 1 wrote to Frrd Allen, and 1 find that in i t I did make that statement ahout emphasizing physics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and atomic structure r o l h w t h o n c h e r n i s l r ~ My . ideaof chemistry at that time was that one developed a fiumliarity with rhemical suhstanres, and chemical suhstances to me meant inorganic suhstances hecause all organic substances seemed to me to be about the same. I rememher that some 20 years later I met a man who had a PhD in chemistry from Berkeley, and I said to him that I was interested in bonds between metal atoms-that is, in inorganic compounds that contain metal-metal bonds. I mentioned that there is, of course, one well-known one, the mercurous ion in calomel. It turned out that he, with his PhD in chemistry, did not know that there is a mercury-mercury bond in calomel. I douht that be knew anything about calomel. I was shocked to find that there could be people with a PhD in chemistry who knew so little about descriptive chemistry. I- think that this mieht be a real fault in the teachine of el~~~~-~~~ ~emeutary chemistry low-that students do not become familiar with a considerable number of chemical substances. I rememher the first full-time teaching job that I had, heginning in the fall of 1919, when I was 18 years old, and extending to the summer of 1920. I taught quantitative analysis to second-year students in Oregon State College. I had finished my sophomore year the year before, and when I did not have monev enouah to ao back to the college in the fall, I was given t h e a"ppoin
