SIMPLE IS A RELATIVE WORD During World War I, when the Govern- ment requested scientific aid in comhat- ting the submarine menace, much advice was received. One of these contributions remains unique to this day."The solution of the submarine problem is simple," said this advisor. "All we have to do is boil the ocean!" Of course this is not a fair sample of the scientific help received by the Gov- ernment during 1917-18, hut I think all will agree that a better job was done dur- ing the more recent conflict. The Office of Scientific Research and Development had at its disposal the best brains in the country, both home-grown and imported. And many valuable contributions to the final victory were made by them. Among the distinguished scientists whose services were enlisted by the U. S. Government was Linus Pauling of the California Institute of Technology. Dur. ing the war he carried on work for sev- eral divisions of NDRC and for the Com- mittee on Medical Research. This young professor has ranged so widely and so rapidly throughout the Elysian Fields of learning that it is not easy for an ordi- nary mortal to follow him, even for brief descriptive purposes. He is a rara avis, a child prodigy whose genius has grown and strengthened with the years. He was horn in 1901, and his Baconian curiosity ,was first manifested when young Linus was only thirteen years of age. Beginning not long after that, he has somehow found time to do important work on the structure of crystals and molecules, application of quantum me- chanics to chemistry, rotation of mole- cules in crystals, size of ions, theory of stability of complex crystals, nature of the chemical bond, line spectra, and on immune-chemistry. In the field of serol- ogy alone, Dr. Pauling and his co-work- ers have published since 1940 no fewer than 14 papers concerned with the the- ory of the strncture and formation of antibodies. He has the standing of an eminent authority in all of these fields, and in consequence his labors have been rewarded with most of the major honors in American chemistry. As an illustration of this universality and apparent ease, let us consider briefiy a paper recently published. "On October 3,1940, at a meeting in Washington.. . mention was made of the need for an in- strument which could measure and indi- cate the partial pressure of oxygen in a gas. Dtufng the next few days we devised and constructed a simple and effective instrument for this purpose."' DR; LINUS P When put that way it sounds rather easy-a simple problem solved in a few days. But a closer examination of this "simple device" reveals a new. and extremely ihgenious instrument which could not have been developed in a few days at Government request, except by a mind stored with scientific data and guided by a disciplined imagination. A brief description of this instrument is in order. It is essentially an oxygen meter which depends for its efficacy on the fact that the magnetic susceptibility of molecular oxygen is very much greater than that of other common gases. A small glass dumbbell with mirror attached is suspended on a stretched fused-silica fi- ber in a inhomogeneous magnetic field. The magnetic field is produced by a small pair of Alnico V permanent magnets.The gas under test is permitted to flow around the dumbbell, which acts as a test body. How sieple! How easy! And yet-w&& one considers how tiny are the forces that must he measured, how remarkable that the thing should work! Evkn with a gas of relatively strong magnetic suscep tibility like oxygen, the forces due to easily-produeed magnetic fields are very small. Nevertheless, the instrument is so cunningly constructed and calibrated that it does work. Several hundred of them have been produced, with un- doubted usefulness to the war effort. It is a pleasure to record that Professor Pauling's thoughts have. in recent years been turning more and more in the diree- tion of work that is of fundamental im- portance to biology and medicine. The