Linus Pauling Gets the Jitters

At the edge of the abyss, the celebrated chemist delivered a lecture to nature

The exalted American chemist and social activist suffered from a profound case of the jitters on Feb. 30, 1960. Dr. Linus Pauling had reached the Edge of the Earth — otherwise known as the Big Sur bluffs — and it scared the bejabbers out of him.

So he did what any accomplished genius who was afflicted with the jitters would do: He peered into the darkness and lectured the churning sea about the nature of chemical bonds.

It seemed like the right thing at the time. If nothing else, Dr. Pauling had to know that heavy-duty brainwork is a great way to avoid thinking about fear, fatalism or falling off a cliff. 

He was 58 at the time, and he was regarded as one of the 20 greatest scientists to ever roam this planet. Dr. Pauling was a chemist with a conscience, a Nobel Prize winner, an outspoken champion for international peace, and a genius with an inclination for dissent. 

Admired as he was, the genius community was naturally concerned that the great man had gone missing when he wandered from his Big Sur home on that January morning. And his extended family and colleagues were distraught after later hearing reports that Dr. Pauling had died. 

He was still alive, of course; the report was erroneous. But he definitely was not in a good place. Dr. Pauling was utterly stranded, seized by an overwhelming dread that’s known to happen in the haunting isolation of Big Sur. Some folks have been known to lose connection down there, in more ways than one.  And now it had happened to Dr. Pauling.

It started innocently enough. Dr. Pauling told his wife Ava Helen that he wanted to check the fencing that surrounded their 163-acre property overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Salmon Creek, way down south of Gorda. The Paulings had purchased the land, the crude cabin and the crusty old caretaker that came with it four years earlier. It was their quiet getaway. On this particular getaway morning, Dr. Pauling strolled out the door wearing a pair of slacks, a light jacket and his trademark beret. He was due back in time for lunch with friends.

During his ramble, he ventured along a couple of bluffs, following a deer trail that suddenly ended at the Edge of the Earth, near Salmon Cone. The celebrated chemist had apparently miscalculated his route, and he ended up at a precarious dead end. Whoops. Now he was perched on a narrow ledge littered with broken shale and slick leaves, a sheer rock face behind and a 200-foot-plus drop in front of him.

He later admitted that he got “the jitters.” Too frightened to move from this predicament, he hunkered down and waited for help. He knew Ava would summon authorities when he hadn’t returned.  

Sure enough, she called the forest service early in the afternoon. 

A search party formed, and it spread out over the region. A bloodhound was summoned. An Army helicopter from Fort Ord surveilled the area.

Later in the day and from off in the distance, Dr. Pauling heard searchers calling his name. He shouted back, but he couldn’t be heard. Have you ever tried shouting into the abyss?

As the sun set on the western horizon, he realized that this scary place would be his situation for the evening. He dug out a bit of earth from his three-by-six foot perch, fashioning a comfortable foxhole in which to settle.

But he didn’t want to get too comfortable. He dared not slumber; rolling off a cliff while asleep would be a dumb way to die. And Dr. Pauling was the opposite of dumb.

So he devised a strategy to keep himself awake. He decided to think his way through the night. He would engage the brain. The amygdala is the organ in the brain that responds to fear. He was brainy enough to know he needed more hippocampus and less amygdala.

As luck would have it, he had been preparing a lecture about the nature of chemical bonds that he was due to deliver in several days at the California Institute of Technology, where he was a professor. So he delivered the hour-long lecture to the sea and the rocks below.

Then he recited the elements in the periodic table.

Then he thought long and hard about the Mohs Mineral Hardness Scale, whatever the hell that is.

Then, noticing the stars were out this night, he used his walking stick to try to figure out if he could keep track of time by the movement of constellations.

Then he amused himself by rattling off long strings of sequential numbers in English, then in French, then in German, and then in Italian.

And that’s how Dr. Linus Pauling got through a night perched above the abyss.

Just before 10 a.m. the next day, Dr. Pauling heard a young fellow — his name was Terry Currence, of Pacific Grove — shouting his name from the beach beneath the ledge. Currence had been in the area to fish when he was recruited to join the search party. Dr. Pauling called to Currence below, and this time he was heard.  Currence and Sheriff’s Sgt. Edward Thornburg arrived after scrambling to the location. Thornburg was able to talk Dr. Pauling along the path until he felt safe from peril.

Freshly rescued, Dr. Pauling good-naturedly spoke to a couple of reporters who had rushed off to Big Sur to cover the story of the missing scientist. He pretty much laughed it all off, talked about having the jitters. He recounted all the deep thinking he did while he was stranded. He also declared that “I guess I’ll stay off of steep places and avoid climbing for a while.”

The reporters then reported that Dr. Pauling went home and got some deserved sleep.

The next day, Dr. Pauling and Ava packed up their car and headed to Pasadena for his scheduled lecture, the one he had practiced on the ledge. When he got to Caltech, a group of friends and colleagues greeted him with a small welcome-back party, but he walked past them without saying a word.

He locked his office and slipped a note under the door saying he’d be unavailable all day. A colleague called his grandson, who showed up to drive Dr. Pauling to his Pasadena home. 

Dr. Pauling’s night on the Edge of the Earth had impacted him more deeply than anyone first imagined. A doctor ordered several days of bed rest after determining Dr. Pauling had gone into a mild shock. The patient also suffered agonizing physical pain brought on by a severe case of poison oak, which he got while strolling along the deer trail.

“The emotional and physical exhaustion that he suffered from his night on the cliff forced Pauling to take a much-needed rest and to finally let out some of the emotions that he had been bottling up for so many years of relentless work as a scientist and activist,” according to an account of the incident recorded by The Pauling Blog. The blog is an online publication by Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center.

Dr. Pauling followed the doctor’s orders, and he returned to his life as a professional genius within two weeks. He also continued to advocate for disarmament and peace, an effort that secured him another Nobel — the Peace Prize — two years later.

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Sources:
The Monterey Peninsula Herald
The Salinas Californian
The New York Times
Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives Research Center

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