Oregon State UniversitySpecial Collections & Archives Research Center

Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, 1873-2013

16. Personal Safe. 1912-1993.

The four drawers of Linus Pauling's personal safe contained an astonishingly rich and diverse collection of items which have yielded a much fuller portrait of Pauling's life and activities. Drawer 1 held over seven-hundred letters between Linus and Ava Helen Pauling, most of them love letters. Drawers 2 and 3 contained a number of items that Pauling had deemed to be either sensitive or important, including communications with world-historical figures as varied as John F. Kennedy and Ho Chi Minh. Drawer 4 served as repository for the dozens of pocket notebooks that Pauling carried throughout his life, as well as scores of Dictaphone belts on which Pauling had recorded chapters of a proposed autobiography.


42 boxes

4. Linus Pauling's Safe - Drawer 4.


Note: This drawer is inventoried in chronological order, as it contains mostly small journals and pocket planners from the late 1920's to the 1970's, except for items 4.058-4.100c, which are in a box marked "DIARIES Linus Pauling", and items 4.101-4.105, which were loose in the drawer and are in a file folder.

4.019 - 4.025 (Page: 21 - 30)



4.019.
Diary: 3.75x6" labeled "Paragon S-7845", spiral bound labeled inside by LP "Medical Research" January 29, 1945 - April 11, 1945, with a slide photograph inside labeled "The burning rate of a composite propellant of filaments compared with those of the constituents and an intimate mixture", and a newspaper clipping from the New York Times of letters to the editor regarding support for medical research.

4.020.
Diary: 2.75x5" labeled "Addresses" for 1945 primarily addresses with several small newspaper clippings inside.

4.021.
3.5x6" spiral pages stapled together labeled as "John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation" 1945.

4.022.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled as "Numbers and Addresses" 1946.

4.023.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled "February 194_" "6,7" [1946-1947?].

4.023a.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled "March 194_" and by LP "1946, I think".

4.023b.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled "October 194_" and by LP "7.00x16 Zephyr." for 1946.

4.024.
Diary: 2.5x4.5" labeled "January 194_", and by LP "6, 7" [1946-1947?].

4.024a.
Diary: 3x5" spiral labeled "The Spiral", and by LP "1947".

4.025.
Diary: 3.5x5.75" labeled by LP "Board of Foreign Scholarships" 1947.