Speaker Biographies
Session 1
February 28, 2001, 9:00a.m. - 12:00p.m.
Clifford Mead is Emeritus Head of the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections, a position that he held from 1987 to 2010, beginning with the first arrival of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers to the university. He has authored or co-edited several publications including The Pauling Symposium: A Discourse on the Art of Biography (1996), Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker (2001) and The Pauling Catalogue: Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at Oregon State University (2006).
Stephen Lawson is Administrative Officer of the Linus Pauling Institute, where he has worked for more than thirty years as a scientist and administrator. He is also a former colleague and co-worker of Linus Pauling, having collaborated with Pauling on cancer and vitamin C, a theory of superconductivity, and other topics.
Paul Risser served as President of Oregon State University from 1996 to 2002, before accepting the position of Chancellor of the Oklahoma Higher Education System. He is also a biologist of international renown who has published widely in the field of ecosystem analysis.
Ahmed Zewail is the recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, awarded for his research in femtoscience. He is the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and directs the Institute's Physical Biology Center for Ultrafast Science and Technology.
Biographer and science writer Thomas Hager has written or edited five books on medicine and science. For six years he served as Director of Communications and Marketing for the University of Oregon, and spent two years directing the University of Oregon Press. His books include Force of Nature: The Life of Linus Pauling, Linus Pauling: Scientist and Peacemaker (ed. with Clifford Mead), The Demon Under the Microscope and The Alchemy of Air.
Session 2
February 28, 2001, 1:30p.m. - 5:00p.m.
Jack Dunitz is an emeritus faculty member at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Zurich, with which he has been affiliated since 1957. A renowned crystallographer and close friend of the Pauling family, Dunitz has authored over 350 scientific papers and two books on topics related to structural chemistry, including Reflections on Symmetry in Chemistry...and Elsewhere, co-written with Edgar Heilbronner.
Robert Paradowski is a Professor in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is the official biographer of Linus Pauling and is currently writing a multi-volume work that will greatly expand upon his doctoral dissertation, The Structural Chemistry of Linus Pauling. More broadly, Paradowski's research interests include the history of chemistry and Roman Catholic studies.
Linus Pauling, Jr. is the first-born of Linus and Ava Helen Pauling's four children. A past executive officer of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, Pauling enjoyed a long and successful career practicing psychiatry in Honolulu, Hawaii.
John Byrne is an Oregon State University President Emeritus, having led the institution from 1984 to 1995. The first dean of OSU's widely-respected School of Oceanography, Byrne's service to the university spans more than forty years.