Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling stands alone in Nobel history as the only person to win two unshared prizes: the 1954 Chemistry prize for unraveling the nature of chemical bonds and the 1962 Peace prize for campaigning against nuclear testing. His 1961 book on vitamin C sold over 1 million copies, illustrating his reach beyond academia. Pauling’s unique dual-prize achievement underscores a career that merged science with activism, backed by concrete evidence like his 1951 formulation of alpha-helix protein structures.