Linus Pauling was a scientific genius, the only winner of two unshared Nobel Prizes. But he was also an original, often controversial thinker whose knowledge encompassed an astonishing range of disciplines. A theoretician by nature, he was as active outside of the laboratory as he was in it and was especially outspoken on the obligations of the scientist to society.

He was probably better known for his political activism and his championing of vitamin C than for his brilliant contributions to structural chemistry and molecular biology. Culled from sixty years of his essays, books, speeches, and interviews, and selected with the general reader in mind, Linus Pauling in His Own Words is the first anthology of Pauling's writings, with an introduction that Pauling himself completed only months before his death in 1994.

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Pauling was even more passionate about his social activism than he was about his science. Despite the threat to his professional reputation, he crusaded on behalf of world peace and against atomic weaponry. He denounced the testing of nuclear weapons (his own radiation research helped bring about a ban on testing in the atmosphere, which earned him a Nobel Peace Prize).

At an address he gave to assembled university students in 1954 upon the receipt of his first Nobel Prize, Pauling put his own philosophy into words: "Never put your trust in anything but your own intellect...always think for yourself."