Linus Pauling: the Teacher

Uno splendido sito dedicato a Linus Pauling: la vita, le scoperte, momenti di vita accademica e non, immagini dei suoi appunti, della sua vita accademica, di scienziato e uomo politico; soprattutto vi troverete l’intera versione del libro The nature of chemical bond, un classico della chimica e una delle più importanti opere di letteratura scientifica di tutti i tempi. Interessante il Pauling docente:

Pauling cared deeply about teaching, enjoyed it, and wanted to make it come alive for students. He believed a chemical education should start with a sense of wonder. "I know of no chemist who was attracted to this field because of theoretical chemistry," he wrote his superiors at Caltech. "Instead, it is an interest in chemicals and their reactions which first attracted the chemist." In his own lectures he used chemical props and tricks like a magician, showing students how chemistry worked rather than telling them. He proposed giving students drawings of molecules "as we now picture them" to give them a concrete feel for what they were studying. Such molecular drawings, now common in most chemistry textbooks, had not been used before.