Ava Pauling's Vision of Peace
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2 min readAva Pauling, wife of renowned chemist Linus Pauling, was born on Christmas Eve in 1903. Today we look at her lifetime of work toward peace on Earth.
On Dec. 24, 1903, a baby girl named Ava was born. An intelligent and compassionate girl, she would grow up to be a crusader for peace and human rights.
Much of her activism was done in conjunction with her husband, scientist Linus Pauling. A chemist during a time when many of the greatest minds in the United States were devoted to creating the atomic bomb, Linus declined an invitation to work on the Manhattan Project. It’s just one of many examples of the Paulings’ commitment to peace.
Ava Pauling may have influenced her husband’s decision not to work on the bomb – she certainly steered him toward the work he did for peace. In his own words, “I would never have become involved in anything other than chemistry had it not been for my wife.” And Ava did much more than influence her husband; she worked her entire life to end war, advance human rights, preserve the environment, and more.
On her birthday, we look at seven ways Ava Pauling worked to make the world a more peaceful place.
1. An end to nuclear proliferation.Most prominent of Ava Pauling’s causes was nuclear disarmament. She gave speeches and organized rallies across the U.S. and Europe, hoping to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear war and urge others to protest the creation and testing of more nuclear weapons. Linus and Ava worked together on a petition calling for an end to nuclear-weapons tests, presenting it to the United Nations with the signatures of more than 11,000 scientists. This strong argument helped pave the way for the Partial Test Ban Treaty, signed in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which prohibited all above-ground testing of nuclear weapons. Linus Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in the same year, and he maintained that Ava should have shared the honor with him: “In the fight for peace and against oppression, she has been my constant and courageous companion and coworker.”
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