Why did Linus Pauling receive the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry?

Linus Pauling was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the molecular structure of complex substances.123

His work in this field was foundational to modern structural chemistry. By integrating quantum mechanics with experimental techniques like X-ray diffraction, Pauling developed a valence bond theory and established an electronegativity scale to describe how atoms interact within molecules. His influential book, The Nature of the Chemical Bond, and the Structure of Molecules and Crystals (1939), provided a unified summary of these concepts, which he later applied to study biological molecules, including proteins and hemoglobin.3