1901 Born in Portland, Oregon.
1905 Family moves to Condon, Oregon.
1910 Linus's father, Herman Pauling, dies at the age of 33. 
Linus, his mother, and his two sisters move to and manage a Portland boarding house.
1914 A friend of Linus Pauling shows him a chemical experiment, triggering Pauling's fascination with chemistry.
1917 Enters Oregon Agricultural College (OAC - now Oregon State University) to study chemical engineering.
1922 Pauling, as a senior, teaches course in "Chemistry for Home Economics Majors" and he meets a student who will become his wife, Ava Helen Miller. Pauling graduates OAC with a B.S. in chemical engineering.
1923 Publishes his first scientific paper, on the crystal structure of molybdenite.
1925 Pauling graduates summa cum laude from California Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in chemistry. He remains at Caltech for the next 38 years.
1931 Pauling's paper on "The Nature of the Chemical Bond" is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
1933 Pauling is elected — the youngest member ever — to the National Academy of Sciences.
1939 The Nature of the Chemical Bond, considered one of the most influential scientific books ever, is published by Cornell University Press.
1942-45 Pauling works for several divisions of the National Defense Research Commission.
1946 At the invitation of Albert Einstein, Pauling becomes a member of the Emergency Committee of Atomic Scientists.
1948 Receives the Presidential Medal of Merit of the United States.
1949 Elected president of the American Chemical Society.
1954 Receives the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for "his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its applications to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances."
1956 Directs research interest to mental illness.
1958 Pauling and wife, Ava Helen Pauling, present to UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld the petition to end nuclear-bomb testing with over 11,000 signatures from scientists around the world.
1963 Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1962.
1966 Responding to a letter from vitamin C advocate Irwin Stone, Pauling redirects his research interest to vitamins, micronutrients, and orthomolecular medicine.
1970 Publishes Vitamin C and the Common Cold.
1973 Founds, with Arthur B. Robinson and Keene Dimick, the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine as a non-profit health research organization, which becomes The Linus Pauling Institute of Science & Medicine.
1979 Publishes Cancer and Vitamin C with co-author Ewan Cameron.
1986 Publishes How to Live Longer and Feel Better.
1994 Pauling dies at his California ranch. He leaves more than 400,000 journals, scientific writings, papers, models, and other scientific memorabilia to his undergraduate alma mater, Oregon State University. The collection makes up one of the great scientific archives of the 20th century.
1996 The Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine moves to Oregon State University and becomes the Linus Pauling Institute.
1997 Balz Frei, Ph.D., assumes directorship of the Linus Pauling Institute and its Endowed Chair.
2001 Inauguration of “The Linus Pauling Institute Prize for Health Research” at the “Diet and Optimum Health” conference in Portland, OR, to celebrate the centennial of Linus Pauling’s birth; the Ava Helen Pauling Chair is established at the Institute.
2011 Linus Pauling Science Center opens at Oregon State University.