Pauling

The development of an accurate electronegativity scale was one of Linus Pauling’s many major contributions to the study of chemistry. In this two part series, we’ll first look at the electronegativity research that preceded Pauling’s breakthrough, before analyzing the details of the scale that Pauling ultimately derived. The electronegativity scale we use today was formalized by Linus Pauling, and was first published in 1932. However, the idea of electronegativity existing between atoms was established well before Pauling, dating back to the early 1800s.