Ava Helen Miller was born in Beaver Creek, Oregon, later becoming a renowned peace and human rights activist as Ava Helen Pauling.
Ava Helen Miller was born on December 24, 1903, in the small farming community of Beaver Creek, Oregon. She was one of twelve children born to Nora Gard and Ulysses Grand Miller, a family of modest means with progressive social views. Her upbringing in rural Oregon instilled in her an early sensitivity to issues of fairness, labor, and social justice, values she carried throughout her life.
Ava Helen attended Oregon Agricultural College (now Oregon State University), where she studied home economics. It was there, in a chemistry class, that she met Linus Pauling, a brilliant young chemistry student who would go on to become one of the most celebrated scientists of the twentieth century. Their meeting in 1922 marked the beginning of a lifelong partnership that combined intellectual rigor with deep social commitment.
Though she did not complete her formal degree after marrying Pauling in 1923, Ava Helen became an autodidact and a formidable political thinker in her own right. Her birth in a working-class household, far from the elite scientific and political circles she would later inhabit, gave her a grounded perspective that informed her lifelong advocacy for peace, civil rights, and women's rights. She would go on to be recognized as a co-recipient of ideals behind her husband's Nobel Peace Prize, and an activist of national and international significance in her own right.
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