A selection of brilliantly quotable quotes from chemists through the ages:
The physical chemists never use their eyes and are most lamentably lacking in chemical culture. It is essential to cast out from our midst, root and branch, this physical element and return to our laboratories.
Henry Edward Armstrong, 1848 to 1937
The country which is in advance of the rest of the world in chemistry will also be foremost in wealth and in general prosperity.
William Ramsay, 1852 to 1916
Time is the best appraiser of scientific work, and I am aware that an industrial discovery rarely produces all its fruit in the hands of its first inventor.
Louis Pasteur, 1822 to 1895
With monads and diads, and pentads and triads,My brain has been addled completely;
And what’s really meant by ‘something-valent,’
Is a question I give up discretely.
John Cargill Brough, 1834 to 1872
The chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasures amid smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly that may I die if I were to change places with the Persian king.
Johann Joachim Becher, 1635 to 1682
Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.
Thomas Thomson, 1773 to 1852
Experimental science hardly ever affords us more than approximations to the truth; and whenever many agents are concerned we are in great danger of being mistaken.
Humphry Davy, 1778 to 1829
Chemistry begins in the stars. The stars are the source of the chemical elements, which are the building blocks of matter and the core of our subject.
Peter Atkins, 1940 to present
Still I had a lurking question. Would it not be better if one could really ‘see’ whether molecules as complicated as the sterols, or strychnine were just as experiment suggested?
Dorothy Hodgkin, 1910 to 1984
We think there is color, we think there is sweet, we think there is bitter, but in reality there are atoms and a void.
Democritus, c. 460 – c. 370 BC
Every aspect of the world today – even politics and international relations – is affected by chemistry.
Linus Pauling, 1901 to 1994
Chemists do not usually stutter. It would be very awkward if they did, seeing that they have at times to get out such words as methylethylamylophenylium.
Sir William Crookes, 1832 to 1919
I saw that people trying to synthesize gold and silver were working in ignorance, and by false methods; I then perceived that they belonged to two classes, the dupers and the duped. I pitied both of them.
Geber, c. 712 – c. 815 AD
A detective with his murder mystery, a chemist seeking the structure of a new compound, use little of the formal and logical modes of reasoning. Through a series of intuitions, surmises, fancies, they stumble upon the right explanation, and have a knack of seizing it when it once comes within reach.
Gilbert Lewis, 1875 – 1946
Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.
Michael Faraday, 1791 to 1867
A fact acquires its true and full value only through the idea which is developed from it.
Justus von Liebig, 1803 to 1873
Nothing can be more certain than this: that we are just beginning to learn something of the wonders of the world on which we live and move and have our being.
William Ramsay, 1852 to 1916
Trial by combat of wits in disputations has no attraction for the seeker after truth; to him, the appeal to experiment is the last and only test of the merit of an opinion, conjecture, or hypotheses.
Joseph Mellor, 1869 to 1938
We must reason in natural philosophy not from what we hope, or even expect, but from what we perceive.
Humphry Davy, 1778 to 1829
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chemistry is everywhere, from what we eat, what we wear, what we think , and even what we like or dislike is driven by the molecules to dictate us for taking certain action, As one scientist above said ” chemistry begins with starts and from stars all elements come, and from all elements come molecules and from various molecules comes life and from life comes death again through the action of molecules, and cycle continues
Dr Raj K dhar
Director, PharamaRen
Saint louis, MO
“We think there is color, we think there is sweet, we think there is bitter, but in reality there are atoms and a void.”
DEMOCRITUS, C. 460 – C. 370 BC
Amazing that someone was thinking like this so long ago.
Also amazing (and *scary*) is that 2,400 years ago there were people who had more advanced thoughts than some of today’s cultures/ideologies.
“Trial by combat of wits in disputations has no attraction for the seeker after truth; to him, the appeal to experiment is the last and only test of the merit of an opinion, conjecture, or hypotheses.”
So true. Sadly the marketing people, the politicians, the lawyers, and the preachers know we’re all driven by our stupid emotions. That’s how they’re able to manipulate us.
I love THOMAS THOMSON’s
“Chemistry, unlike other sciences, sprang originally from delusions and superstitions, and was at its commencement exactly on a par with magic and astrology.”
The way modern food and nutrition theories go back and forward with advice about fats, carbs and the like makes me think that a lot of it is almost on a par with magic and astrology.
Agreed.
10 years ago nutrition scientists were telling us butter and salt were deadly. Food manufacturers were removing fats and salt from food and pumping it up with sugars. Now nutrition scientists tell us that sugar is deadly and butter is okay. I have no confidence in these people. They are not scientists like Dorothy Hodgkin, William Ramsay, and Michael Faraday, who were real scientists.