19th-century Chemist Quotes

I would trade all my experimental works for the single idea of the benzene theory.

August Wilhelm von Hofmann

No other substance in organic chemistry attracts the attention of the physiologist and chemist to a higher degree than uric acid.

Friedrich Wöhler

As chemists, we must rename [our] scheme and insert the symbols Ba, La, Ce in place of Ra, Ac, Th. As nuclear chemists closely associated with physics, we cannot yet convince ourselves to make this leap, which contradicts all previous experience in nuclear physics.

All statements about the hydrides of boron earlier than 1912, when Stock began to work upon them, are untrue.

Chemistry without catalysis, would be a sword without a handle, a light without brilliance, a bell without sound.

Error is transient; truth alone is eternal. Error is only the shadow cast by truth, when its rays are arrested on their path by human ignorance and intellectual opacity.

Justus von Liebig

Theories are like crutches; to prove that they are good, we must make use of them and walk.

Jean-Baptiste Dumas

A child of the new generation Refused to learn multiplication. He said 'Don't conclude That I'm stupid or rude; I am simply without motivation.'

Joel Henry Hildebrand

Man's intellectual development has extended for a period of at least 5,000 years. However, it has been only during the past three centuries that scientists have realized their real objectives and have learned to use what we designate the scientific method.

Unless the chemist learns the language of mathematics, he will become a provincial and the higher branches of chemical work, that require reason as well as skill, will gradually pass out of his hands.

Alexander Crum Brown

The triumph of a theory is to embrace the greatest number and the greatest variety of facts.

Charles-Adolphe Wurtz

Scientists are in fact imaginers and artists; they are not free with their ideas; they can work well and hard only at what their thinking accepts and what their feelings are drawn to. Ideas alternate; impossible and often mad ones appear; they swarm and whirl, fuse and sparkle. Scientists live among these ideas and work for them.

Vladimir Vernadsky

Research workers were, at one time, obliged to endeavor to ensure that their theories did not contradict those of the Church, nowadays, in contrast, the Church is at pains to prove that its teachings are compatible with those of Science. In other words, the Church acknowledges Science as the higher authority.

Wolfgang Ostwald

Facts not explained by the existing theories are probably the most valuable for science, for their study is most likely to lead to its early advancement.

Alexander Butlerov

The minds of most men, like their bodies, grow stiff with age and unreceptive of new impressions.

As a matter of simple justice, and in the interest of all true workers in science, both theoretical and practical, it is right that the originator of any proposal or discovery should have the credit of his labour.

John Newlands (chemist)

On a particular substance contained in the seawater.

Title of his work on the discovery of Bromine

Antoine Jérôme Balard

Some sort of false logic has crept into our schools, for the people whom I have seen doing housework or cooking know nothing of botany or chemistry, and the people who know botany and chemistry do not cook or sweep. The conclusion seems to be, if one knows chemistry she must not cook or do housework.

Ellen Swallow Richards

The fact is 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

At the moment I am occupied by an investigation with Kirchhoff which does not allow us to sleep. Kirchhoff has made a totally unexpected discovery, inasmuch as he has found out the cause for the dark lines in the solar spectrum and can produce these lines artificially intensified both in the solar spectrum...

Science, which deals with the infinite, is itself without bounds.

Dmitri Mendeleev

To comprehend a man's life, it is necessary to know not merely what he does but also what he purposely leaves undone.

John Hall Gladstone

There is no more elevating spectacle than to contemplate the sky with its thousands of stars on a clear night. When we send our thoughts to those lights glittering in infinite distance, the question forces itself upon us, whether there are not out there planets like our own that will sustain organic life.

Svante Arrhenius

It is difficult, however, for a person to be comprehensible and at the same time remain scientific, so I must ask you to bear with me.

This is physical chemistry, formerly a colony, now a great, free land.

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff