British Chemist Quotes

Dorothy Hodgkin

Oliver Sacks

Joseph Black

George Porter

James Smithson

John Mayow

William Prout

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)

We believe in atoms, because Nature seems to use them, and we break them up continuously because we do not know where to stop. There are various methods of spanning the distance from nothing to something.

Robert Angus Smith

When men began to use their hands and eyes as well as their reason in attempting to get at nature's secrets, doubts arose whether the explanations and hypotheses of the gown-men were not rather strained, and for the most part unsatisfactory.

Thomas Edward Thorpe

The study of blind chance in theory and practice is one of the great performances of the nineteenth century.

John Theodore Merz

Science is not only for illumination, for the mastery of nature's resources and the improvement of man's estate, it is also for the satisfaction of the soul.

George William Gray

Speaking exclusively of observational and experimental sciences, it is obvious that progress can be accomplished only at the cost of destroying or modifying current theories; for if a theory suffices to explain facts discovered after its promulgation, knowledge may be increased; but there is no true progress unless our general outlook is altered.

Alfred Walter Stewart

That we live on land is, in the grander scheme of things, best regarded as an anomaly, or even an eccentricity — albeit with sound evolutionary justification. The story of life is, if we retain a true sense of proportion, a story of life at sea.

The end of chemistry is its theory. The guide in chemical research is a theory. It is therefore of the greatest importance to ascertain whether the theories at present adopted by chemists are adequate to the explanation of chemical phenomena, or are at least based upon the true principles which ought to regulate scientific research.

Archibald Scott Couper

Chemistry is not yet a science. We are very far from the knowledge of first principles. We should avoid every thing that has the pretensions of a full system. The whole of chemical science should, as yet, be analytical, like Newton's Optics, in the form of a general law, at the very end of our induction, as the reward of our labour.

Chemistry is a universal science: it was founded by many whose memories are forgotten. The foundations of chemistry are laid deep in the experiences, the hopes, the visions of mankind.

M. M. Pattison Muir

I had come to the conclusion, that the principal alimentary matters might be reduced to the three great classes, namely the saccharine, the oily and the albuminous.

The exact verbal definition of qualitative concepts is more often the province of philosophy than of physical science.

There was once an Editor of the Chemical Society, given to dogmatic expressions of opinion, who once duly said firmly that 'isomer' was wrong usage and 'isomeride' was correct, because the ending 'er' always meant a 'do-er' 'As in water?' snapped Sidgwick.

I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can

It is unmatched in its ability to think, to communicate, and to reason. Most striking of all, it has a unique awareness of its identity and of its place in space and time. Welcome to the human brain, the cathedral of complexity.

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

To feed applied science by starving basic science is like economising on the foundations of a building so that it may be built higher. It is only a matter of time before the whole edifice crumbles.

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

The particle and the planet are subject to the same laws and what is learned of one will be known of the other.

And so, after many years, victory has come, and the romance of exploration, of high hopes and bitter disappointment, will in a few years simply be recorded in the text-books of organic chemistry in a few terse sentences.

You ask whether I am going over to the history of science...no, I am not as old as that.

Christopher Kelk Ingold

One or two atoms can convert a fuel to a poison, change a color, render an inedible substance edible, or replace a pungent odor with a fragrant one. That changing a single atom can have such consequences is the wonder of the chemical world.

It is clear, however, that the distinguishing mark of the whole development of theoretical chemistry and physics is the elimination of the anthropomorphic elements, especially specific sense-impressions, from the concepts. This process is called by Prof. M. Planck the objectification of the physical system.

J. R. Partington

The detailed geometry of the coenzyme molecule as a whole is fascinating in its complexity.

Dorothy Hodgkin

TO MY WIFE—who made the writing of my previous book a pleasure and writing of the present one a necessity.

Herbert C. Brown