Chemist Quotes

Scientists need to exchange ideas in an informal place.

What one commonly takes as 'the reality,' including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous-that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego.

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

Dorothy Hodgkin

[Hypotheses were] part of the scaffolding of the building of science [rather] than as belonging either to its foundations, materials, or ornaments.

Knowledge is power, especially when it is hitched to a workhorse.

Orlando Aloysius Battista

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.

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

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

Basic research is like shooting an arrow into the air and, where it lands, painting a target.

Homer Burton Adkins

On a particular substance contained in the seawater.

Title of his work on the discovery of Bromine

Antoine Jérôme Balard

The search for an element is always captivating. In Mary Elvira Weeks

Great Britain may certainly continue to uphold her envied supremacy, sustained by her coal, iron, capital, and skill, if, acting on the Baconian axiom, " Knowledge is Power," she shall diligently promote moral and professional culture among all ranks of her productive population.

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

The endless frontiers of science now stretching to the stars can provide rich opportunities for the best creative minds.

Edward R. Weidlein

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

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

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 field was essentially stuck, but following the well known scientific approach known as "sheer blind luck," we stumbled upon the protein that is the answer to the question: do water channels exist?

The common life of man is full of wonders, Chemical and Physiological. Most of us pass through this life without seeing or being sensible of them, though every day our existence and our comforts ought to recall them to our minds.

James Finlay Weir Johnston

What is the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we're willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true.

F. Sherwood Rowland

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

John Theodore Merz

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

It will rightly be asked: What is the synthetic principle on which this obviously highly important product of y-methylcyclopentenophenanthrene is built up in nature, and why is it that this particular type which, as founda tion of many substances indispensable to life and of extreme physiological and biological importance, plays such a vital role in the vegetable and animal kingdoms? However, the time has not yet come when we can give an answer to questions so fundamental and so important to an understanding of the workings of Nature. But I am firmly convinced that this problem - like all others - will eventually be solved.

University of California at Berkley (UC Berkley) is one of the most outstanding universities, and the Chemistry Department there ranks first amongst the universities of the world in research performance. This department was established by G. N. Lewis, who is considered to be the father of modern chemistry.

Chemists think in the highly visual nanoscopic world of atoms and molecules, but they work in the tangible world of macroscopic laboratory apparatus. These two approaches to the chemical sciences cannot be divorced.

David W. Oxtoby