German Chemist Quotes

Wilhelm Ostwald

Otto Hahn

Hermann Emil Fischer

Fritz Haber

Justus von Liebig

Adolf von Baeyer

Robert Bunsen

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.

A theory has only the alternative of being right or wrong. A model has a third possibility: it may be right, but irrelevant.

I have fortunately been proved wrong in that prediction demonstrates how far I underestimated that as science progressively developed and as its nature and attributes became more and more familiar, mankind's appreciation and acceptance of scientific progress has steadily accelerated.

Wilhelm Ostwald

Men who are capable of modifying their first beliefs are very rare. This ability was one of the reasons for the success of Claude Bernard and Pasteur. Out of a very vivid imagination they forged new hypotheses all the time but abandoned them with equal ease as soon as experience contradicted them.

Adolf von Baeyer

The number of known metals had been increased by one — from 17 to 18.... A few years ago we thrilled to hear of the discovery of the final planet by Sir William Herschel. He calls the new member of our solar system Uranus. I propose to borrow from the honor of that great discovery and call this new element Uranium.

Martin Heinrich Klaproth

To provoke dreams of terror in the slumber of prosperity has become the moral duty of literature.

Ernst Otto Fischer

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.

Emil Fischer represents a symbol of Germany's greatness.

Nitrogen bacteria teach us that Nature, with her sophisticated forms of the chemistry of living matter, still understands and utilizes methods, which we do not as yet know how to imitate.

The little Daisy, which has painted its 'wee crimson-tipped flowers,' puts the chemist and scientific man to shame, for it has produced its leaf and stem and flowers, and has dyed these with their bright colors from materials which he can never change with all his art.

Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge

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

Chymia, or Alchemy and Spagyrism, is the art of resolving compound bodies into their principles and of combining these again.

Georg Ernst Stahl

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...

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

An equal number of atoms, combined in the same way produce the same crystal forms, and the same crystal form does not depend on the nature of the atoms, but only on their number and mode of combination.

Eilhard Mitscherlich

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

August Wilhelm von Hofmann

I consider the teaching and study of the historical development of science as indispensable... Our textbooks fail in this respect.

Richard Willstätter

The chemists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among 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 would change places with the Persian King.

Johann Joachim Becher

The abundance of substances of which animals and plants are composed, the remarkable processes whereby they are formed and then broken down again have claimed the attention of mankind of old, and hence from the early days they also persistently captivated the interest of chemists.

Hermann Emil Fischer

If molecules can be structurally identical and yet possess dissimilar properties, this can be explained only on the ground that the difference is due to a different arrangement of the atoms in space.

Johannes Wislicenus

Someone has said that the benzene theory appeared like a meteor from the sky. It came absolutely new and uninitiated. The human mind does not work in this manner. Nothing has ever been thought of which is absolutely new, certainly not in chemistry...

Friedrich August Kekulé

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

Friedrich Wöhler

Everyone now agrees that a physics lacking all connection with mathematics...would only be an historical amusement, fitter for entertaining the idle than for occupying the mind of a philosopher.

Franz Karl Achard

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.

They [Kekule and Zincke] found, as the result of their research, that Kegnault's statements were perfectly correct, and that chloracetene possessed, besides other remarkable properties, that of non-existence!

Carl Schorlemmer