Physical Chemistry

Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff

Science

1852–1911

"A famous name has this peculiarity that it becomes gradually smaller especially in natural sciences where each succeeding discovery invariably overshadows what precedes."

🇫🇷Marcellin Berthelot

organic compound

freethought

1827–1907

"Science... dominates all things, it alone is of any definite utility. No man, no institution shall henceforth have an enduring authority if they do not conform themselves to its precepts."

🇯🇵Ryōji Noyori

Science

b. 1938

"Keep stupid, keep crazy. Knowledge begins with wonder. Success as a scientist is based on keen curiosity. If one wants to enjoy academic life, I would recommend him or her to be different."

🇺🇸John Tukey

Mathematics

1915–2000

"Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise."

🇺🇸Peter Debye

Science

1884–1966

"Mathematical physics is in the first place physics and it could not exist without experimental investigations."

🇺🇸Robert S. Mulliken

Science

1896–1986

"...the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air."

"The nature of the chemical bond is the problem at the heart of all chemistry."

🇺🇸Linus Pauling

Science

atheism

1901–1994

"If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away."

🇺🇸Otto Stern

Science

1925–1945

"Shall we do it?" "Well, then let's go, we shall do it!" Otto Stern asking, Walther Gerlach answering."