Wilhelm Ostwald Quotes

Molecular chemistry, the chemistry of the covalent bond, is concerned with uncovering and mastering the rules that govern the structures, properties and transformations of molecular species.

My own ideas on the mechanism of catalytic phenomena were very different from those at one time commonly held, ideas which I no doubt owed to the influence of the illustrious teacher who had guided my first steps in chemistry nearly twenty years before - I refer, of course, to Berthelot.

Our femtosecond snapshots can examine a molecule at discrete instants in time.

Chemistry is a hard thing. I don't think you can force it, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to have great chemistry outside of work. It's just something that sparks on screen or doesn't.

Chemistry, until my childhood, not that long ago, was regarded as a calculating device. Because you couldn't reduce to physics. So it's just some way of calculating the result of experiments. The Bohr atom was treated that way.

I was also interested in formulating the path of chemical reactions.

Molecular collision dynamics has been a wonderful area of research for all practitioners. This is especially true for those who were following the footsteps of pioneers and leaders of the field twenty years ago.

By combining chemical, biochemical and physical techniques, it has thus become possible to investigate the nature of enzymic catalysis in a novel manner, complementary to the other approaches which have developed over the same period.

Chemistry happens naturally, and there's not really a lot you can do intentionally to create it.

With this in mind, for some twenty years I have set myself as my particular task the experimental investigation of the connexion between change in the structure and change in the spectra of chemical atoms.

My special fascination has been to understand better the world of chemistry and its complexities.

Many transition states have a well-defined preferred geometrical requirement.

The distinction between the old and the new formulations consisting in the incorporation of the concept of the rate of chemical reactions is so great that it immediately asserted itself in the objective development of catalysis.

I started my scientific work by putting forward a hypothesis on the arrangement of atoms in nitrogen-containing molecules.

Even when they are saturated in the sense of the older theory of valence, the elementary atoms still possess sufficient chemical affinity to bind other seemingly also saturated atoms and groups of atoms, under generation of clearly defined atomic bonds.

As early as 1912, we worked on the problem of the hydrogenation of organic substances with the aid of highly compressed hydrogen.

If you had to sum up chemistry in one sentence, it might be this: Atoms need to have full shells of electrons to feel satisfied, and different elements steal, shed, or borrow different numbers of electrons to achieve a full shell.

I do not want chemistry to degenerate into a religion; I do not want the chemist to believe in the existence of atoms as the Christian believes in the existence of Christ in the communion wafer.

As soon as we touch the complex processes that go on in a living thing, be it plant or animal, we are at once forced to use the methods of this science [Chemistry / Physics]. No longer will the microscope, the kymograph, the scalpel avail for the complete solution of the problem…. the investigator must associate himself with those who have labored in fields where molecules and atoms, rather than multicellular tissues or even unicellular organisms, are the units of study.

In 1967, I had formed a collaboration with Hermann Eggerer, then of Muenchen, and together, we solved the problem of the 'asymmetric methyl group' and applied the solution in some of the many ways that have proved possible.

The main thread of my work is structure property relations and materials. If you have certain atoms, why do they attract each other? Why do they make compounds? Why do they do what they do?

Life does depend on accurate replication of molecules, and its complexity often requires that an enzyme shall accept one molecular species or type and transform it to equally specific products.

Chemistry was my college interest. Cooking is about chemistry.

Biochemical interactions are very interesting to me.

In the lab, we're discovering that nature can do chemistry we never dreamed was possible.