Marcellin Berthelot Quotes
One can, then, conceive the production, by purely mineral means, of all natural hydrocarbons. The intervention of heat, of water, and of alkaline metals - lastly, the tendency of hydrocarbons to unite together to form the more condensed material - suffice to account for the formation of these curious compounds. Moreover, this formation will be continuous because the reactions which started it are renewed incessantly.
Berthelot, Marcellin. "Sur l'origine des carbures d'hydrogène." Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences, vol. 62, Gauthier-Villars, 1866, p. 951.
Pierre Eugène Marcellin Berthelot FRS FRSE (French: [bɛʁtəlo]; 1827–1907) was a French chemist and politician noted for the Thomsen–Berthelot principle of thermochemistry. He synthesized many organic compounds from inorganic substances, providing a large amount of counter-evidence to the theory of Jöns Jakob Berzelius that organic compounds required organisms in their synthesis. Berthelot was convinced that chemical synthesis would revolutionize the food industry by the year 2000, and that synthesized foods would replace farms and pastures. "Why not", he asked, "if it proved cheaper and better to make the same materials than to grow them?"