Heroes of Science: Chemists

E-text prepared by Albert László, P. G. Máté, Josephine Paolucci, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF GENERAL LITERATURE AND EDUCATION APPOINTED BY THE SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE. LONDON: SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE, NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, CHARING CROSS; 43, QUEEN VICTORIA STREET, E.C.; 26, ST. GEORGE'S PLACE, HYDE PARK CORNER, S.W. BRIGHTON: 135, north street. New York: E. & J. B. YOUNG & CO. 1883.
The discoveries of great men never leave us; they are immortal; they contain those eternal truths which survive the shock of empires, outlive the struggles of rival creeds, and witness the decay of successive religions. —Buckle.
He who studies Nature has continually the exquisite pleasure of discerning or half discerning and divining laws; regularities glimmer through an appearance of confusion, analogies between phenomena of a different order suggest themselves and set the imagination in motion; the mind is haunted with the sense of a vast unity not yet discoverable or nameable. There is food for contemplation which never runs short; you gaze at an object which is always growing clearer, and yet always, in the very act of growing clearer, presenting new mysteries. —The author of Ecce Homo.
Je länger ich lebe, desto mehr verlern' ich das Gelernte, nämlich die Systeme. —Jean Paul Richter.

I have endeavoured in this book to keep to the lines laid down for me by the Publication Committee of the Society, viz. to exhibit, by selected biographies, the progress of chemistry from the beginning of the inductive method until the present time. The progress of chemistry has been made the central theme; around this I have tried to group short accounts of the lives of those who have most assisted this progress by their labours.
This method of treatment, if properly conducted, exhibits the advances made in science as intimately connected with the lives and characters of those who studied it, and also impresses on the reader the continuity of the progress of natural knowledge.