Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
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Bernard Courtois
(8 Feb 1777 - 27 Sep 1838)
French chemist who first discovered iodine, though he lacked the resources to positively identify it as a new element.
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This is
NOT Bernard Courtois, the French chemist!
(source)
Bernard Courtois
(8 Feb 1777 - 27 Sep 1838)
French chemist who discovered iodine
This thumbnail used to be shown - in error - on this site to illustrate the entry for Bernard Courtois, the French chemist who discovered iodine.
The error was realized 5 Feb 2011, and is now corrected on this site. However, the same error has been copied on many other sites on the web, so here is a caution.
Most obviously, since Bernard Courtois died in 1838, which is many decades before photography was invented, one realizes it cannot be a photo of that French chemist.
It turns out that it is a picture of a “M. Courtois” that can be seen on a French genealogical web page of cheminots (railwaymen) and not chemistes (chemists) !
See also:
- Science Quotes by Bernard Courtois.
- 8 Feb - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Courtois's birth.
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The Discovery of Iodine - first observed by Bernard Courtois.
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Bernard Courtois - On the Discovery of Iodine - by M. Cap (1851)
- Iodine: Why You Need It, Why You Can't Live Without It, by Charles Harvard Gibbs-Smith. - book suggestion.
Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath. (1882) --
Nathaniel Egleston, who was writing then about deforestation, but speaks equally well about the danger of climate change today.
Carl Sagan: In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) ...
(more by Sagan) Albert Einstein: I used to wonder how it comes about that the electron is negative. Negative-positive—these are perfectly symmetric in physics. There is no reason whatever to prefer one to the other. Then why is the electron negative? I thought about this for a long time and at last all I could think was “It won the fight!” ...
(more by Einstein) Richard Feynman: It is the facts that matter, not the proofs. Physics can progress without the proofs, but we can't go on without the facts ... if the facts are right, then the proofs are a matter of playing around with the algebra correctly. ...
(more by Feynman)
