TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index C > Donald J. Cram Quotes

Thumbnail of Donald J. Cram (source)
Donald J. Cram
(22 Apr 1919 - 17 Jun 2001)

American chemist who shared the 1987 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for synthesizing three-dimensional molecules that could mimic the functioning of natural molecules.


Science Quotes by Donald J. Cram (4 quotes)

Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work—and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.
— Donald J. Cram
From Design to Discovery (1990), 119-20.
Science quotes on:  |  Become (821)  |  Book (413)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Claim (154)  |  Contribution (93)  |  Culture (157)  |  Cumulative (14)  |  Detail (150)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Experimental (193)  |  Field (378)  |  Happen (282)  |  Happened (88)  |  Imagination (349)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Mature (17)  |  Mind (1377)  |  Most (1728)  |  Other (2233)  |  Quality (139)  |  Reading (136)  |  Research (753)  |  Result (700)  |  Scientific Method (200)  |  Scientist (881)  |  See (1094)  |  Spent (85)  |  Still (614)  |  Subject (543)  |  Tell (344)  |  Verification (32)  |  Work (1402)  |  World (1850)

Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.
— Donald J. Cram
In 'The Design of Molecular Hosts, Guests, and Their Complexes', Nobel Lecture, 8 December 1987. In Nobel Lectures: Chemistry 1981-1990 (1992), 419.
Science quotes on:  |  Acid (83)  |  Avoid (123)  |  Being (1276)  |  Biochemistry (50)  |  Biological (137)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Chemist (169)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Complicated (117)  |  Compound (117)  |  Crystal (71)  |  Delicate (45)  |  Dream (222)  |  Enzyme (19)  |  Evolution (635)  |  Imitate (18)  |  Immune System (3)  |  Knowing (137)  |  Marvel (37)  |  Molecular Biology (27)  |  Most (1728)  |  Must (1525)  |  Nucleic Acid (23)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Compound (3)  |  Produced (187)  |  Scientist (881)  |  Structure (365)  |  System (545)  |  Task (152)

I have always felt that I understood a phenomenon only to the extent that I could visualise it. Much of the charm organic chemical research has for me derives from structural formulae. When reading chemical journals, I look for formulae first.
— Donald J. Cram
From Design to Discovery (1990), 122.
Science quotes on:  |  Charm (54)  |  Chemical (303)  |  Derive (70)  |  Extent (142)  |  First (1302)  |  Formula (102)  |  Journal (31)  |  Look (584)  |  Organic (161)  |  Organic Chemistry (41)  |  Phenomenon (334)  |  Reading (136)  |  Research (753)  |  Structural (29)  |  Understood (155)

The discovery that these soccer-ball-like molecules can be made in large quantities will have an effect on chemistry like the sowing of a bucket of flower seeds—the results will spring up everywhere from now on. I’d be surprised if we don’t see thousands of new fullerene compounds in the next few years, some of which are almost certain to have important uses.
— Donald J. Cram
As quoted in Malcolm W. Browne, 'Bizarre New Class of Molecules Spawns Its Own Branch of Chemistry', New York Times (25 Dec 1990), Late Edition (East Coast), L37.
Science quotes on:  |  Ball (64)  |  Bucket (4)  |  Buckyball (5)  |  Certain (557)  |  Chemistry (376)  |  Compound (117)  |  Discovery (837)  |  Effect (414)  |  Everywhere (98)  |  Flower (112)  |  Fullerene (4)  |  Important (229)  |  Large (398)  |  Molecule (185)  |  New (1273)  |  Next (238)  |  Quantity (136)  |  Result (700)  |  See (1094)  |  Seed (97)  |  Soccer (3)  |  Sow (11)  |  Sowing (9)  |  Spring (140)  |  Thousand (340)  |  Use (771)  |  Will (2350)  |  Year (963)


See also:
  • 22 Apr - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Cram's birth.
  • Donald J. Cram: From Design to Discovery, by Donald J. Cram. - book suggestion.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.