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Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index F > Elizabeth Fulhame Quotes

Elizabeth Fulhame
(flourished 1780 - flourished 1810)

Scottish chemist who published An Essay on Combustion (1794), in which she reported her 'numerous, meticulous and numbingly tedious' experiments involving oxidation reactions in the presence of water, which was a major step in the history of chemistry.

Science Quotes by Elizabeth Fulhame (5 quotes)

[When combustion occurs,] one body, at least, is oxygenated, and another restored, at the same time, to its combustible state... This view of combustion may serve to show how nature is always the same, and maintains her equilibrium by preserving the same quantities of air and water on the surface of our globe: for as fast as these are consumed in the various processes of combustion, equal quantities are formed, and rise regenerated like the Phoenix from her ashes.
Fulhame believed 'that water was the only source of oxygen, which oxygenates combustible bodies' and that 'the hydrogen of water is the only substance that restores bodies to their combustible state.'
— Elizabeth Fulhame
An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), 179-180. In Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (2000), 478.
Science quotes on:  |  Air (366)  |  Body (557)  |  Combustion (22)  |  Conservation Of Matter (7)  |  Equilibrium (34)  |  Form (976)  |  Hydrogen (80)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Nature (2017)  |  Occur (151)  |  Oxidation (8)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Preserving (18)  |  Redox Reaction (2)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Rise (169)  |  Show (353)  |  State (505)  |  Substance (253)  |  Surface (223)  |  Time (1911)  |  Various (205)  |  View (496)  |  Water (503)

Combustible bodies do not reduce the metals by giving them phlogiston, as the Phlogistians suppose; nor buy uniting with, and separating their oxygen, as the Anti-phlogistians maintain.
Rejecting older theories of combustion.
— Elizabeth Fulhame
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), iv. In Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (2000), 478.
Science quotes on:  |  Combustion (22)  |  Do (1905)  |  Maintain (105)  |  Metal (88)  |  Oxidation (8)  |  Oxygen (77)  |  Phlogiston (9)  |  Redox Reaction (2)  |  Reduce (100)  |  Reduction (52)  |  Suppose (158)

I found the invention was applicable to painting, and would also contribute to facilitate the study of geography: for I have applied it to some maps, the rivers of which I represented in silver, and in the cities in gold. The rivers appearing, as it were, in silver streams, have a most pleasing effect on the sight, and relieve the eye of that painful search for the course, and origin, of rivers, the minutest branches of which can be splendidly represented this way.
Description of an outcome of her experiments originally investigating 'the possibility of making cloths of gold, silver and other metals by chemical processes.'
— Elizabeth Fulhame
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), iii-iv. In Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (2000), 478.
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I imagined in the beginning, that a few experiments would determine the problem; but experience soon convinced me, that a very great number indeed were necessary before such an art could be brought to any tolerable degree of perfection.
Upon pursuing the ''
— Elizabeth Fulhame
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), iii. In Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie and Joy Dorothy Harvey, The Biographical Dictionary of Women in Science (2000), 478.
Science quotes on:  |  Art (680)  |  Beginning (312)  |  Degree (277)  |  Determine (152)  |  Experience (494)  |  Experiment (736)  |  Great (1610)  |  Indeed (323)  |  Necessary (370)  |  Number (710)  |  Perfection (131)  |  Perseverance (24)  |  Problem (731)  |  Pursuing (27)  |  Soon (187)

I publish this Essay in its present imperfect state, in order to prevent the furacious attempts of the prowling plagiary, and the insidious pretender to chymistry, from arrogating to themselves, and assuming my invention, in plundering silence: for there are those, who, if they can not be chymical, never fail by stratagem, and mechanical means, to deprive industry of the fruits, and fame of her labours.
— Elizabeth Fulhame
Preface to An Essay on Combustion with a View to a New Art of Dyeing and Painting (1794), vii-viii.
Science quotes on:  |  Attempt (266)  |  Essay (27)  |  Fail (191)  |  Fame (51)  |  Fruit (108)  |  Imperfect (46)  |  Industry (159)  |  Invention (400)  |  Labor (200)  |  Mean (810)  |  Means (587)  |  Mechanical (145)  |  Never (1089)  |  Order (638)  |  Plagiarism (10)  |  Present (630)  |  Prevent (98)  |  Publication (102)  |  Silence (62)  |  State (505)  |  Themselves (433)


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
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