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Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
(6 Dec 1778 - 9 May 1850)
French chemist.
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Science Quotes by Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (5 quotes)
At Arcueil ... I dined in distinguished company... There was a lot of very interesting discussion. It is these gatherings which are the joy of life.
— Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (1978), 21.
Compounds of gaseous substances with each other are always formed in very simple ratios, so that representing one of the terms by unity, the other is 1, 2, or at most 3 ... The apparent contraction of volume suffered by gas on combination is also very simply related to the volume of one of them.
— Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Mémoires de la Société d' Arcueil, 1809, 2, 233-4. Trans. Foundations of the Molecular Theory, Alembic Club Reprint, no. 4 (1950), 24.
I have not chosen a career that will lead me to a great fortune, but not my principal ambition.
In fact, later in life he enjoyed comfortable income from his science discoveries.
In fact, later in life he enjoyed comfortable income from his science discoveries.
— Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Letter to his father, 1803. In Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (1978), 1.
If one were not animated with the desire to discover laws, they would escape the most enlightened attention.
— Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (1978), 54.
In the natural sciences, and particularly in chemistry, generalities must come after the detailed knowledge of each fact and not before it.
— Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac
Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (1978), 69.
Quotes by others about Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac (2)
We all teach ... the chemistry of Lavoisier and Gay-Lussac.
Comment made in 1877. Cited in Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (1972), 248.
Gay-Lussac was quick, lively, ingenious and profound, with great activity of mind and great facility of manipulation. I should place him at the head of all the living chemists in France.
In Mary Elvira Weeks, Discovery of the Elements (1934), 161, citing J. Davy, Memoirs of the Life of Sir Humphry Davy, Bart. (1836) Vol. 1, 469.
See also:
- 6 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Gay-Lussac's birth.
- Gay-Lussac: Scientist and Bourgeois, by Maurice P. Crosland. - book suggestion.
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) -- 
