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Nicolas Lémery
(17 Nov 1645 - 19 Jun 1715)
Writer of the very popular French chemistry textbook, Cours de Chimie (1675), who used a mechanical atomistic interpretation of chemical reactions, explaining them in terms of particle shape and movement.
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Science Quotes by Nicolas Lémery (2 quotes)
A demonstrative and convincing proof that an acid does consist of pointed parts is, that not only all acid salts do Crystallize into edges, but all Dissolutions of different things, caused by acid liquors, do assume this figure in their Crystallization; these Crystalls consist of points differing both in length and bigness from one another, and this diversity must be attributed to the keener or blunter edges of the different sorts of acids
— Nicolas Lémery
A Course of Chymistry (1675), trans. W. Harris (1686), 24.
After some experiments made one day at my house upon the phosphorus, a little piece of it being left negligently upon the table in my chamber, the maid making the bed took it up in the bedclothes she had put on the table, not seeing the little piece. The person who lay afterwards in the bed, waking at night and feeling more than ordinary heat, perceived that the coverlet was on fire.
— Nicolas Lémery
Quoted in John Emsley, The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus (2000), 11.
See also:
- 17 Nov - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Lémery's birth.
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) -- 
