| Abstract: | There are many kinds of great men. Berzelius was one, but he was not a Newton, an Einstein, or a Faraday. He set up no world system, he carried out no radical transformation of ideas, he opened up no new vistas through epochmaking experiments. Yet he gathered the whole of the science of chemistry into his intellect, digested it, influenced it in every branch, gave it a notation as elegant as that of music, inspired the next generation, and was superseded by it. He was right more often than he was wrong, and his creative conservatism gave chemistry a discipline it still possesses. |
