Gilbert N. Lewis quotes

Gilbert N. Lewis was an American physical chemist known for his groundbreaking work on the chemical bond and the concept of electron pairs. His research greatly influenced the development of modern chemistry, including the Lewis structure and acid-base theory. He profoundly shaped scientific understanding of atomic and molecular structure. Here are 6 of his quotes:

We frequently define an acid or a base as a substance whose aqueous solution gives, respectively, a higher concentration of hydrogen ion or of hydroxide ion than that furnished by pure water. This is a very one sided definition.

Gilbert N. Lewis

We may say that a basic substance is one which has a lone pair of electrons which may be used to complete the stable group of another atom, and that an acid is one which can employ a lone pair from another molecule in completing the stable group of one of its own atoms.

Gilbert N. Lewis

It must be admitted that science has its castes. The man whose chief apparatus is the differential equation looks down upon one who uses a galvanometer, and he in turn upon those who putter about with sticky and smelly things in test tubes.

Gilbert N. Lewis

In the snobbery of science, each branch attempts to rise in the social scale by imitating the methods of the next higher science and by ignoring the methods and phenomena of the sciences beneath.

Gilbert N. Lewis

Sometimes I think that our laboratories are but little earthworks which men build about themselves, and whose puny tops too often conceal from view the Olympian heights; that we who work in these laboratories are but skilled artisans compared with the man who is able to observe and to draw accurate deductions from the world about him.

Gilbert N. Lewis