Sharks and Shabby Curates

"I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark" asserted Samuel Taylor Coleridge, on his plans to set up a joint chemistry laboratory in the Lake District with his fellow poet Wordsworth, and Sir Humphry Davy.

The plan was not realized, but the words remain as a nice example of the fascination of the world of science, especially for the non-scientist.

(W. H. Auden commented that when he found himself in the company of scientists he felt "like a curate who has strayed by mistake into a drawing room full of dukes").

The Greek mathematician and philosopher Democritus, born in the 5th century bc, reflected, "I would rather discover one scientific fact than become King of Persia."

In the 18th century, George II said wistfully, "I spend money on war because it is necessary, but to spend it on science, that is pleasant to me." A century later, Mary Somerville's view was that science "must ever afford occupation of consummate interest". She might have felt sympathy with Rosalind Franklin's judgement that "Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated."

The scientists who would have intimidated Auden set themselves hard goals. Konrad Lorenz thought that it was "a good morning exercise for a research scientist to discard a pet hypothesis every day before breakfast". Albert Einstein said that he had "little patience with scientists who take a board of wood, look for its thinnest part and drill a great number of holes where drilling is easy".

The naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace recorded the intense excitement he experienced on finding a previously unknown species of butterfly. (His heart began to beat violently, the blood rushed to his head, and he felt as though he were going to faint; so great was the excitement that he had a headache for the rest of the day.) Yet somehow it is the thrill of discovery rather than the exhaustion it engenders which is most notable, and the greatest scientists emerge uncrushed by the experience. In the 18th century, indeed, Joseph Banks evidently thought that Humphry Davy would be the better if he were a little sobered: "He is rather too lively to fill the Chair of the Royal Society with that degree of gravity it is most becoming to assume."

Read more original words on the great scientific discoveries, from the first 'Eureka!' to the cloning of Dolly the sheep in the Oxford Dictionary of Scientific Quotations

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