Donald Cram famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

An investigator starts research in a new field with faith, a foggy idea, and a few wild experiments. Eventually the interplay of negative and positive results guides the work. By the time the research is completed, he or she knows how it should have been started and conducted.
-- Donald Cram

#Fog #Ideas #Negative
Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired. Evolution has produced chemical compounds exquisitely organized to accomplish the most complicated and delicate of tasks. Many organic chemists viewing crystal structures of enzyme systems or nucleic acids and knowing the marvels of specificity of the immune systems must dream of designing and synthesizing simpler organic compounds that imitate working features of these naturally occurring compounds.
-- Donald Cram

#Dream #Knowing #Design
Any chemist reading this book can see, in some detail, how I have spent most of my mature life. They can become familiar with the quality of my mind and imagination. They can make judgements about my research abilities. They can tell how well I have documented my claims of experimental results. Any scientist can redo my experiments to see if they still work-and this has happened! I know of no other field in which contributions to world culture are so clearly on exhibit, so cumulative, and so subject to verification.
-- Donald Cram

#Book #Reading #Imagination
This is largely the methodology I've used throughout my career - that is, starting with a question as to what might be the properties of a set of compounds that could be invented which were unusual and unpredictable. Many times I've felt a bit like Columbus setting sail.
-- Donald Cram

#Careers #Sailing #Might
Few scientists acquainted with the chemistry of biological systems at the molecular level can avoid being inspired.
-- Donald Cram

#Levels #Chemistry #Inspired
To retain my fascination with chemistry, I have had to change my research fields about every 10 years.
-- Donald Cram

#Years #Fascination #Research
We usually don't have applications in mind. They come later.
-- Donald Cram

#Mind #Application
By the time I entered college, I had decided not to have children, a decision that was never regretted. Accordingly, I was careful to court only girls who wanted to have professional careers.
-- Donald Cram

#Girl #Children #College
I have always felt that I understood a phenomenon only to the extent that I could visualise it. Much of the charm organic chemical research has for me derives from structural formulae. When reading chemical journals, I look for formulae first.
-- Donald Cram

#Reading #Firsts #Looks

I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?
Piglet was so excited at the idea of being Useful that he forgot to be frightened any more, and when Rabbit went on to say that Kangas were only Fierce during the winter months, being at other times of an Affectionate Disposition, he could hardly sit still, he was so eager to begin being useful at once.
A false idea is not only one which is absolutely subjective but one which is absolutely objective.
I tried the paleo diet, which is the caveman diet - lots of meat. And I tried the calorie restriction diet: The idea is that if you eat very, very little - if you're on the verge of starvation, you will live a very long time, whether or not you want to, of course.
Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn't saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.
Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.
They care about their club, and that's why they always have something good to say, even when it is negative
Unfortunately my career began in Hollywood, doing a negative pickup for Universal pictures.
Any 'transmitting' device or applied technical method, which gets in the way of the 'transmission'/message/story, etc., is a negative element, garbling that which ought to be clear and instantly understood, and ought to be simply-stated with economy!
Life consists of positive and negative features, and I think that it is permissible to write about both.

Donald Cram famous quotes

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