Biocurious

/ a biophysics blog

Philosophical Friday: Svante Arrhenius

Posted 23 November 2007 by PhilipJ under &

Svante Arrhenius is perhaps most famous as a Nobel laureate (1903, for electrolytic dissociation), but he also wrote a text which would be of some interest to many readers of this site (or at least, me), titled Quantitative Laws in Biological Chemistry. Published in 1915, it contains chapters on the velocity of biochemical reactions, chemical equilibria, temperature effects on rates, etc.

But most interesting to me, given that we are in an age where the quantification of biology is a big idea, is this choice quotation:

[B]iological chemistry can not develop into a real science without the aid of the exact methods offered by physical chemistry.

What’s old is new again.

  

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