Past Researchers

"The advancement of science is slow; it is effected only by virtue of hard work and perseverance. And when a result is attained, should we not in recognition connect it with the efforts of those who have preceded us, who have struggled and suffered in advance? Is it not truly a duty to recall the difficulties which they vanquished, the thoughts which guided them; and how men of different nations, ideas, positions, and characters, moved solely by the love of science, have bequeathed to us the unsolved problem? Should not the last comer recall the researches of his predecessors while adding in his turn his contribution of intelligence and of labor? Here is an intellectual collaboration consecrated entirely to the search for truth, and which continues from century to century." -— Henri Moissan (who won the 1906 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work in isolating fluorine from its compounds) in Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution, July 1897 (1898), p. 262.