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A scientific autobiography belongs to a most awkward literary genre. If the difficulties facing a man trying to record his life are great - and few have overcome them successfully - they are compounded in the case of scientists, of whom many lead monotonous and uneventful lives and who, besides, often do not know how to write . . .

Erwin Chargaff

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Erwin Chargaff
Age: 96 †
Born: 1905
Born: August 11
Died: 2002
Died: June 20
Biochemist
Biographer
Chemist
Writer
Czernowitz
Write
Difficulty
Literary
Compounded
Many
Record
Belongs
Monotonous
Great
Case
Scientists
Successfully
Writing
Lead
Overcome
Autobiography
Trying
Cases
Genre
Facing
Men
Records
Scientific
Difficulties
Life
Lives
Overcoming
Besides
Often
Scientist
Awkward
Uneventful

More quotes by Erwin Chargaff

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He [said of one or other eminent colleagues] is a very busy man, and half of what he publishes is true, but I don't know which half.
Erwin Chargaff
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The modern version of Buridan's ass [a figurative description of a man of indecision] has a Ph.D., but no time to grow up as he is undecided between making a Leonardo da Vinci in the test tube or planting a Coca Cola sign on Mars.
Erwin Chargaff
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If you can modify a cell, it's only a short step to modifying a mouse, and if you can modify a mouse, it's only a step to modifying a higher animal, even man.
Erwin Chargaff
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Science is now the craft of the manipulation, substitution and deflection of the forces of nature. What I see coming is a gigantic slaughterhouse, an Auschwitz, in which valuable enzymes, hormones, and so on will be extracted instead of gold teeth.
Erwin Chargaff
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The narrow slit through which the scientist, if he wants to be successful, must view nature constructs, if this goes on for a long time, his entire character and, more often than not, he ends up becoming what the German language so appropriately calls a Fachidiot (professional idiot).
Erwin Chargaff
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You can stop splitting the atom you can stop visiting the moon you can stop using aerosols you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.
Erwin Chargaff
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The results serve to disprove the tetranucleotide hypothesis. It is, however, noteworthy-whether this is more than accidental, cannot yet be said-that in all desoxypentose nucleic acids examined thus far the molar ratios of total purines to total pyrimidines, and also of adenine to thymine and of guanine to cytosine, were not far from 1.
Erwin Chargaff
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Molecular biology is essentially the practice of biochemistry without a license.
Erwin Chargaff
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Life is the continuing intervention of the inexplicable.
Erwin Chargaff
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We manipulate nature as if we were stuffing an Alsatian goose. We create new forms of energy we make new elements we kill crops we wash brains. I can hear them in the dark sharpening their lasers.
Erwin Chargaff