Jöns Jacob Berzelius

There was much dispute as to whom the first place really belonged.

The Vormlanders boasted of having produced Geir, whose portrait hung in their hall, while the Smålanders had Tegner, Berzelius, and Linnaeus.

The Stockholm students who had only Bergfalk and Bellman were called gutter snipes.

This was not a very brilliant piece of wit, especially as it emanated from a Kalmar student who was thereupon asked whether there were no gutters in Kalmar.

The fact was that the period had no special feature to characterize it.

There is no such thing as Swedish culture any more than there is Belgian, Swiss, or Hungarian.

Sweden had indeed produced a Linnaeus and a Berzelius, but they had had no successors.

John had no spirit of enterprise.

And, and the lives of these scientists were oftentimes tragic.

There's a great, uh, story in one of the chemistry labs of-- She was a, a female, uh, basically a, a maid of a scientist in Sweden, who when the scientist, uh, his name was Jons Berzelius, would leave, she would voraciously, like, subversively read all the materials in the lab.

And she in her own right became just as amazing and good as a scientist as he was, and eventually they started working together.

And there was a little bit of like soap opera drama there too, which we touch on, you know, in a, in a, in an appropriate way.

There was much dispute as to whom the first place really belonged.

The Vormlanders boasted of having produced Geir, whose portrait hung in their hall, while the Smalanders had Tegner, Berzelius, and Linnaeus.

The Stockholm students who had only Bergfalk and Bellman were called guttersnipes.

This was not a very brilliant piece of wit, especially as it emanated from a Kalmar student who was thereupon asked whether there were no gutters in Kalmar.

The fact was that the period had no special feature to characterize it.

There is no such thing as Swedish culture any more than there is Belgian, Swiss, or Hungarian.

Sweden had indeed produced a Linnaeus and a Berzelius, but they had had no successors.

John had no spirit of enterprise.