[jtyska]

jtyska asked the Naked Scientists:
   
Chris,

I have tried to find this info on the web to no avail.

I have a recollection from a lecture someone gave. Maybe Richard Feynman that the Royal Society stated sometime in the late 19th Century that all major scientific discoveries had been made. Sometime prior to the discovery of the Atomic Theory.

Does this ring a bell.

I would like to find out the details.

Thanks,

John Tyska

What do you think?

[LeeE]

You might be thinking of Charles H. Duell, who was commissioner of the United States Patent and Trademark Office in 1899.  He was (apparently falsely) alleged to have said "Everything that can be invented has been invented".

But then there's also verse 9 of Ecclesiastes, which says "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun"

[teragram]

I think that it was Lord Kelvin (he of the temperature scale?) who publicly claimed that science had all the answers, in 1900 or just afterwards.