Special Issue 150 Years of BASFFuture of ChemistryDOI: 10.1002/anie.201410884

Reinventing ChemistryGeorge M. Whitesides*

change · chemistry · science

The End of One Era and the Beginning of Another

Nothing goes on forever. The years following World WarII were very kind to chemistry. The research universities andthe chemical industry—one of the most beneficial partner-ships our technologically sophisticated society has seen—developed the forms that we know. Industrial chemistrybecame a core part of the industrial world; academicchemistry explained how atoms and molecules made realityhappen.

How did it start? World War II generated a flood oftechnology relevant to chemistry. High-octane fuel andsynthetic rubber were the first of many major expansions ofthe chemical industry. Catalysis—especially heterogeneouscatalysis—became the core of large-scale synthesis. Methodsto separate molecules revolutionized purification. New formsof spectroscopy uncloaked molecular structure. Quantumchemistry rationalized chemical bonds, and molecular orbitaltheory made these rationalizations relevant to complexmolecules. Computers, and computer-aided simulations, be-gan their development. The technical and conceptual capa-bilities of chemistry increased enormously. At the same time,the economic reconstruction of Europe and Japan, and therebuilding of the U.S. infrastructure, provided expansivecommercial opportunities. Although the rapid growth ofchemistry initially concentrated in the United States, it soonspread across the developed world.

It was a very easy time for chemistry: complex organicsynthesis, quantum chemistry, laser spectroscopy, productionof polyolefins, organometallic chemistry, molecular beams,medicinal chemistry, and countless other areas developed andflourished. The range of commercial and scientific opportu-nities was very large.

This prolific era is over, and chemistry is now facingclasses of opportunities, and obligations to society, that areeven more interesting, but entirely different. They willrequire—I believe—a new structure for the field, and raisea fundamental question: “What must chemistry be in thefuture?” It has been the field of science that studied atoms,bonds, molecules, and reactions. And 50 years from now? Willit still be the study of molecules and what they do? Or will itdeal with complex systems that involve molecules, in anyform—in materials science, biology, geology, city manage-

ment, whatever—“chemical” or not? Any simple definitionof the field of chemistry—or at least any definition as simpleas “atoms, molecules, and reactions”—no longer seems to fitits potential, its obligations to society, or the complexity of thechallenges it faces.

Throughout the productive postwar period, “chemistry”always blended the practical and conceptual. This postwar erasimultaneously developed academic chemistry—to analyzeand understand complexity—and industrial chemistry—toproduce the chemicals used by society.[1] The two are some-times described as separate, and even antagonistic. Far fromit! The interchange between them—albeit usually unplannedand often haphazard—provided extraordinary benefits toboth. The discovery of useful new phenomena—often inindustry—offered starting points for academic scholarship.The universities, for their part, developed theoretical andmechanistic understanding, which reappeared in industry asbetter processes and new products. Academic researchgenerated new analytical methods, which the manufacturersof commercial instrumentation converted into easily used,highly engineered, and indispensable tools for chemicalresearch. Both industrial and university researchers devel-oped new synthetic methods and new materials. Computationand simulation changed the definition of an “experiment” forboth. Everyone won. This stimulating exchange of informa-tion between academic and industrial laboratories continueduntil the 1980s, and then slowed.

The post WW II era has now ended. Since the 1990s, thechemical industry has focused on process improvement, andhas introduced few fundamentally new products. Althoughacademic chemistry has migrated into new fields (biochem-istry, materials science, and computational chemistry areexamples), and academic departments have proliferated, thehistorical core disciplines have drifted more toward “itera-tion” and “improvement” and away from “discovery.”

The depletion of the vein of new ideas and commercialopportunities that marked the end of the postwar period wasinevitable: nothing goes on forever. And the issue is certainlynot that society has run out of problems for chemistry to solve.In fact, I would argue the opposite: that chemistry may nowbe the most important of the sciences in its potential to impactsociety.

So: what are these new problems? How must chemistrychange to address them? What�s next? The science andtechnology that developed in this period will continue as thefoundation of whatever the field becomes, but the mosturgent opportunities now lie in new directions. Exploiting

[*] Prof. G. M. WhitesidesDepartment of Chemistry and Chemical BiologyHarvard University, Cambridge MA 02138 (USA)E-mail: gwhitesides@gmwgroup.harvard.edu

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these new opportunities will require new skills, and a newstructure for the field.

Three preliminary points: opinions, vocabulary, andsummary. First, this Essay is a perspective, not a classicalreview of the literature. I will offer opinions, but state them—at least in some cases—as assertions, primarily to save space;for the shorthand, I apologize. I intend to offer ideas andopinions for discussion, not facts.

A second matter—and one closely connected to a majorpoint of the Essay—has to do with vocabulary. One of theinternal quarrels in chemistry—and other fields of science—concerns the relative value of research that is (ostensibly)based purely on curiosity, and research that is (possibly) basedpurely on solving problems. Here I will make no distinctionbetween the two—between basic and applied, or betweenscience and engineering—not because they are not different,but because they share a common purpose, because theyoverlap so greatly that it is often impossible to tell them apart,and because they must work together seamlessly if they are tosolve the problems they face. I will use the word “fundamen-tal” to describe all academic research and nonproprietaryindustrial research; that is, all research that contributes toa common, public pool of knowledge.“[2] ”Fundamentalresearch“ includes curiosity-driven research, problem-basedresearch, empirical research, theoretical research, computa-tional research, and other flavors of research. I also empha-size that when I use the word ”chemistry,“ I (usually) intend itto be shorthand for ”Chemical science and engineering.“

Third, I will summarize my perspective in five points:1) Chemistry is ending an era of extraordinary intellectual

growth and commercial contribution to society, poweredby an explosion of science and technology, and a paralleland mutually beneficial expansion of academic andindustrial chemistry. The close links between the twowere mutually deeply beneficial.

2) Although this era is over, the new opportunities that haveappeared are, if anything, even greater—both in terms ofintellectual challenge and in terms of potential for impacton society—than were those in the rich period now past.

3) These new opportunities are, however, much broader inscope and greater in complexity than the simpler, previousproblems, and require new structures and methods.Chemistry is no longer just about atoms and molecules,but about what it, as a field with unique capabilities inmanipulating molecules and matter, can do to understand,manipulate, and control complex systems composed (in

part) of atoms and molecules: its future extends fromliving cells to megacities, and from harvesting sunlight toimproving healthcare. To deal efficiently with theseproblems, academic chemistry will need to integrate“solving problems” and “generating understanding” bet-ter. It should teach students the skills necessary to attackproblems that do not even exist as problems when thestudents are being taught. Industry must either augmentits commodity- and service-based model to re-engage withinvention, or face the prospect of settling into a corner ofan industrial society that is comfortable, but largelyirrelevant to the flows of technology that change theworld.

4) In the new era, both academic and industrial chemistry(ideally with cooperation from government) would benefitfrom abandoning distinctions between science and engi-neering, between curiosity-driven understanding andsolving hard problems, and between chemistry and otherfields, from materials science to sociology.

5) In short, chemistry must expand its mission from “mole-cules,” to “everything that involves molecules.” Foracademic chemistry, this expansion will provide freshintellectual and practical challenges, and fulfill its ethicalobligations to the taxpayers who pay the bills. Forindustrial chemistry, the expansion of scope would openthe door to new commercial opportunities, and to futuregrowth. For government and for Society, it would buildsome of the capability needed to solve problems thatcurrently seem insoluble.

70 Years

Three groups cooperated to build modern chemistry: theuniversities, the chemical industry, and governments. Thefoundation of the enterprise was the chemical industry, whichhad existed for a century.[1] The first new foundation stone waswhat we now call the “research university.”[3] This new type ofuniversity was invented in the U.S., and included among itsresponsibilities—beyond teaching undergraduates—the con-duct of research, as an element of national strategy, and thecreation of technology, both sponsored by the government. Itwas a product of post-war concerns about national security.

The “research university.” The research university wasa utilitarian construct,[3b] based in the perception that scienceand technology had played a crucial part in determining theoutcome of WW II,[4] and that it was appropriate (and, in fact,strategically critical) that the government build a capability inuniversities that supported national needs in technology. Thevery influential document used to justify the use of federalfunds to support academic research—“The Endless Fron-tier”—was written by Vannevar Bush.[3b, 5] Its argument wasthat technology was useful in supporting three objectivesimportant to society: national security, health, and jobs. It wasnot a paean to unfettered academic research to be paid for bytaxpayers.

In the 1960s and 70s, the Cold War was in its most unstablephase, the scientific establishment was relatively small, andthere was lots of money. Physics—for its relevance to the Cold

George M. Whitesides received his ABdegree from Harvard University in 1960,and his PhD from the California Institute ofTechnology in 1964 (with J. D. Roberts). Hebegan his independent career at M.I.T., andis now the Woodford L. and Ann A. FlowersUniversity Professor at Harvard University.His current research interests include phys-ical and organic chemistry, materials sci-ence, biophysics, water, self-assembly,complexity and simplicity, origin of life,dissipative systems, affordable diagnostics,and soft robotics.

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War, microelectronics, and Sputnik—was the dominantscientific ideology. Curiosity-based research—“playing”—was easy to justify, and because of the wealth of scientificopportunities, often productive. From this period came thedelicious idea of “entitlement:” that is, the theory that a gooduse of public funds was to give them—without attachedstrings—to scientists in universities, with the understandingthat their published, public research would provide a pool ofknowledge from which technology could be drawn.

The contradiction between the utilitarian intent of “TheEndless Frontier,” and the understandable desire to havea research stipend, without obligation, has been one source ofconflict and argument in academic science, and in sciencepolicy, ever since. The argument “pro-stipend” is that (asa singular example) curiosity-driven research led to quantummechanics (certainly the most important of the discoveries ofthe last century), and later to areas such as genomics.“Directed research,” so the argument goes, “could never dobetter than that.” The argument “con-stipend” is that themoney for research comes from taxpayers (who expect anddeserve something in return), that undirected research oftenbecomes directionless research (and has, in any event, a lowyield of important science and technology), and that workingon real problems results in better fundamental science thanworking without constraints (Figure 1). As one example, theInternet—certainly one of the most important scientific toolsever developed, started as a redundant communicationsystem linking ballistic missile silos. As another, the responseof the biomedical world to the emergence of AIDS, and thesubsequent, absolutely remarkable advances intreatment of viral disease, have been claimed to bebased on a foundation in undirected research invirology. An alternative argument is that theresponse to AIDS was made possible by targetedresearch in a number of areas, from Nixon�s “waron cancer” (which assumed, largely incorrectly,that cancer was a viral disease, but which provideda critical foundation in retrovirology) to theindustrial pharmaceutical research that led to thefirst HIV protease inhibitors, and ultimately totriple therapy. The overall effort was a brilliantsuccess, but it is difficult—even in retrospect—toseparate the contributions of “directed” from“curiosity-driven,” and of academic from industri-al. Whatever the reason, the mixture worked, verywell: chemistry was prodigiously productive (Fig-ure 2).

Regardless of this history, academic scientistsbecame accustomed to little or no accountability intheir research, and universities became accus-tomed to overhead on research grants as a sourceof operating income. The many “easy” opportu-nities for discovery—combined with the system ofacademic incentives and rewards (which is still inplace)—favored a style of research involvinga single investigator and graduate students, gen-erally without collaborators.

Darwinian evolution of subfields. Chemistrystarted an era of expansion with a traditional

structure of subfields: organic, inorganic, physical and ana-lytical chemistry. Although it has worked hard to maintainthis disciplinary structure, unacknowledged convergences and

Figure 1. “Follow the money!” Taxpayers (individuals and corporations)provide money to government, on the hopeful theory that good willcome of it, and because they have no legal alternative. Governmentprovides a small amount to academic scientists (largely to stimulatelong-term, early-stage research in areas with broad social benefit), andto industry (largely to purchase specific services—which may includeresearch and development—and products). In an ideal world, corpo-rations and universities work together to generate the technologiesthat provide the benefit to taxpayers. Support for universities is not anentitlement, it is an investment by taxpayers; but whether the resultingobligation to them is best discharged by unconstrained research, or byresearch directed toward the solution of a problem, is a matter ofopinion.

Figure 2. Chemistry has been extraordinarily creative and productive in the last70 years. Examples (a small number, chosen idiosyncratically, from a list ofhundreds) range from strategies for the synthesis of complex molecules toproduction of commodity polymers, and from new types of catalysts and reagents todrugs, foods, and systems for control of pollution. Analytical methods providea common enabling theme.

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easily recognizable mutations in fields evolved a differentstructure. Synthesis of structurally complex natural prod-ucts—a dominant early specialty—was arguably as mucha product of the new instrumental methods—the HPLC andVPC and NMR and MS and X-ray crystallographic methodsthat made it possible to determine complex structures—as ofthe sophisticated synthetic strategies developed to make thesestructures. Similarly, the combination of organic and inorgan-ic chemistry, new structural methods, and catalysis led toorganometallic chemistry and organometallic catalysis.Chemistry and biology fused to create biochemistry—themost popular of today�s subfields.

Materials science was another product of this era. It isparticularly relevant to questions of “directed” vs. “undir-ected” research, in the sense that this now-respectableacademic field was intentionally constructed by the U.S.government to fill a need. Its origin was a set of interdiscipli-nary laboratories founded and supported by the Departmentof Defense and the National Science Foundation in the U.S. toprovide, in universities, some of the types of multidisciplinaryexpertise found in the major corporate laboratories of GE,Boeing, IBM, Bell Labs, and DuPont, and required formilitary systems.

The explosion of interest in biochemistry came, of course,partially from the fascination of biology, but partially from theenormous financial support provided by the National Insti-tutes of Health, urged on by a public eager to live as long aspossible.

So, the evolution of academic chemistry as a field wasnever a simple result of unfettered, curiosity-driven research:it was the product of a much more complicated set ofprocesses, involving changing scientific opportunities, discov-eries and developments in industry, national priorities, theexploitation of technologies developed for other purposes inWW II, the geopolitics of the Cold War, the co-evolution ofanalytical systems and scientists using those systems, and thedevelopment of computers, lasers, gene-sequencers and othertools with broad impact. Also, importantly, it reflected thechoices of students and young faculty: each subfield, as itbloomed (and faded), was evaluated through the eyes of freshgraduate students and starting faculty for fundamentalscientific interest, for the availability of funds, and for theeventual prospect of jobs and opportunities for advancement.

Academic chemistry is now conservative, individualistic,and competitive. Now, at the end of this remarkable andcomplicated post- WW II period, chemistry, and especiallyacademic chemistry, has expanded enormously. There maynow be, if anything, too many (rather than too few)universities with aspirations to research, and in some coun-tries, there is too little money to sustain individual, isolatedprograms at productive levels. (It is not that academicchemistry is underfinanced: financial support from mostgovernments has continued to grow, if unevenly, and in waysthat depend sensitively on the state of economies, but that theratio of funds to investigators has shrunk.)

The system of incentives evolved in the university worldhas, however, not changed much over the last 50 years, andstill favors small, competing research groups, with fundsdistributed by peer review. Tenure and other related forms of

academic employment are still based largely on evaluations ofindividual scientists: universities do not trust themselves toevaluate the “creative” contribution of a single person toa collaboration. The processes used to award tenure increas-ingly depend upon numbers that are easy for computers tocalculate, but difficult for humans to interpret (awards,publications, dollars under management, “H-index”). Thisstyle of evaluation favors research in well-established (andwell-populated) disciplines, where there is a group of “peers”with opinions on the quality of the work, rather thanexploratory work. It also favors a style of research centeredon small, isolated research groups, and not on the largercollaborations usually necessary to attack “big” problems.

Tribalism and competing disciplines: A (probably inevi-table) side effect of a structure for academic chemistry thatfavors non-cooperating, individual research groups is theemergence of tribalism based on technical specialties. Chem-ists usually identify themselves as members of specialistgroups: “synthetic organic chemists,” “bioinorganic chem-ists,” “surface,” “mass spec,” “physical-organic,” or whateverchemists. Whether these groups are, in fact, granfalloons (inKurt Vonnegut�s classic definition),[*] or whether they servesome function in dissemination of information, and incompetition for funds, students, and space, is unclear. Theydo, however, impose a barrier to a student who wishes tocontribute to an area that does not fit into an historicallyrecognized discipline (research in sustainability or climatechange, energy conservation, public health, and complexsystems are examples). And tribes generally are at war withone another as a matter of principle.

The chemical industry—from partner in discovery tospecialist in product development. The chemical industry wasthe core of chemistry before the research university wasinvented. Its role as producer of fuels and chemicals oncommercial scales is well understood and appreciated. Its roleas a creative force in invention is sometimes less wellrecognized, and one of the unfortunate changes in thechemical industry has been its gradual but progressivewithdrawal from long-term, fundamental research. In itsheyday, however, it—in a sense—embodied the style ofresearch in which groups of scientists and engineers—incollaborations—took on very large, important (both com-mercially and societally), problems for which there are nosolutions, and invented the science and the technology thatwas required to solve them. Examples of areas which havebeen—in large part—invented and developed by industryinclude heterogeneous catalysis, synthesis of monomers andproduction of polymers, small-molecule pharmaceuticalchemistry, organometallic chemistry, much of electrochemis-try and energy storage, materials science, and much of surfacescience. The DuPont Central research laboratory (under thedirection of Earl Muetterties and George Parshall) providedan example; it was, for many years, arguably the world�scenter of fundamental research in organometallic chemistry.

[*] A granfalloon “… is a group of people who affect a shared identity orpurpose, but whose mutual association is actually meaningless.” (K.Vonnegut, Cat’s Cradle and Wikipedia).

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In the first half of the postwar era, industry was an equalpartner with the universities in the development of new areasof chemistry; in the second half, economic pressures—anda decrease in the number of opportunities that were perceivedto be economically realizable—caused industry to focus onshort-term product development, rather than to contributeactively to the development of new areas of large-scalechemistry.

The changes that forced large companies out of long-termresearch are relatively straightforward to understand: thegoals of capitalism and the public markets, and incentives forsenior management, both favor investments in which financialreturns are expected to be short-term. Research is generallya long-term investment. The question of whether the short-term approach is the best for companies and stockholders isa complicated one to answer;[6] if the chemical industry wereexpanding, and demonstrating profits based on successfulresearch, it could do as it wished. In the face of pressure forprofitability, much of industry has chosen to emphasize themanagement of existing businesses, rather than to try tocreate new ones: research in the chemical industry is nowoften considered as an expense, rather than an investment.

This choice of direction has had several consequences:1) it has ended (or constrained in scope and character) theunique and mutually beneficial intellectual partnership be-tween industrial and academic chemistry that characterizedthe 1960s to 1980s (Figure 3). 2) It has increasingly limited thenumber of jobs for chemists in industry, and made a career inindustrial chemistry less attractive for students choosing whatto study. 3) It has limited the options for chemistry to explorenew areas, since many of these areas (e.g., the materialsscience of porous media under hydrostatic pressure, or“fracking”; understanding if there is new chemistry—espe-cially chemistry relevant to sequestration—that can beapplied to carbon dioxide; the management of flows ofmaterial, energy, and information in cities; the developmentof new strategies for using solar energy) require the kinds ofresources and skills in large-scale project management thatonly industry can provide. Industry continues to place a fewlarge-scale bets in research (for example, synthetic biology tomake fuels and specialty chemicals), but the number andaudacity of these bets have declined sharply. Even thepharmaceutical industry—a long-term contributor to, anduser of, sophisticated synthetic organic chemistry—increas-ingly considers synthesis a valuable, but primarily technicalskill, and has turned to organismic and disease biology as thesource of new products and services.

The narrowed focus of industry on maintaining profit-ability in commoditized product lines, in a business environ-ment in which costs due to regulation (especially environ-mental regulation) and safety are increasing, has had anotherimportant effect. It has made the chemical industry seemrelatively uninterested and uninvolved in research whoseoutcome might have social benefit rather than financialreturn. There is a wide range of problems—environmentalmaintenance, sustainable practices, reduction in the costs ofhealthcare, areas of national security (e.g., defense againstchemical and biological terrorism; emerging disease), educa-tion, raising the standard of living of the poor—in which

societies may have substantial interests, but in which theopportunities for profitability may be limited, or in which itmay be necessary to develop a new kind of business. It hassometimes been possible to justify product developmentfocused on areas of social return for their potential benefit inpublic relations, to provide windows into possible newbusiness areas, and to avoid the appearance that companiesare exclusively financially self-serving. The disinterest insocial return has placed the chemical industry increasingly inthe position of appearing to be a necessary, valuable, but notnecessarily attractive part of the industrial economy. Thatstrategy may not be the best for it in the long term.

So, as with the research universities (albeit for totallydifferent reasons), industry has become more conservative,more financially oriented, and less exploratory, as it extractsas much value as it can from the last set of problems, tries tounderstand the conflicting advice about “innovation” withwhich it is flooded,[7] and considers how, and if, to participatein whatever comes next.

Government. Government plays a complex, and oftenmaligned, role in the chemical enterprise. It provides the

Figure 3. The interaction between academic and industrial research issometimes simplified to a linear process: academics discover andunderstand new phenomena (“curiosity-driven research”) and industrycommercializes these phenomena. The reality is much more complicat-ed. In particular, and especially in chemistry, both have contributed todiscovery and invention, although universities tend to carry out muchof the work in scholarly investigation (understanding mechanisms,developing complex synthetic methods, understanding model systems,and validating new analytical procedures), and industry develops large-scale and practical multistep syntheses, and carries out the capital andengineering-intensive development required for commercialization. Asa few examples, university research produced quantum mechanics,crystallography, and restriction endonucleases, which have been indis-pensable in both academic and industrial research. Industry discov-ered the first examples of olefin dismutation, and its development intoa broadly useful class of reactions for complex organic synthesis byGrubbs, Schrock and others occurred in universities. Observation ofthe acidity of silica–alumina supports for cracking and reformingcatalysts in petroleum companies stimulated, in part, Olah’s work onfluid superacids in the university. NMR was discovered as a phenomen-on in the university (in physics), but would never have become theindispensable tool—NMR spectroscopy—for organic and biochemistrythat it now is without enormously sophisticated, conceptual andtechnical development both academically and in commercial instru-ment companies.

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funds for much of academic research. It channels industrythrough laws, regulations, and taxes, and it also providesrevenue as a purchaser of services and products. One of themost interesting developments in the relationship betweengovernment and universities has been in peer review. Peerreview was originally established to place the responsibilityfor allocation of government funds—to individual projects,according to their technical merit—in the hands of scientists,rather than bureaucrats. Two things have gone wrong. First,the peer review system has moved from one centered in elitescience to one that is populist. (Even to use the word “elite”now evokes a shiver of discomfort from the politicallysensitive.) I would argue that science is, at its core, an elitistactivity: not everyone can do it, not everyone can judge it, andonly unusual people do it really well. This point of view is atodds with one that says that support for science—since itcomes from taxpayers broadly—should be distributed broadlyby a peer-review process that is itself demographicallyrepresentative and anonymous. Second, governments havedecided that they have priorities in technology, and that theyshould be entitled to direct the research focused on thoseareas of high priority. The first part is undoubtedly correct;the question of whether government program managers arealso competent as research directors is more arguable.Regardless, the peer review system has evolved from one of“keeping academic research out of the hands of governmentbureaucrats” to “evolving government bureaucracy to directacademic research.”

Government, for all of its idiosyncrasies, also still some-times serves another vital and increasingly neglected func-tion; that is, protecting and supporting research activities thatare intended to generate a social rather than financial return,or that require a long time to accomplish. Unfortunately,research in laboratories—whether in university or industry—can take a technology only so far, and full-scale implementa-tion of any new technology to the benefit of society almostalways requires industrial participation in some large-scale,for-profit form. Government can start and enable programs,but it is usually industry that provides products as perceptiblebenefits. Academics can, of course, provide valuable under-standing.

What’s Next? Unlimited Opportunity, But in NewClasses of Problems

Coming out of this extraordinary era of the 50s to the 80s,chemistry has a certain intellectual and organizational style;and although there are certainly still opportunities that fit thatstyle, the perception—by society, and probably by mostchemists—is that chemistry is less exciting than biomedicine,brain science, “social engineering” (that paradigmatic hybridof computer science, electronics, sociology, and advertising),studies of climate change, astronomy, and a number of otherfields. The increasing evolution of the chemical industrytoward a commodity-and-service business model leaves itunarguably essential, but not exciting. Does this mean thefield is over?

No. It is not over. Of course not! In fact, a look at theproblems facing society, and the requirement for the skills ofchemistry that can be applied to the solutions of theseproblems, indicates exactly the opposite. But the structuresthat served so well in the past will not do equally well in thefuture. What is called “chemistry” now may be only a distantcousin to the chemistry of 50 years from now.

One change is that some of the chemical “opportunities”are now urgent necessities. Academic scientists are uneasywhen faced with “timelines” and “deliverables.” Some of theproblems facing society (for example, climate change, man-agement of energy production and use, lowering costs ofhealthcare and distributing its benefits) must, in fact, beattacked immediately, and finding approaches to theirsolution is urgent. Other, seemingly less urgent, enigmas(for example, understanding the molecular basis of life) willbe entirely based on curiosity (although even they offer—inthe undefined future—avenues to new technologies and jobs).While there are many problems to which chemistry is thediscipline offering the most plausible expertise, how will theparticipants (research universities, industry, government, andinterestingly, in the future, foundations) set priorities? Whowill do what, in what order? How long will it take? Table 1

contains examples of challenges.[8] Some are obvious. Someare “inevitable,” in the sense that it is certain that the problemis real and will be addressed somehow. (The only question is“How?”) Some come simply by assuming that commonwisdom is wrong. Some are purely my personal opinion.

Table 1: What’s next?

New Classes of Problems

1) What is the molecular basis of life, and how did life originate?2) How does the brain think?3) How do dissipative systems work? Oceans and atmosphere,

metabolism, flames.4) Water, and its unique role in life and society.5) Rational drug design.6) Information: the cell, public health, megacities, global monitoring.7) Healthcare, and cost reduction: “End-of-life” or healthy life?8) The microbiome, nutrition, and other hidden variables in health.9) Climate instability, CO2, the sun, and human activity.10) Energy generation, use, storage, and conservation.11) Catalysis (especially heterogeneous and biological catalysis).12) Computation and simulation of real, large-scale systems.13) Impossible materials.14) The chemistry of the planets: Are we alone, or is life everywhere?15) Augmenting humans.16) Analytical techniques that open new areas of science.17) Conflict and national security.18) Distributing the benefits of technology across societies: frugal

technology.19) Humans and machines: robotics.20) Death.21) Controlling the global population.22) Combining human thinking and computer “thinking.”23) All the rest: jobs, globalization, international competition, and Big

Data.24) Combinations with adjacent fields.

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Although I chose the particular problems in this Table toillustrate the need to rethink what chemists should know inthe future, many people would construct similar lists. Let mediscuss each of them briefly, since their connections with“chemistry,” as it currently defines itself, may, for some, not beimmediately obvious. And if some now seem closer to sciencefiction than to the usual content of a fine chemical journalsuch as Angewandte Chemie, consider—100 years ago—howludicrous proposals would have seemed to double the humanlifespan, assemble the world-wide web (whatever that mightbe), eliminate polio and smallpox, define the molecularstructure of a biological assembly to be called “the ribosome,”or explore Mars by sending robots using rockets guided bycomputers. All, of course, happened. Chemistry tends to beexcessively modest in its ambitions. Excessive ambition mightsometimes be a better strategy.

1. What is the molecular basis of life? Isn�t understanding“life” a subject that falls in the intellectual purview ofbiology? (Figure 4) No. Life is an expression of molecular

chemistry—a remarkable network of molecules, catalysts, andreactions. It is also chemistry operating in a way that we (or atleast I) do not understand. The cell is an assembly of reactingand interacting molecules. The molecules are not alive; thereactions are not alive; so how does the cell become alive?The answer to this question seems non-obviously obvious:“life” appears to be the name we give to the astonishingbehavior of a particular set of reactions, operating in a con-strained environment called “the cell.” It is like a flame, onlymuch more complicated. A flame burns oxygen and methane,and generates heat and light. A cell “burns” oxygen andglucose, generates heat, and makes another cell. And life ismuch more difficult to understand than a flame in anothersense: unlike a flame, we do not know how life started. Aspark ignites a flame in a mixture of oxygen and methane ofthe right concentration. How could the much more compli-cated components of life put themselves together from thedisorganized chaos of prebiotic Earth, and make the much,much more complicated networks of reactions we call thecell?[9]

2. How does the brain think? That life is simply molecularbehavior is disconcerting; that human thought is more of thesame is even more so. Yes, there are the detailed andfascinating biochemical questions of neurotransmitters/re-ceptors and protein synthesis and transmembrane electro-chemical potentials, but the deeper question—probably onemore at the border of chemistry, cognition, and physics thanchemistry and biology—is the basis of sentience and self-awareness. Is thought—is Bach�s “Well-tempered Clavier”—simply molecular behavior (albeit of a complicated sort)? Oris there something else there? Are we missing somethingfundamental? (I do not mean to minimize the interest inarguments about “emergence” as “something new” vs.“incomplete understanding” in complex systems, only toreemphasize that the empirical foundation of “thought,” sofar as we now know, is simply interacting molecules, andhence, chemistry.)

3. Dissipative systems. Oceans and atmosphere, metabo-lism, flames. Chemistry tends to study systems at, or movingtoward, thermodynamic equilibrium. They have seemedcomplicated enough. But the most interesting systems in theworld around us—life, thought, combustion, ecosystems,traffic, epidemics, the stock market, the planetary environ-ment, weather, cities—are “dissipative;” that is, their charac-teristic and most interesting features only emerge when thereis a flux of energy through them.[10] Studying dissipativesystems has, of course, been a subject of physical science fordecades, but, unlike equilibrium systems, understandingdissipative systems— both theoretically and empirically—isstill at the very beginning.

4. Water, and its unique role in life and society. Water is anastonishing liquid: there is nothing like it. Understandingwater is crucial at almost every level, from the very practicalto the very conceptual. How will it be possible to generate thepure water needed for human life, and the much largerquantities of water required for consumption by plants, as theclimate changes, and as the energy used to generate andtransport it is constrained? Why is water the unique fluid inwhich life occurs? What is the role of water in the myriad ofprocesses—from catalysis to molecular recognition—thatmake up metabolism in the cell?[11] (It is remarkable thatmost discussions of biochemistry focus so intently on theorganic molecules that make up the cell, and so completelyignore the water that is the major component of livingsystems: conceptually, we often discuss life as if it occurred ina vacuum. Although computation has now reached the pointwhere it can begin to help in understanding water, we still donot understand most of its mysteries.)

5. Rational drug design. So-called “rational drug design”has been a familiar problem for decades. One promise ofgenomics has been that it would give rise to a process in whichsequencing the genome would allow the prediction of theamino acid sequence of a protein; the sequence would allowprediction of protein tertiary structure; the protein structurewould lead to identification of the active site; and witha three-dimensional model of the active site, chemists coulddesign and synthesize tight-binding ligands. In this process,only the “sequencing” works, after 50 years of effort. Makinga drug is, of course, much more complicated than making

Figure 4. Left: A cell with fluorescent labeling of some of its internalstructure. Right: A diagram of an “interactome”. Points representproteins, lines interactions between them. The network of interac-tions—and probably most importantly the control of catalytic activitiesof enzymes by metabolites and signaling molecules—is enormouslymore complicated than suggested by this diagram, and well beyondthe reach of current understanding of complex, dissipative systems.

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a tight-binding ligand, but the ability to design ligandsrationally would be enormously helpful. So, after decades ofwork by very able researchers, the solution of the problem stillescapes us. It has been so difficult, that I must wonder—in thesense explained so compellingly by Thomas Kuhn—if ourunderstanding of the problem is not missing some crucialelement.[12]

6. Information: from the cell, and public health, tomegacities, and global monitoring. Because computation hasbecome so powerful and so inexpensive, there is a tendency tothink of all information in terms of binary bit strings.[13] It isnot clear how best to describe “information” in all theproblems with which chemistry deals. The often-heardphrases “What is the information content of an active site?”Or “What is the information content of a cell?” or “Howmuch information is necessary to model the global climate?”may not be best answered using just what can be immediatelycoded in a bit string. And other, fundamentally empirical,questions about information abound in chemistry. For exam-ple, if one wishes to monitor global climate, or manage theflows of matter, energy, waste, people, and disease into andout of a megacity (Figure 5), what should be the nature of thesuite of sensors involved, and how should the enormousquantities of data generated be processed and interpreted?Questions about the generation, collection, and uses ofinformation in complex physical systems are, of course, onlyquestions partially addressed to chemistry; chemistry has,however, probably the deepest fundamental knowledge oftheir physical bases, and of the methods used to collect therelevant data, and will thus be essential to answering them.

7. Healthcare and cost reduction: “End-of-life” or“healthy life”? The type of healthcare prevalent in most of

the developed world has a capitalist, for-profit, focus ontreating established disease, usually at end-of-life.[14] In fact,much of the increase in lifespan that we have enjoyed in thelast century has come—not from high-technology medicine—but from public health: clean water, pollution control, airbags,traffic lights, safe food, antibiotics, vaccinations, even an even-handed legal system. A focus on a “healthy life,” coupled withreducing the cost of healthcare, generating new technologiesfor public health, and extending their benefits across classesof society is squarely within the purview of chemistry, and isa key objective of most societies.

8. The microbiome and other hidden variables in health.The current enthusiasm for understanding the role of themicrobiome[15]—the “bugs in our gut”—in human health mayor may not be sustained as the subject is explored, but the ideathat there are hidden variables—nutrition, exercise, environ-mental exposures, complex patterns of inheritance andsusceptibility—that are not a central part of the currentparadigm (or dogma) of “diagnosis and treatment” offersanother set of fundamental problems appropriate for chemis-try.

9. Climate instability, CO2, the sun, and human activity.Perhaps the most pressing scientific problem facing human-kind is understanding the influence of human activity on theenvironment, and the most pressing technological problem isunderstanding what to do about it. This problem is enor-mously significant practically and economically, and isenormously complicated scientifically. One of the mantrasof business schools is “If you can�t measure it, you can�tmanage it!”, and chemists are masters at the measurementsneeded to understand these interactions. And if we everseriously consider implementing so-called geoengineering—

Figure 5. One of the new constructions of humankind is the “megacity:” a city with a population of greater than 50 million people. Managingthese ensembles requires both knowledge and technology to solve problems at every level, among which are: mass transport of water, food,materials of construction, power, heat, pollution, and waste; control of disease; and management of education, self-governance, rumor, unrest,and crime. Chemistry is uniquely experienced in making sensors, in managing large systems of sensors, in dealing with problems in transport ofmaterials, energy, and waste, and in developing appropriate technologies for sustainability and public health. Based on its experience withmodeling large numbers of interacting molecules and particles (e.g., statistical mechanics and colloid science), it may also have more to offer tothe science of sociology and related areas concerned with large numbers of interacting people than one might expect. (Photo left: David Iliff.License CC-BY-SA 3.0. Photo right: YGLvoices. License: CC-BY-2.0).

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the intentional modification of global climate (for example,by injecting sulfur-containing aerosols into the atmosphere, orforcing large blooms of algae in the oceans), estimating risksand benefits will require combinations of the skills ofchemistry with those of many other areas, from geology andoceanography to economics, public policy, and politics. Geo-engineering would also require acute sensitivity to ethicalissues, since experiments influencing the habitability of earth,if they were to go wrong (as do many experiments), couldhave memorably unfortunate consequences.

10. Energy generation, transportation, use, storage, andconservation. Most of the CO2 injected into the atmosphereby humans is the result of the combustion used to generateenergy (Figure 6).[16] Again, every aspect of energy gener-ation, transportation, storage, and conservation has chemicalcomponents, from understanding the very interesting practi-calities of familiar (but not necessarily well understood)processes—from fracking to sequestration, and from thedesign of photovoltaics to storage of nuclear waste—toinventing radically new approaches to energy generationand use. More importantly, the question of how theseprocesses, and their consequences, influence oceans, atmos-phere, and climate are critical for large-scale action.

11. Catalysis (especially heterogeneous and biologicalcatalysis). One of the uniquely important skills of chemistry iscatalysis. Given its pervasive importance, it is astonishing howmuch we still do not know about this subject. Although theHaber–Bosch process for synthesis of ammonia (first com-mercialized by BASF around 1913) led the way into today�s

universe of commodity catalysts, we still do not understand(beyond a superficial level) the mechanisms of these process-es that generate fuels, chemicals, and materials. As anindication of the limitations of our understanding, considerthe difficulty of designing a new heterogeneous catalyst,understanding the complexities of enzymatic catalysis, and,especially, designing catalytic networks in which there isfeedback and control operating between different parts of thenetworks (as there is in the cell).

12. Computation and simulation of real, large-scalesystems. Will we, at some point, be able to simulate a cell,from the molecular level up? What about an ocean? Designa drug (not just a ligand)? For all the continuing expansion inthe power of computing, and the optimism (with goodhistorical foundation!) that more bits thrown at a problemoften leads to better results, what are the limits to simulation,and what are the approximations that will be most useful, inbridging molecular and macroscopic phenomena? And willthere be alternatives to current methods of digital computa-tion? Quantum computing? New uses of analog computing,or neural-net-like systems? Neuromorphic systems? Then,beyond simulation, there are the problems of theory. Is therean analytical approach to solve large sets of coupled, non-linear differential equations that describe life, or megacities,or planets? How should one analyze the behavior of complexsystems (and, in fact, is there a single theory for suchsystems)?

13. Impossible materials. Will it be possible, eventually, tomake a high temperature superconductor? What about

Figure 6. A schematic diagram showing the flows of energy in the U.S.; these flows vary from region to region in the world, but any diagramsuggests countless opportunities for intervention and improvement, many involving chemistry. The inertia of large energy systems is alsoenormous: the fact that �80% of the energy is now generated by burning fossil fuel will take decades to change significantly. (Figure 6 wasprepared by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under sponsorship by the U.S. Department of Energy: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/).

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a transparent, liquid ferromagnet, or a truly biocompatibleneural prosthesis? A material that was a better thermalconductor than diamond, but inexpensive and oxidativelystable, would be most useful. Active, adaptive, matter thatmimics some of the features of tissues provides many targets.Most “impossible” materials that one can imagine seemimpossible because they have not been made, not becausethere is a sound theoretical reason that they cannot be made.

14. The chemistry of the planets: Are we alone, or is lifeeverywhere? Planetary discovery is a field that has undergonerecent and revolutionary change: we now know that many(perhaps most) stars have planets, and some of those planetswill support liquid water. We will be able to visit the planets(and their moons) in our solar system, but not—in anyforeseeable future—those in others. What will we be able tomake of them, and particularly of the possibility that theymight support life, either like ours, or perhaps entirelydifferent? If “life” is a molecular phenomenon, life involvingsystems of molecules other than the ones that have led to usseem possible. And inferring that life was probable (orinevitable) on other planets would be a kind of secondCopernican revolution: it would complete the displacementof humankind from a unique place at the center of theuniverse, to the much less exalted position as one of manyforms of life, on many planets, circling many suns. From“crown of creation” to “common as grass.” It might be goodfor our humility.

15. Augmenting humans. Humans are remarkable; per-haps with augmentation, they could be even more so.Augmenting human capabilities could take many forms, mostwith strongly molecular and biochemical components. To takejust one example, the human nervous system operates usingelectrical potentials generated from gradients in concentra-tions of ions between the cytosol and the extracellularmedium; computers operate using electrical potentials gen-erated from gradients in the concentrations of electrons incircuits fabricated in doped silicon. Connecting these twosystems is an arrestingly difficult problem with a stronglymolecular component. Augmentation could apply to senses,memory, information processing, and physical abilities. Aug-mentation applied to behavior and emotion would be muchmore complicated ethically. Of course, Facebook, Twitter, andthe other avatars of social engineering have already aug-mented electronically (for better or worse) the ability of ourchildren to communicate, and their ability to form commun-ities, so some changes are already underway.

16. Analytical techniques that open new areas of science.Analytical chemistry is a much more important area than itmay seem. Dyson, Galison, and others have argued convinc-ingly that one of the most important steps in opening newareas of science is developing new analytical techniques thatmake possible relevant measurements.[17] (As an example,consider the indispensable contribution of chemical methodsto gene sequencing, of spectroscopy to organic synthesis, andof lasers to everything). Chemistry is still in a period of veryactive development of new analytical techniques, and probingmolecular behaviors and motions at the subcellular level,addressing individual cells, exploring the deep brain (espe-cially in humans), and (at the other end of scales of sizes)

developing the measurement infrastructure for managingmegacities, healthcare systems, and atmospheres, all representenormously interesting and challenging problems.

17. Conflict and national security. Terrorism by smallgroups has come to be the equivalent of war using conven-tional armies—in impact on societies, if not in ultimatepotential for harm—as a concern of national security.Although terrorism has historically been confined to rela-tively small events, acts involving nuclear, chemical, orbiological weapons have the potential to be another matterentirely. Defense against this type of terrorism involveschemistry at every stage—from intelligence, and managementof a terrorist event, to cleanup, forensics, and restoration offunction.

18. Distributing the benefits of technology across soci-eties: frugal technology. Most of the people in the world livein conditions that we—in the developed world—wouldconsider unendurable poverty and instability. Extending thebenefits of technology to these societies—for ethical reasons,to promote regional and global stability, and, in the long term,to create markets, jobs, and an expanded middle class—requires a business model that does not fit well with short-term capitalism. Technology that is successful in developingeconomies must give the highest possible ratio of benefit tocost (both measured somehow). Taking an expensive tech-nology and making it inexpensive and robust is not straight-forward. Often, in fact, it is best to invent new solutions to theproblem altogether. Chemistry has been a key to develop-ment of sophisticated and expensive technologies; it also hasthe potential to be a major contributor to the development offrugal and accessible technologies. Developing a solution toa problem that is simultaneously inexpensive, functional,rugged, and profitable is usually more difficult than develop-ing one that is simply complicated and expensive.[18]

19. Humans and machines: robotics. What is the “next bigthing” in technology (after the World Wide Web)? Robotics isone candidate. It is an area that is in the early stages ofexplosive growth. It has the potential to provide newefficiencies, and capabilities that human workers cannotmatch, and, perhaps, to release humans from some of thedrearier parts of a working life; it also has the potential todisplace humans from jobs, when jobs are already in shortsupply, increase consumption of energy, and perhaps gener-ate—in combination with computer “intelligence”—a kind ofnon-human competitor for humans. Understanding how tomake robots that remove humans from dangerous situations,or that substitute for them in unpleasant ones, or that workwith them as assistants (so-called “collaborative robots”),while minimizing the costs and dangers of doing so, isa challenge with many components in materials science and inchemistry. Developing new forms of robotics will, of course,also require close cooperation between chemistry and theother components of this dynamic and quite unfamiliar field.

20. Death. We mortals find death obsessively and endur-ingly interesting. We spend enormous effort to avoid it. We donot, however, have a precisely defined idea of what it is. Whatdoes the death of a living organism really entail? Whatmolecular, cellular, and organismic processes are essential forlife and death, and where is the boundary between them? Is

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death a binary process, a gradual one, or a complex system ofprocesses? Understanding death, like understanding life, isa subject that can involve molecular science at many levels,and have conceptual, ethical, and practical outcomes.

21. Controlling the global population. Standard of livingis, in some broad sense, the ratio of resources to population.Population control is a complex problem, with elements fromcontraception to education.[19] There are components to it,however, to which chemistry must contribute. For example,reversible male contraception provides an obvious path tolimit unwanted pregnancy. Decreasing infant mortality, andimproving the health of children, provides a less obvious pathto the same end, by decreasing uncertainty in the number ofbabies to have to produce the desired number of healthy,working young adults (who are the only support available tomany families in the developing world). Building betterpublic water systems is even less obvious, but equallyimportant. Making potable water available frees younggirls—in many societies—of the obligation to fetch waterfrom distant wells, and allows them to go to school. Improvingthe level of education of women is one of the best ways tolimit population growth. So, chemistry is involved in manyaspects of this problem, from medicinal chemistry to PVCpipe.

22. Combining human thinking and computer “thinking.”Humans think. Computers compute. But as computationsbecome more complex, the distinction between computationand thinking becomes more and more difficult to make.Building the bridge between human thinking, and theinformation processing activities of computers and sys-tems—whether simply computation or machine intelli-gence— will require building bridges between them. GoogleGlass and similar systems may be a primitive first step, butwhat would a USB port for the brain look like? Among othercharacteristics, it might have a neural-to-electrical interface,which we cannot presently begin to design at the molecularlevel.

23. All the rest: jobs, globalization, international com-petition, and big data. Against the background of theseproblems, there is a tsunami of other changes coming inscience and technology that will also generate new problemsto solve. Chemistry must learn how to swim in these turbulentwaters, or run the risk of being swept under. One particularlyinteresting issue is the development of different forms ofscience in different geographical regions. Europe, the U.S.,and Japan have been accustomed to having little competitionin advanced science and technology from the rest of theworld. That protection is disappearing, as different geo-graphical regions develop different scientific strengths, cul-tures, ambitions, and objectives. In chemistry, the U.S. stilldominates in biochemistry and related fields; a resurgentChina is beginning to take over significant areas of synthesis;one focus of India is “frugal innovation”; Europe is especiallystrong now in the emerging field of “systems chemistry.” Whatwill this competition—a competition that did not exist inmuch of the era now over—lead to? What will be added asAfrica and South America develop their own styles ofscience? And how will regional industries respond (withnew technologies and products, and by creation or elimination

of jobs) to the different opportunities created by regionalstrengths and weaknesses? The development of the Internetalso will be a major force for disruption. Everyone�sinformation—proprietary or not—will probably be availableto everyone. Will this (sometimes unwanted) sharing stim-ulate original chemical research, or make it more attractive tobe a fast follower, and depress originality?

24. Combinations with adjacent fields. Some of theopportunities for chemistry lie with new intellectual partners(some obvious, some not). For example, most efforts inmedicinal chemistry now devoted to the subject of “lungcancer” focus on high-technology medical intervention—surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, immunotherapy—in treat-ing established disease. Their success is at best spotty. Themost effective way of dealing with lung cancer is clearly toavoid it: cleaning polluted urban air, reducing specificenvironmental exposures, stopping smoking, and perhapsrecognizing genetic and environmental interactions that leadto high risk. This problem is not exclusively a chemicalproblem: it is a problem at the unfamiliar boundaries betweenchemistry, sociology, psychology, public health, and citymanagement, but the “chemical” aspect is essential. Similarly,understanding “fracking” must involve the interaction ofchemistry, geology, climate instability, public health, andgeochemistry. Developing hypotheses about the origin of lifemust involve chemistry, biology, and planetary astronomy.Arguably, since chemistry is typically the science (among thephysical sciences) that deals most fundamentally with theperceptible world, it has the greatest to gain by forming newalliances with other fields—especially in the social sciences—where molecular interactions and human behaviors overlap—but more expansively wherever there are combinations ofdifficult problems (technically, economically, and ethically)that would benefit from complementary technical strengths.

Setting Priorities for The Future

Political and financial imperatives. Many factors beyondacademic preference determine what areas of academicscience flourish: intellectual inertia tends to prevent univer-sities from changing rapidly, and governments and societieshave their own agendas that are not necessarily aligned withthose of professors. For the foreseeable future, many of themost important problems for society (and perhaps forgovernment) will require chemistry, although not necessarilythe kind of chemistry now popular in the research universities.Stabilizing the environment, managing energy, providingaffordable healthcare, generating jobs, protecting societiesin unsettled times: all are extraordinary challenges, oppor-tunities (and obligations), but they are also evanescent: ifchemistry does not accept them, other fields will. For largechemical companies, short-term financial return will continueto dominate strategy. Will it be possible to combine theacademic enthusiasm for obligation-free funding, govern-ment�s need to solve problems, and industry�s focus onprofitability?

Academic strategy: curiosity, solving problems, or both?A problem among scientists—especially those who think of

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themselves as doing creative, curiosity-driven work—is theperception that pure science and applications are somehowincompatible. Don Stokes developed a useful formulation ofthis problem—now called “Pasteur�s Quadrant.” (Figure 7)[20]

In this formulation, science is partitioned (artificially) intoproblems motivated by curiosity and understanding, andproblems motivated by practical ends. The names “Bohr” and“Edison” are associated with these two styles. The interestingquadrant is given the name “Pasteur” (to whom is attributedearly work in vaccination– that is, now, applied immunol-ogy—and in heat sterilization—now microbiology). Pasteur isgiven credit for an approach that starts by identifyingimportant societal problems with practical implications(death from rabies; illness from spoiled milk) for which therewere no solutions and no relevant science, and then inventsthe new fields of science necessary to solve them. Pasteur didnot apply known science; he invented new science to apply.The Pasteur�s quadrant approach implies that it is possible tocouple, simultaneously, the development of fundamentalscience to the solution of problems important to society. Ituses very difficult problems to stimulate scientific discovery.Working in the Pasteur�s quadrant is not—as it is sometimescalled—“just applications.”[20b]

The unproductive debates over “pure” versus “applied”also form one basis for the problems with the peer reviewsystem. Populist review of proposals very successfully filtersout proposals with the worst ideas, and also, sometimes, themost unfamiliar, ambitious, and original ones. Pasteur�squadrant research, ideally, is stimulated simultaneously bycuriosity and problem solving, and is ambitious and uncertainalong both axes. (And, hence, probably inappropriate for peer

review: Pasteur himself would probably have a difficult timemaking it through the modern peer review system.) Embrac-ing research in Pasteur�s quadrant will require modifying peerreview.

Change

“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its oppo-nents and making them see the light, but rather because itsopponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that isfamiliar with it.”Max Planck (Translation by T. S. Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific

Revolutions).

If chemistry needs to change—from the style developed inthe period post-WW II to that needed to solve very differenttypes of problems—who should lead the change?

Research universities: in principle, the organizations withthe greatest flexibility. Universities should, ideally, lead inchanging the structure of chemistry, not because they aremore competent than industry or government, but becausethey are less constrained, and because one of their jobs iseducation, and education is the future. Many useful types ofchange would be (in principle) easily accomplished: combin-ing different departments (chemistry, biochemistry, chemicalengineering, materials science), broadening education, andchanging the criteria for tenure to give credit for collaborativeresearch are among them. Others may be more difficult. Forexample, there is growing agreement (at least in the U.S.), thatgraduate research groups in many areas of science (includingchemistry) need some form of restructuring).[21] Liebig wouldrecognize most current research groups: a professor, a student,a project, a thesis, a paper (Figure 8). This structure isbasically that of master and apprentice, and it is, arguably,exactly what is not appropriate for students who will faceproblems in their careers that their professors cannot solve.

And what about teaching? The impact of the web andsocial networking on students has been profound; it is just

Figure 8. Liebig invented an organization with which to carry outacademic research with students (the apprentice model). In manyareas of chemical research, over a period of 150 years, this model hasnot changed much. Since, in their careers, current students will befacing problems that do not now exist, the Liebig model and theapprentice system are no longer appropriate. (Text in Figure: modifiedfrom Wikipedia.)

Figure 7. The quad diagram proposed by Don Stokes to summarizehis arguments about different styles of research, modified slightly interminology in this Essay by replacing the terms “pure research” and“applied research” with “knowledge” and “solutions”. The justificationfor this modification is that the “pure”/“applied” distinction isartificially sharp; there is no bright line separating research intendedto generate knowledge (which will ultimately, ideally, be used to solveproblems) and research directed toward solutions of problems (which,for big, non-routine problems, will require generating new knowledgeand understanding).

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beginning to influence teaching. Although there are wonder-ful, wise textbooks, textbooks will almost certainly disappear.Since anything can be put on the web now, for free, instructorswill have the ability to pick and choose what they need, andstudents will largely be freed of paying for it. MOOCs, web-based tools, active learning, inverted classes, interactiveclassrooms—all are important current experiments, butGoogle Glass may be just a step toward the disappearanceof a “university” as a place with real estate, buildings, andfood services, and with professors and students interacting inthe same room through courses. I am not imaginative enoughto see how to replace physical laboratories completely withvirtual ones, but many shared instruments are now operatedvirtually.

The chemical industry: retirement, or evolution anddisruption? The big chemical companies are essential to theproduction of chemical products and hydrocarbon fuels thatrequire handling large amounts of materials, energy, andcapital. They have settled into a strategy of technicallysophisticated improvements to existing processes and prod-ucts. Industries that do not change when technology shiftsdramatically sometimes disappear—companies that producedsteam engines, film for silver halide photography, and addingmachines are examples—but Society will continue to needsulfuric acid, concrete, and polyethylene film. The largestchemical companies will not disappear, but a future producingcommodities at declining margins is not exciting. Moreimportantly, these enormous, technically sophisticated com-panies have unique skills in managing technically demandingand dangerous processes on very large scales, in controllingflows of heat and materials, and managing capital: it would bea great loss if those skills were not applied to managing waterresources, atmospheres, and megacities (Figure 5). Society(and their own stockholders) would be much better for it ifthey were to choose to explore avenues for growth, ratherthan to settle into a retirement that is irrelevant to channelingthe streams of technology that will shape the future world.

Government. Government agencies everywhere couldimprove the effectiveness of the funds they spend byminimizing the bureaucracy associated with those funds.The amount of effort that goes into writing proposals, reports,and program reviews—worldwide—is now extraordinary, andactively damaging to the research being supported, andultimately irresponsible in its supervision of the moneytaxpayers provide. Young investigators—those who will buildnew fields—learn quickly where the bureaucracy is and ifpossible, go elsewhere. Bureaucracy repels innovation; bu-reaucracy also attracts bureaucrats.

That said, government agencies still contribute—asidefrom the money—problems and priorities in areas too long-term for industry to address, and too unconventional or toofar in the future for the university to have thought about; theycan initiate fields that take 50 years to mature, and introducenew and sometimes unwelcome ideas into science andtechnology. Some agencies are better at it; some are worse.Money and a good program manager can be much morevaluable than just money.

Chemistry, Public Understanding, and a Sense ofStyle.

One final point: Chemistry is relentlessly utilitarian in theway it presents itself to the non-scientific public. The now-abandoned DuPont slogan “Better things for better livingthrough chemistry” was an example. This phrase may havepleased chemists, but most people thought of “better things”as “glue” and “paint.” Useful, yes, but ordinary. Not muchpoetry about them.

If there is little public appreciation of a field, there is littlepublic support for it, and ultimately little money. At the end ofeach year, the popular scientific press publishes variousroundups: “The 100 most exciting inventions of 20XX!”chemistry is seldom mentioned. Nobel prizes in chemistry arelargely ignored in the public press. Society will supportchemistry only to the extent that it is excited by what it does;and that part of society that does love science loves it—not forbetter glue—but for intellectual astonishment, and mysteri-ous ideas, and glamour, and promises of the extraordinary.

Other fields manage to be exciting, each in its own way.Although biology is a field with as many incomprehensibledetails as chemistry, “Biology cures cancer,” and “Life” seemsmysterious and endlessly wonderful. Physics contemplates themysteries of space and time. Astronomy brings wonderfulimages of exploding stars, and whispers of the Big Bang andblack holes. Computer science and social engineering rewiresthe minds of our children. Even statistics now keeps watchover “Big Data” (whatever that might be). What doeschemistry do? “Better glue” is not an arresting answer.

Let me sketch a conversation I have had on variousoccasions—in one form or another—at dinner parties and onairplanes. The person next to me says, “What do you do?” Ianswer “I�m a chemist.” S/he responds: “Chemistry was theone course in high school I flunked. What is it that chemistsdo, anyway?” I have tried two types of answers.

One is: “Well, we make drugs. Like statins. Very useful.They are inhibitors of a protein called HMGA-CoA reduc-tase, and they help to control cholesterol biosynthesis andlimit cardiovascular disease.” (This answer usually ends theconversation.)

The second is: “We change the way you live and die.”The second works better.

Acknowledgment

I thank my long-time friend and colleague, Professor JohnDeutch (M.I.T), for his often excellent and sometimes alarmingcomments on the subject of this Essay. Chris Flowerscontributed to the independence of opinion. My wife, Barbara,and my colleagues in the research group, helped to make itclearer.

Received: November 19, 2014Published online: February 12, 2015

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