editorial
An Editor’s Hopes
G
ardeners—both amateurs like myself and farmers who seek a livelihood—are always conscious of the coming and going of the summer solstice. The dry season is upon us and winter comes behind. Thoughts and plans start to trickle up for the coming year—what parts of our past plans and plantings were not successful and what new plans and ambitions are to come in the next year? Entwined with such reflections is always a collection of hopes. Besides a deeply personal hope for the first Tuesday of November, I will share an Editor’s hopes, which are a blend of hopes for chemistry and analytical chemistry, for the journal that I am privileged to serve, and for my academic role as a researcher and teacher. I hope that the discipline of analytical chemistry continues its truly remarkable trajectory as a creative force that advances the chemical and other sciences, with concurrently deepening respect within the sciences. I hope that the positive contributions of analytical chemistry to the health and well-being of the world’s societies continue and grow. I hope that we welcome the vast infusion of scholars from diverse backgrounds who see opportunities to contribute to analytical principles and measurements, yet that, as a discipline, we maintain a distinct identity so that future scholars who understand the core ideas of analytical chemistry can be trained and nurtured. I hope that creative scholars devoted to original ways of making chemical measurements continue to innovate at the furious pace I have witnessed in the past decade-plus and give us even more new tools to solve problems both fundamental and applied. I hope that the significance of training and research in analytical chemistry continues to permeate all the continents and encourages all societies to invest in the discipline. I hope that analytical scholars continue to fearlessly explore new and unfamiliar areas and that we ourselves tolerate and
10.1021/AC801341Q 2008 AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY
Published on Web 07/31/2008
welcome talented scholars who plunge into our own field with unvarnished but creative ideas. I hope that more analytical chemists learn the joys of designing and synthesizing new molecules and chemical materials that do our bidding and advance the crucial art of sensors with chemical selectivity beyond the current fixation on DNA hybridization. I hope that the journal Analytical Chemistry will continue to be regarded as the highest-quality outlet available for authors to publish significant ideas, methods, instruments, and applications—I and my fellow Editors pledge to keep it that way. I hope that I and all of my academic analytical colleagues will be successful in judging what—amid the sea of measurement ideas—are the most foundational ones to teach our students in classes and laboratories to prepare them for any and all futures. I hope that our analytical colleagues who pursue measurement tasks in industrial and government laboratories achieve their directed goals in ways that give deep satisfaction and rewards. I have the same hopes for all the branches of the chemical sciences! These are personal hopes, but I suspect that you will recognize some of your very own. Each of us, in our professional contexts, develops our own set of hopes. I hope that yours and mine come to fruition as the days move toward the next summer solstice, when life starts another fundamental cycle.
AUGUST 1, 2008 / ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY
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