ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY EDITORIAL
January 1973, Vol. 45, No. 1 Editor: H E R B E R T A. L A I T I N E N
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A Question of Priorities IT IS INTERESTING to compare the approach taken by chemists and physicists in evaluating their professions in terms of the supply of re search funding in relation to the demand for funds. Several years ago, a report entitled "Chemistry: Opportunities and Needs/' which came to be known as the Westheimer report, was issued under the sponsor ship of the NAS-NRC. In this report, chemistry was subdivided into functional groupings such as synthesis, structure, physical properties and characterization, chemical dynamics, etc., rather than the classical branches of chemistry. Areas of research deemed to be especially ripe for expansion were identified, but no attempt was made to set up a system of priorities. Rather, it was maintained that chemistry as a whole could be classified as "little science" in contrast to areas such as radioastronomy or high energy physics which inherently require large installations, and that both the manpower and technical needs to justify substantial expansion of pure research in chemistry were available. Recently, a report entitled "Physics in Perspective" was prepared by a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, under Professor D. Alan Bromley of Yale University. The field of physics was divided into 69 different specialties, of which 15 were chosen as priority areas for research during the next δ years. Criteria both internal to the field of physics and external to science were used in selecting the priority order. Both "big science" and "little science" appear on the high priority list. Another type of priority is involved in the committee recommendation that scarce resources should be concentrated on sup porting research in the best universities and at major facilities. Whether this approach, clearly setting forth priorities, will prove to be more in fluential than the broad-based appeal of the chemists remains to be seen, but it can be safely predicted that it will cause dissent among those not in the chosen elite areas or institutions. What has this to do with analytical chemistry? It is significant that our field is so broad, in fact in some respects broader than chemistry as a whole, that it is relatively immune to shifts of emphasis from one area to another. Of course the analytical field as a whole prospers or suffers with the totality of support for science, and specialties within the field shift with changing emphasis, but the broad base of analytical character ization gives it an exceptional stability.
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ANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY, VOL. 45, NO. 1, JANUARY 1973
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