Focus on the Future — Research
Chemistry's Golden Age While continuing to nurture the core of their discipline, chemists in the next 25 years will unlock many secrets of biology, create materials with almost magical properties Rudy M. Baum C&EN Washington
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hat will chemistry look like in 2023, the 100th anniversary of Chemical & Engineering News? Wloat research will dominate the pages of the Journal of the American Chemical Society? Will there be paper pages of JACS, or will the contents o/JACS and other journals be disseminated exclusively by electronic means? Where will the best chemistry research be carried out—in traditional chemistry departments of universities or in departments of structural biology and materials science? Who will support the research? Will most universities still have chemistry^ departments? In an effort to answer these and other questions, C&EN assembled a panel of distinguished chemists to discuss the evolution of chemistry over the next 25 years. Columbia University chemistry professor Ronald Breslow moderated the discussion. Also participating were fohn D. Baldeschivieler, chemistry1 professor, California Institute of Technology; Allen f. Bard, chemistry1 professor, University of Texas, Austin; Jacqueline K. Barton, chemistry professor, Caltech; Theodore L. Brown, chemistry professor (emeritus), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Barbara Imperiali, chemistry professor, Caltech; Robert S. langer, chemical engineering professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Koji Nakanishi, chemistry professor, Columbia University; Daniel G. Nocera, chemistry professor, MIT; Douglas Raber, director, Board on Chemical Sciences & Technology, National Research Council, Washington, DC; Stuart A. Rice, chemistry1 professor, University of Chicago; and Richard E. Smalley, chemistry1 and physics professor, Rice University, Houston. In intenneivs with C&EN Managing Editor Rudy M. Baum, Richard N
Zare, chairman of the National Science on an intimacy with the objects of their Board and chemistry professor, Stanford science unmatched by other disciplines. University1, and Stephen f. lippard, chair- Chemistry has fulfilled its extraordinary man of the MIT chemistry1 department, potential. It is, in fact, the 'central, useful, also contributed their thoughts about the and creative" science that Ronald Breslow future of chemistry1. called it in the title of his 1996 book on chemistry for nonscientists. So successful Seventy-five years ago, a new age was has chemistry been that its approach, its dawning in chemistry, an age when new focus on structure and reactivity, now techniques and new instrumentation productively dominates other scientific would open a window on molecular struc- disciplines. Is not molecular biology, in ture and quantum mechanics would pro- reality, chemical biology? Is not materials vide a truer view of the behavior of at- science, in fact, materials chemistry? oms. That window never closed, and mo But tliis very success has given rise to lecular structure and quantum mechanics doubts about the future health of the scibecame the organizing principles of ence of chemistry. Are the hottest areas of chemistry. The focus on structure was, chemical research being appropriated by in many ways, what set chemistry apart disciplines not identified as chemistry? from other sciences—chemists insisted The group assembled by C&EN to discuss the future of chemistry seemed relatively sanguine about the future of the discipline. "We speak of chemistry as if we all know what it is," observed Breslow. "But there are fields of materials science (now departments of materials science) or fields of environmental science (now departments of environmental sciences), departments of biochemistry and molecular biology—all areas in which a large component is chemistry. Are chemistry departments going to encompass all this?" Jacqueline Barton provided one answer to Breslow s question. "I predict there will be fewer chemistry departments, but not fewer chemists," she said. "Some universities wont have a chemistry department, but there will be Ronald Breslow chemists in departments of JANUARY 12, 1998 C&EN 143
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where other than in a place explicitiy called a chemical laboratory, retained a unique identity. Daniel Nocera, for example, observed, "Whenever I come up against this question, I always ask: How do you define a chemist? What makes a chemist unique? And then the question is: Will that ever go away? Chemists make new things and we study reactions. That's the core of this profession. And that can never go away. People will always rely on us for that." "The fantastic thing about chemists," said Barbara Imperiali, "is that we all speak the same language. We share the same fundamental science. And therefore we can talk to each other about what we are doing. We have to ensure that the next generations can keep on doing that, that they don't slide away from us and become specialists in a field where they can't talk with a physical chemist, for example." Douglas Raber On a very practical level, Allen Bard noted: "I think as long as life processes, new materials, neurological chemists keep getting jobs, there will be investigations. I think we should embrace chemistry departments, especially at the this, because if you believe chemistry is a graduate level. There are places that central science, which I do, then in fact have eliminated, for example, physics dewe're all doing chemistry in these differ- partments. But as long as we can turn out students who can find employment, ent areas." Some panel members took issue with we'll be okay." Barton's prediction of fewer chemistry departments, arguing that the discipline The comprehensive sequencing of is simply too fundamental for a universi- the human genome and the genomes ty to abandon the department altogether. of various pathogens is going to have Stuart Rice, for example, said, "Some- a profound effect on the future. The where the intellectual core of chemistry impact for intervention, for therapy, has to be taught, advanced, maintained." for dealing with resistant microorAnd Robert Langer, the sole chemical en- ganisms—the potential is enormous. gineer on the panel, noted, "Some uni- And that will transform the way we versities have gotten rid of departments, look at the practice of medicine. sure. But chemistry? If they're going to John Baldeschwieler get to the point where they're going to get rid of chemistry, that just seems to So chemists will still be practicing chemme like a very long way to go." istry in 25 years. They will be doing it in Douglas Raber, whose board at NRC traditional chemistry departments, but spans both chemistry and chemical engi- they will be doing it in a lot of other neering, pointed out that there already places, too. But what research will they has been a strong effort in many parts of be carrying out? And what will they have the community—including funding agen- accomplished between now and then? A cies—to exploit the interdisciplinary na- lot of the activity, according to our panture of the chemical sciences, and that el, will be at those interfaces with biolothe real strength of the field lies at its in- gy and with materials science. Although some members of the panel believed that terfaces with other disciplines. While all panel members agreed that government and foundation funding patchemistry's push into related disciplines is terns had distorted research priorities toirreversible, they also expressed a sense ward biological questions, the majority that chemists, even those working some- believed that chemistry applied to biolo144 JANUARY 12, 1998 C&EN
gy is one of the most intellectually stimulating of today's research frontiers. "One of the greatest challenges of the next century will be for chemists to make life," Richard Zare said in an interview after the panel met. "A system that is self-replicating, self-organizing, and even has the possibility of evolving into other things—I think this is possible." Creating life is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of chemistry turning toward biology, but it is not the only daring prediction Zare was willing to make. "We're going to move more toward bionic man," he predicted, "toward the possibility of putting man and machine together, at least for medical purposes, and being able to understand how to make implants of materials which will aid our health or which will monitor our health and tell us ahead of time, like on a car, when you should take it in to the service station rather than waiting for it to blow up on the freeway. I think there's going to be much more done with sensors and the connections of people with them." Panel members, while no less excited about the prospects of chemistry applied to biological questions, were somewhat more circumspect than Zare in their predictions. But Zare wasn't entirely alone in his sense that chemists are on the verge of creating life, as this exchange between Nocera and Breslow indicates: Nocera: And I imagine that in the next
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tion to screen synergistic WiS^i.!i'M mixtures like Koji described. The diagnostic tools are all becoming available. They were not available five to 10 years ago. That will bring alternative medicine into the realm of real-world medicine." "Let's expand this be yond alternative medicine," Barton argued. "We've been thinking about gene therapy or protein therapies. I think, as you look to the future, it's going to go back more to small molecules, whether discovered through alterna tive medicine or rationally from the standpoint of using small molecules as regula tors. In terms of signal trans duction regulators, in terms of antiviral agents, it's not necessarily that we're going to go to bigger and bigger. As we figure out how these U.tJ.\mn7nm.m:j.iét.i.\ i-reTT7.rj.«i
