Editorial
"Analytical Chemistry Is What Analytical Chemists Do"
T
he title quotes a famous remark by Charles N. Reilley on the occasion of his Fisher Award address at the April 1965 ACS national meeting. I have just re-read a copy of Reilley's opening remarks, in which are found some timeless gems on the teaching of analytical chemistry. Today, with the overwhelming growth of knowledge, there is simply no time for easily outdated frills in our curriculum. As a result, it is essential that stress be given to core concepts—those principles that will remain as firm foundations for our thinking and action ten and, hopefully, twenty years hence. In attempting to decide what subject matter should be included in today's curriculum, it is necessary to judge this, not from what has been the traditional content, but from the viewpoint of current research procedures and interests. Reilley went on to suggest some other auricular changes. In the first year, he urged that laboratories become more quantitative and include an introduction to gravimetry and titrimetry. For the sophomore year, he urged major surgery ("an adiabatic transition") with a change to emphasis on separations and spectroscopy with "a small amount of chemical equilibria." Reilley was speaking at a time of some turbulence in chemistry, when some were questioning the relevance of analytical chemistry as a discipline. He recognized that what we teach is what we are perceived to be, and he observed that "The traditional sophomore course has become so steeped in tradition that it has become seriously out of touch with today's needs." Important and sweeping changes did occur as a result of the urgings of Reilley and of other leaders in the field, many just as prescribed above. I believe that such changes in the past
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Analytical Chemistry, Vol. 66, No. 13, July 1, 1994
have been an important part of the intellectual vitality that analytical chemistry enjoys as a discipline today. For the future, though, changes toward modernization must continue. Education in science must be a continuing frontier, else it will stagnate and fail. In that context, I wonder how vigorously the existing mix of topics in the beginning undergraduate analytical course can be justified as matching up with what students need to know about analytical chemistry when they become professional chemists. I throw a specific stone. To what extent is modern analytical chemistry based on the acts of gravimetric analysis and titrimetry? To what extent are determinations of acids and bases or investigations of chemical equilibria made with a titration? In my view, these topics are tenaciously hanging onto a disproportionate share of extremely valuable real estate in any beginning analytical chemistry course. Their merits should be weighed, relative to giving more attention to, for example, separations (capillary electrophoresis!), spectroscopy (laser-induced fluorescence!), statistics, and MS. Some hard choices need to be considered—by educators, by laboratory designers, and by textbook writers. "Analytical chemistry is [still] what analytical chemists do." And as changes occur in what analytical chemists do in their work in industrial, government, and academic laboratories, educators must recognize that so that what is taught as analytical chemistry truthfully defines the topic.
