ACCOUNTS OF CHEXICAL RESEARCH” Registered in U.S.Patent and Trademark Office;Copyright 1986 by the American Chemical Society
VOLUME 19
NUMBER 2
FEBRUARY, 1986
EDITOR JOSEPH F. BUNNETT ASSOCIATE EDITORS Joel E. Keizer John E. McMurry EDITORIAL ADVISORY BOARD Robert Abeles Richard Bernstein R. Stephen Berry Michel Boudart Maurice M. Bursey Charles R. Cantor Ernest R. Davidson Marshall Fixman Jenny P. Glusker Keith U. Ingold Maurice M. Kreevoy Theodore Kuwana Stephen R. Lippard James M. McBride Josef Michl Kenneth N. Raymond Jacob F. Schaefer Richard C. Schoonmaker BOOKS AND JOURNALS DIVISION D. H. Michael Bowen, Director
Journals Department: Charles R. Bertsch, Head; Marianne C. Brogan, Associate Head; Mary E. Scanlan, Assistant Manager Production Department: Elmer M. Pusey, Jr., Head Research and Development Department: Lorrin R. Garson, Head The American Chemical Society and its editors assume no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by contributors. Views expressed in the editorials are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the official position of the American Chemical Society. Registered names and trademarks, etc., used in this publication, even without specific indication thereof, are not to be considered unprotected by law.
Infrastructure for Cottage Industrialists For almost a generation academic chemists have referred to their operations as a “cottage industry”. Some months ago I was brought up short on the use of this term while preparing a report that I hoped would be influential with legislators (or at least their staffers) in drastically upgrading financial support for chemistry. As I contemplated the contrast between Hebridean crofters knitting sweaters to sell in Edinburgh with the needs of a modern chemistry department it became clear how fatuous was the application of “cottage industry” to our modus operandi. Legislators are remarkably sensitive to fatuous and self-serving language! Two or three generations ago it was standard practice for chemistry graduate students to make most of their own glassware, equipment, and chemicals. Nowadays fresh Ph.D.’s leave graduate school with a few well-developed special skills in programming, glass blowing, electronics, or machining. Yet most laboratory chemists are faced increasingly with highly specialized “black boxes” whose parts are sealed, hidden, or require sophisticated shop facilities for repair. The neophyte Ph.D. on his or her first industrial job who tries to do his or her own plumbing or glass blowing will soon be told that he or she was not hired to do such work. In academia where good support facilities are harder to come by, many a promising career has been piddled away on unprofitable “do it yourself“ instrument maintenance while the main chance for intellectual creativity was lost. Within our Universities and Colleges success or failure is often determined by the presence or absence of support facilities, shops, and well-functioning equipment that make up the local infrastructure. A crucial problem facing University administrators and federal granting agencies is how to provide funds for these increasingly important components. Beyond that is the question of how to make the best use of all the resources of a large university or even a region in a way that is cost effective without stifling individual creativity. Slowly we are learning to collaborate and share the use of special equipment and skills. The working unit of Chemistry is still the small research group which operates with a totally different style than that of Big Science such as high energy Physics. Yet it is also a far cry from anything like the “cottage industry” which it may have been in some simpler day. No longer can a Sherlock Holmes enjoy a few hours of recreational organic chemistry on “the chemistry of the acetones (sic)” in his Baker Street flat’ or an Agnes Pockels launch a new era of interfacial chemistry at her kitchen sink. It is dangerously self-defeating to pretend that University Chemistry in the 1980s is still a small, cheap science when we are so dependent on such a large and expensive infrastructure and are asking (quite correctly) for much better funding to support it. We cannot have it both ways. An image of simple peasants making their own sandals is no longer appropriate to the multibillion dollar complex of instruments and facilities that are needed to realize the Opportunities in Chemistry which are now so clearly recognized in the “Pimentel Report”. Edward M. Arnett Duke University (1) “The Adventure of the Copper Beeches”,first published in Strand Magazine 1892, 3, 613. As communicated to Sir A. Conan Doyle by Dr. J. H. Watson.
