provocative opinion Reunification of the Chemical Sciences H. A. McGee, Jr. and P. K. Mercure Chemical Engineering Department. Virginia Tech. Blacksburg. VA 24061 To reestablish their entrepreneurial spirit and scientific biochemistry, vigor, ~hearademicdepartm~ntsofrhemistr~, and chemical engineering should now join rogether ro form a School of Chemical science^. Such a trinitv would far exceed, in both power and contribution, the sum of its now sevarate ~ a r t sFor . examvle. and in no wav to disvaraee the . bektifui~obel-prize-winning,~ e r r i f i e l dsolid-phase peptide synthesis, the basic idea of chemical synthesis with an anchored reagent allowing subsequent easy separation by filtration and then automatic sequencing is actually a chemical engineering- type notion. How many more similarly powerful innovations lie undiscovered because academic chemists and chemical engineers continue their benign neglect of each other? This now all-too-absent symbiosis is also applicable the other wav round. for i t i s ~ t h etask of chemical ~ ~ ~ engineering to convert chemical understanding into service to ~ e o ~and l e to societv. But the exvertise in chemistrv that is reqiired for such adaptations is &day curiously lac
