Report Thomas L. Isenhour Department of Chemistry University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, N.C. 27514
The Future of Analytical Chemistry: Will There Be One? Who will be doing analytical chemistry in the future? Will it be done in chemistry departments or even by chemists? Or will there even be chemists? I want to talk about three things: the state of academic analytical chemistry; the decay of science education in the U.S.; and the future of computers in analytical chemistry. I chose the topic of this talk—"The Future of Analytical Chemistry—Will There Be One?" because it was so easy. The answer is: Yes. There will be analytical chemistry in the future. The efforts that Berzelius and Lavoisier started, by making the chemical world quantitative, are not yet finished. However, it is not clear who will be doing analytical chemistry in the future and whether it will be done in chemistry departments or even by chemists. Or whether there will even be chemists. Before I present my reasons for these anxieties, let me show why I have no doubt that analytical chemistry itself will continue. A few facts— the journal ANALYTICAL C H E M I S T R Y
outsells all the other subscription journals of the American Chemical Society. In fact, it outsells most combinations of three or four ACS journals. At the Pittsburgh Conference this year, held in Atlantic City, approximately 15 000 people were registered. Total attendance was around 21 000. This REPORT is derived from Thomas Isenhour's award address upon receiving the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry at the 185th ACS National Meeting. The author is on leave at the National Science Foundation for the 1982-83 academic year.
On the second day of the meeting, 450 companies were present and interviewing 706 job applicants. Table I shows the current occupations of those applicants. Notice that only 39 of the 706 were unemployed. Since one would expect the unemployed to be the most anxious for interviews, there must not be that many analytical chemists out of work. There remains a great need for the developer of techniques and instrumentation to improve measurement science in chemistry. Analytical chemistry has probably never had more exciting research opportunities than it does right now. Exciting advances are occurring in electrochemistry, surface
Table 1. Current Occupations of 706 Job Candidates Applied research Basic research Marketing R&D New graduate Quality/process control Safety and health Sales Supervision Teaching Unemployed
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192 96 23 188 79 11 21 36 21 39
science, spectroscopy, separations, and other areas. New important analytical methods such as two-dimensional NMR, MS/MS, and supercritical fluid chromatography were not even known in the late 1970s but are now becoming common. Predictions range as far as Janet Osteryoung's, who recently told me: "Sampling may come to an end. Miniaturization, imaging, and computerization may allow complete in situ analysis."
Analytical Chemistry in Academia In academia the ratio of openings to applicants is best in analytical chemistry, and the number of industrial positions is also exceptional. The days of predicting the death of analytical chemistry are hopefully over. One of the most respected spokesmen for chemistry, Bryce Crawford of the University of Minnesota, recently wrote me: "After that ridiculous period when the universities in this country went off their rockers and got the notion that analytical chemistry 'was not a discipline' it's good to see that field coming back so vigorously in a good many departments." However, this enthusiasm for analytical chemistry is not necessarily shared by all our academic colleagues. The idea that analytical chemistry is not an academic discipline remains well entrenched in the minds of many academic chemists including those on faculties of many of the schools tradi0003-2700/83/0351-824A$01.50/0 © 1983 American Chemical Society
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tionally considered leaders in science. If you question the motive of a traditionally nonanalytical department trying to hire an analytical chemist, you may get a less than complimentary answer. They often say: "Well, we need someone to teach the quant course." The complex situation with our colleagues who call themselves electrochemists accentuates the problem. Not all electrochemists are analytical chemists; for example, some are physical chemists and some are engineers. Still, it is true that in many departments electrochemists who do some or even all analytical chemistry must pretend they are not analytical chemists if they wish to be respected by their faculty colleagues. This applies in some other areas of analytical but not as systematically as in electrochemistry. While it's usually the analytical chemists who insist upon hiring an electrochemist, that person is often not counted among our ranks afterwards. The fact is that only a fraction of the major departments make a real effort to compete in analytical chemistry. The Ivy League, for example, has only one department with strength in analytical. The most populous state in the union, which is known for top private and public institutions, has only one graduate chemistry department with more than two active analytical chemists.
Yes. There will be analytical chemistry in the future. In 1980, another new journal, the Journal of Computational Chemistry, was published. Now one area where analytical chemists have certainly made major contributions is in the application of computers to chemistry. And yet this new journal states that it publishes original research in all areas of computer applications to chemistry: organic, inorganic, physical, and biological. The absence of analytical from this list is very obvious. All of us in the trade have a variety of anecdotes we can tell about the lack of status our profession has among our academic colleagues. We still have an uphill battle if we are to remain an important part of the academic scene. The groundwork that Kolthoff, Lingane, Laitinen, Reilley, Rogers and others laid by their innovative leadership has certainly paid off. Analytical chemistry is stronger than ever. However, it is still far from established that analytical chemistry is accepted by the academic chemical community at large.
The Decay of Science Education Rather than take more time on this unfortunate attitude problem, I want to turn to the greater problem that all of chemistry faces: the question as to whether chemistry, let alone analytical chemistry, will continue to be a viable discipline. I present three figures to show the order of the disaster we are facing. Figure 1 is a plot of SAT scores for college freshmen over the past two decades. Figure 2 is the production of PhD chemists by discipline over the past decade, and Figure 3 is a plot of PhD production by sex and U.S. citizenship. Look especially carefully at the mathematics SAT scores in Figure 1 and the total production of PhDs in Figure 2. If you think these curves are unrelated, you aren't being realistic. Falling SAT scores, no matter how crude a test of achievement they may be, are a direct indication that fewer and fewer students are capable of even considering a career in science when they leave high school. While SAT scores have been falling, several other things have been rising in the precollege education system. Interpersonal experience, self-awareness training, confluent education, and other psycho-educationese practices abound. Social studies have replaced learning history, and "appreciation" of science, math, music, and almost any subject has become more important than knowledge of it. Whether they know it or not, the
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Figure 1. Math and verbal SAT average scores over the past two decades Source: National Center for Education Statistics; "Digest of Education Statistics," 1980
education establishment is well on the way to creating a society in which all are equal rather than one in which all have equal opportunities, and we are letting them do it. Some of the mod ern educationists would give us Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s society in his short story "Harrison Bergerson," where the more intelligent and more gifted were handicapped to make everyone equal. The Handicapper General was the most powerful person in the U.S., and
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it was a capital crime for an athlete to remove the weighted sacks he wore to keep him from running or jumping well or for an intellectual to remove from his ear the radio receiver that re peatedly played sirens and automobile crashes so that he could not think more clearly than others. In our anxiousness to be fair we are taking away the opportunity, from one and all, to excel. Is this what our society really needs or even wants? To achieve equality are we really willing to lower our standards to the lowest common
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denominator? That won't be equality, that will be mass mediocrity. If you think the educationists have not lost all perspective, then read Richard Mitchell's "The Graves of Academe," in which he points out that our education establishment speaks of teacher training and driver education! We train teachers and educate driv ers. Isn't something very backwards? Our society is illiterate in science! We see newspaper headlines that say "Truck Spills Chemicals." What else could it spill? If you ask the reporter if the truck spilled water or milk, he'll say: "No. It spilled chemicals." The journalist is not likely to know that water is a chemical. Or, if we walk along the boardwalk in Atlantic City we can see a sign that says "Hot Dogs—0.75c" But when we try to buy a hot dog for a penny (with hopes of getting 0.25Φ change) we find out that the storekeeper wants 75 cents and really meant $0.75. The public doesn't even know the meaning of a decimal point. And if you want to suffer real frustration, try to tell the storekeeper what's wrong with his sign. Scientific illiteracy is so widespread that the very word "chemistry" has a negative connotation. The largest chemical company in the U.S., one whose annual sales exceed the gross national products of many nations, has changed its slogan to read: "Better Things for Better Living." The words
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Figure 2. Doctoral degrees in chemistry granted by U.S. universities by discipline Source: "Summary Report 1980 Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities"; Commission i on Human Resources, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 1981
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"through Chemistry" were dropped because of the public image of chem istry. For more than a decade some voices in the wilderness have been trying to tell the country that mathematics and science education is on the rocks. Now, suddenly, within the past year or so, everyone has decided we have fall en behind in science and mathematics education. Perhaps this is because we find ourselves outstripped in many fields by countries that weren't even our competitors 25 years ago. Perhaps it's because we can't sell our inferior automobiles anymore—not even to the American public that is bombard ed an average of 12 hours a day by all the ordnance Madison Avenue com mands. Perhaps we've noticed some of the telltale symptoms, such as that for every engineer or scientist we gradu ate, Japan (a country with half our population) produces two. (We get even by producing 10 lawyers to their one.) But now that everyone is interested in education, at least politically, let's look at some of the things that have been discovered. Only one-third of the 21 000 high schools in the U.S. offer calculus. But it doesn't .really matter because less than 10% of U.S. students take a mathematics or science course beyond the minimum (which is just as minimum as it was 25 years ago) re quired for high school graduation. It doesn't matter that they don't teach
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calculus, because their graduates don't know what a decimal point is. I am sorry to say that the high school in my own town, a supposed oasis in the intellectual desert of the South, offers a course called "Physics without Mathematics." (I assume they will eventually introduce "Music with out Sound" if the trend continues.) Furthermore, in my limited experi ence, college curriculum committees are urging their colleagues to adapt the same attitude of teaching "appre ciation" of subjects rather than knowl edge of them. I recently attended a reception given by a well-respected private southern school that includes my daughter among those it would like to attract. I was appalled to hear the question from the audience, "Are there special science courses for nonscience majors," answered by the ad missions representative, "Oh, yes. We take care to see that no one takes a physics course that's going to be too hard or anything like that." They want me to pay them more than $10,000 a year to guarantee that my child will not be challenged education ally! Let's look at some recent headlines from major U.S. newspapers: • Commission Recommends Math for Most Students • Will It Take Another Sputnik? • Where Are the Math Teachers? • President Wants $200,000,000 for
Teacher Training Notice—good old "teacher training," that's the in thing. I wish someone would tell our national leaders that you train monkeys and public relations persons, but you educate teachers, or at least you should. This fiscal year the National Science Foundation was allocated $15,000,000 to spend in 16 500 school districts to upgrade science teachers. Now this is the kind of "solution" to the problem we can expect—money. And that's not all bad. Money often does a lot of good. However, those that give it do not understand that it doesn't necessarily do the kind of good they want it to. That $15,000,000 will get spent and enter the economy as all other appropriations do. And that's good. Some of it will actually aid education in some form. And that's good, too. But let's put it into perspective. If there is no overhead, and all the money goes to exactly the right uses, the result will be an expenditure of a little less than $1000 per school district. That is, about one month's salary, without fringe benefits or anything else, for a poor, beginning mathematics or science teacher. That is not going to change very much.
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Figure 3. Doctoral degrees in chemistry granted by U.S. universities by sex and U.S. citizenship Source: "Summary Report 1980 Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities"; Commission on Human Resources, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 1981
"So," say many of the education leaders, "We must use these limited resources for the best possible purposes." They mean for research to develop pilot programs and show the rest of the world how to teach science. Unfortunately, there is very little that could ever be called good research in education. Or if there is, we don't know how to do it and we're not very likely to figure it out. The proof is written in tens of thousands of doctoral dissertations that have been done in university schools of education over the past several decades. All of these projects and doctoral degrees and who, outside of the author and a few research peers, even knows the contents of one!
of $200,000,000 put science and mathematics teaching back on track in the U.S.? Not very likely. This would be about $12,000 per school district. And, if it is allocated, it will probably be spent by the same crowd who got us where we are today. The educationists decry the fact that many of today's mathematics and science teachers are not certified. This money probably will be spent at least partially for fellowships to achieve certification. That will probably do some good, but not that much since certification is defined by the same state boards of education that are graduated by the same schools of education that believe you train teachers and educate drivers.
Has the equivalent of the laws of thermodynamics been discovered in education? If so, who was the discoverer? Does education have its Einstein or Planck, maybe a G. N. Lewis or Linus Pauling? No, unfortunately, if there are real breakthroughs in education we haven't come close to finding them. The closest to a breakthrough I know about is the Suzuki method for teaching violin and piano. And that was not, of course, developed under the guise of research in a school of education in the U.S. From another of the headlines we learn that President Reagan wants to spend $200,000,000 in the 16 500 school districts. Now that's a lot of money. That's almost 0.1% or one part per thousand of the annual defense budget! Will a one-time appropriation
The Solution The fact is that our society will remain scientifically illiterate until scientists take education into their own hands. We cannot continue to assign the responsibility for science education to those who are scientifically uneducated! There is an old, supposedly Chinese saying that "Many hands make light work." I'm not sure if it's accurate to attribute this to the Chinese, but since the Wise Men came from the East it certainly seems appropriate. The saying means that if a lot of people work on something, it's easy to do. This is what I propose. Specifically, I propose that scientists, and of course in our domain I mean chemists, become involved with precollege education and do something about the poor
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image of our profession and the scientific illiteracy that surrounds us. Now I proposed this to a professional educator who has been involved with science education on the Washington scene for the past decade. He immediately fired back the cliché that most professsional scientists aren't
W e c a n n o t c o n t i n u e to assign t h e r e s p o n s i b i l i t y for science e d u c a t i o n to t h o s e w h o are scientifically u n e d u c a t e d !
trained in teaching and therefore would probably do more harm than good. I wonder how we could make the situation much worse than it already is. There is another old, supposedly Chinese saying to express his view: "Too many cooks spoil soup." I was politely told that scientists had no business in science education—we should leave that up to the education professionals. Well we have left it up to them and look at where we are. I made up my own old saying, clearly not Chinese, "We are running out of soup." We know what the professional educators can do and, in my opinion, no one-time, massive federal program, which turns a few hundred million dollars over to the same old crowd is going to change anything, except the
employment market for the people who handle the bucks. Of course it might change things if the dollars were used to hire lobbyists to try to change every board of education in the U.S., so that they would require people with degrees in science to teach science, and pay them a decent living, and take the bureaucracy off their backs. Or if it established 100 high schools of science and mathematics and structured them like some of the successful models we have. But don't count on that happening. Count on more teacher training and driver education—it's all they know. There's only one real answer, and it's as old as all the old sayings. If you want a job done right—do it yourself. Scientists must get involved personally. We must go out into the community, make ourselves available, or even demand to participate in our local schools' programs. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. It would take less time than we commit to attending a national meeting, and almost no money, for each chemistry faculty member in the country to spend one day at each of five schools in his immediate area. This is what you could do. You could give a little talk on your research; why you became a chemist; what's neat about chemistry; how science is taught in college; how a laser works or a mass spectrometer or a dropping mercury electrode. And they'd love you. The high school and junior high school teachers would be delighted to have you. If 10 000 chemistry faculty members each visited five schools in one year, there would be 50 000 opportunities for students to learn about our profession. Or, let's further amplify our numbers by calling on our industrial colleagues. After all, industrial chemists live in the real world, deal with real scientific problems, and even know that in spite of what the front office says, most of the better things for better living that come out of Du Pont do so in the form of chemistry. If 100 000 industrial chemists each visit five schools, there will be half a million opportunities for students to learn about our profession. You probably do worse things with your time. If you try this I think you'll enjoy it. Everyone I've ever known in science has had some story about the teacher who inspired them to go into science. Ask yourself, who have you inspired lately? How many students have gone into science because of you? Let's consider the results of convincing a few more people to be interested in chemistry. If we inspire 0.1 student in each school district to become a PhD chemist each year we will double the supply! Perhaps we could even convince some potential law students
to go into chemistry and kill two birds with one stone. (This statistic comes from Fred Findeis as do many of the ideas I'm stating here today.) Here's another Findeis idea. Most parents are willing to spend $300 for a trombone or clarinet so that their child can have a musical experience. They even go to their concerts. How about spending $300 to buy the high school chemistry laboratory a digital pH meter? Wouldn't you like your child to get a reasonable chemical experience? How about attending a meeting of the science club at your local high school? Or if there isn't a science club, how about forming one? Think what that high school science teacher would be able to do with 25 visits from industrial and university scientists every year and with $300 X 150 students coming up in every class. I believe the path to real science literacy within our society is the responsibility of every scientist and that that responsibility will not be met until every one of us becomes involved on the local level. Future of Computers in Analytical Chemistry Now those who know me would not believe that I would write an article like this and not mention my favorite interest—computers. And they are right. I cannot. So I will speculate a little on the future of computing machines and chemistry. My early career went in this direction by accident of a summer job at Oak Ridge, Tenn., when I was a sophomore in college. It was furthered by George Morrison's willingness to let me explore the applications of computers to activation analysis in graduate school. It was even more developed by the excellent graduate students who came to me in the early part of my career and who have continued to come to me. And a most crucial turning point came when Fred Findeis allowed me, on the basis of a phone call, to divert all the money I had in a grant for doing activation analysis to start research on the application of learning machines to the interpretation of mass spectra. Therefore I will don the mantle of prophet and tell you about the future of computers in analytical chemistry as I see it. It looks great. The table has been set for a feast of new analytical chemistry. People who don't know or who want to be superior often say, "What is analytical chemistry?" My reply is: Analytical chemistry is an analytical approach to chemistry. And I believe that. Analytical chemistry has always been the science of measurement in the domain of molecules. "Analytical" has the same meaning to me in chemistry as in mathematics. And nowhere
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Robotics may soon be the main tool of t h e e x p e r i m e n t a l chemist.
is there a greater opportunity for analytical chemistry than in the area of computing. My summary of man's technological accomplishments is very brief: Man's Greatest Inventions 1. Language 2. Writing 3. Computing First, the ability to communicate facts and ideas required some form of language. Second, to be able to communicate facts and ideas over the span of time required a permanent form of communication, that is, writing. And third, to be able to combine information to produce new information required computing—first with sticks and stones, then symbolically on paper, and finally electronically. A modern way to state Western philosophy is: "Compute Ergo Sum"— "I compute, therefore I am." To the classicists, I will point out that the Latin is correct. There are two Latin verbs of interest, calculare from calculus, small stone (used in reckoning), and computare, to reckon together, or to think together. Currently, we do just this. Quantum chemists, spectroscopists, kineticists, and all sorts of other chemical practitioners submit their ideas and data to computers in the form of code and then "compute" or think together with the machine. Now we are taking the first important steps to intelligent robotics. For a long time we have had separate thinking and acting laboratory machines. Thinking machines, computers (and I'm using "thinking" in the artificial intelligence sense to mean intelligent response to problems), and "acting" machines in the form of all sorts of " d u m b " robots: pH meters, mass spectrographs, automatic dishwashers, etc. These are about to be combined. Actually they have been slowly being combined as data systems were attached to NMR spectrometers, etc. But the necessary hardware and software are just now becoming available for analytical robots. Instead of automatic titrators we will' have automatic analyzers. If Janet Osteryoung is right we will be able to do our analysis from outside the system and then size will not be so important. Combined with the incredible increase in density of electronic elements, we will have thinking-acting machines. Robotics may soon be the main tool of the experimental chemist! If you don't believe the technology will go this far, consider what has hap-
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pened in the past decade. For $30 you can buy a watch with computer capa bilities that could not have been con structed using all available technology for any price 10 years ago. Junior high school students are better program mers than most college students, and software systems exist that do symbol ic mathematics on home microcompu ters. Home computers, by the way, last year equaled pantyhose in total sales in the U.S. We are at the begin ning of an exponential growth of com puter usage that over the next decade will transform the analytical laborato ry beyond our wildest dreams. So if you thought I was going to fin ish without saying something a little bit bizarre then you were wrong. I have a prediction with which to end this REPORT. A new era of analytical chemistry, intelligent laboratory auto mation—that is, analytical robotry— will emerge during the 1980s. It is now but in its infancy! In closing, I want to say that many people have played important roles in the development of my career. Special among these have been my graduate students and faculty colleagues. The list is longer than I can present here. But I would be remiss if I did not ac knowledge one person: John C. Mar shall of Saint Olaf College has been my colleague and friend for the past 13 years. Many of the achievements that led to this award must be cred ited to him. I would also like to thank the Fisher Scientific Company for sponsorship of the ACS Award in Ana lytical Chemistry, and Peter Jurs for arranging the award symposium.
Thomas L. Isenhour is professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He received his BS degree from that institution in 1961, and his PhD degree from Cor nell University in 1965. He was assis tant professor at the University of Washington from 1965-69, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in 1971, and the Professor I. M. Kolthoff Senior Visitor in Analytical Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1980. Isenhour's most recent research has focused on factor analysis of mass spectra, reconstruction of gas chromatograms for GC/IR, and GC/IR/MS.
