What’s the Future of Chemistry?

Chemistry is a very old discipline, with references to chemical transformations and debate about the nature of matter dating back to the times of the ancient Egyptians and Greeks. Modern chemistry began to emerge from alchemy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thanks to scholars such as Boyle and Lavoisier, leading to rapid advances in the following two centuries. In this feature, eight leading chemists with a broad spectrum of interests look to the future and share their vision for how their own fields may develop in the coming years. Even though research is increasingly interdisciplinary, the articles are roughly divided into traditional areas of chemistry note, however, the key themes that occur in more than one article, including energy and sustainable chemistry. The chemical tools used to investigate biology - and the analytical tools chemists themselves use - are discussed, as well as the synergy between experiment and theory. Structure and bonding are at the core of the discipline, especially inorganic chemistry, using using weaker intermolecular forces to assemble supermolecules is a field with much still to explore. To begin, the central place of synthesis in chemistry is emphasized and extended to chemistry's place in science Chemistry is the study of matter and materials, and the changes that they undergo. It is a fundamental science that advances our understanding of the natural world, but it also provides solutions to everyday problems, as well as innovations that enhance and enrich our everyday lives. Chemistry underpins a broad range of disciplines and a career in the chemical sciences offers a range of opportunities that can be extremely rewarding, both personally and financially. Chemistry graduates investigate the inner workings of matter itself, they develop new and better medicines, they create specialised materials for clothing, packaging and electronics, they make a vast range of products from cosmetics, paints, toiletries and perfumes to plastics, fuels, and foodstuffs, and much more besides. Chemistry as a discipline also has been, and remains, a significant contributor to the wealth, prosperity and health of humanity. Over the last 5,000 years, it is chemistry, more than any other discipline, that has made our global civilisation possible. Early civilisations learned how to extract simple metals and to process them, which enabled military and eventually economic superiority. Likewise the civilisations that discovered gunpowder gained ascendancy in many areas of the globe. Innovations, such as the development of specific cements, mortars and, later on, concrete, glass and plastic, allowed urbanisation on a massive scale. The industrial revolution was enabled by the rapid improvements in understanding combustion and thermodynamics of fossil fuels. This led to global power shifts to those countries, which were able to implement these innovations on an industrial scale. Science is, in principle, objective. But it is human intelligence and endeavour that discover and create scientific knowledge. The scientific world should be borderless; scientists from both advanced and emerging nations - with different backgrounds and values - must cooperate for the survival of our species within the confines of our planet. This is the greatest challenge facing chemists in conducting their research.