A short history of chemometrics: a personal view

Abstract

This article traces chemometrics back to its origins in scientific computing in the 1960s. Its development is compared in other computational disciplines such as bioinformatics. The change in geographical origins of papers published in the core chemometrics literature is discussed. It is concluded that the level of core activities in this area has hardly changed over several decades, whilst there has been a significant expansion in non‐expert users of packages over this period. It is estimated that around 2% of people encountering chemometrics in their research can be considered real experts. The problems of non‐experts using chemometrics methods with limited knowledge of the statistical fundamentals are explored. The contrasting development of chemometrics compared with, for example, computational chemistry and bioinformatics, is interpreted in terms of the changing financial pressures on research over its key developmental phase, as illustrated by the change in academic finance in the UK over the past 50 years. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.