Quo vadis? Leading the way with the younger generation of scientists

Abstract

Analytical chemistry is the science of measurements. We are concerned with what we measure, how we measure it, how much we can measure, and the selective-sensitivity, reproducibility, and accuracy of our measurement. Through the years the object of measurement and the tools employed change, and will continue to evolve with time. As early as 3,500 B.C., the Egyptians and Mesopotamians possessed an impressive knowledge of what has been coined applied chemistry. For example, these ancient scientists mastered and studied many ecology-based sciences such as the arts of metallurgy, the usage of dyes in art and textiles, the medicinal effects of herbs and soils, and the viable preservation of foods. While the inhabitants of Mesopotamia experimented with different elements and meticulously measured amounts of reagent in product production, the early Greek philosophers demonstrated a concern for elements and compounds, pondering the composition and proportions of matter. One could suggest that Aristotle’s definition of “a simple body” came closest to the modern definition of element, and thus to the formal birth of chemistry as a science. The early chemists, known as Alchemists, searched for the transmutation of common metal into gold, as well as for the elixir of life. By analyzing and measuring the products of their reactions and concoctions, these scientific pioneers performed analytical chemistry of sorts. Centuries later, these goals remain prevalent in modern society, namely the improvement and prolonging of life, and the discovery of new materials to further science, as well as enrich our coffers. In both these efforts, analytical chemists have played and continue to play a pivotal role; the vision of these disciplined scientists coupled with modern needs has driven the evolution of analytical chemistry. For example, analytical chemists’ exponential improvement of instrumentation development during the twentieth century led to the sequencing on the human genome in record time, and to the consequent emergence of genomics and proteomics. These novel fields are already contributing vastly to the advancement of modern medicine, and, thus, to the eternal quest for the prolonging of human life. Observing analytical chemistry from a historical perspective, a trend emerges: many analytical chemists surfed the ocean of science and positioned themselves at the core of the scientific community. A virtue of our discipline as analytical chemists is that our field is necessary and integral in virtually every scientific and technological field; this is further evidenced in the continuing quests for knowledge pertaining to interactions at the molecular level and the mimicking of life at the nanoscale. The constant demand for innovative new tools capable of allowing scientists and engineers to search, identify, quantify, and characterize unknown or highly sought-after targets presents interesting challenges to analytical chemists. In order to develop these tools, analytical chemists must think multi-dimensionally and multilaterally, ably viewing a challenge from a biologist or engineer’s mindset and, thus, developing a method or instrument to help solve the particular genre of scientific problem. In viewing the young generation of analytical chemists, one quickly realizes that these youths will have the opportunity to contribute to discovery perhaps even greater than that of science in the past 110 years. In pondering about the ideal profile of a youngergeneration analytical chemist, several necessary traits emerged: the ability to (1) assess problems with a multidisciplinary approach; (2) build, employ, and understand instruments; (3) perform selective, sensitive, accurate, and reproducible measurements; (4) interpret data; (5) communicate and share findings within the global environment. While the first four outlined skills are rather obvious and have been discussed at length for many decades, the fifth trait has become paramount in the past S. Deo (*) Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Indianapolis, IN 46202, USA e-mail: deo@chem.iupui.edu