Those of you who read the html versions of our pages may have noticed some enhanced features related to the chemical structures. For example, if you mouse-over a bold compound number in an article, a pop-up box showing the structure of the compound will appear. If you click on the bold compound number, you will be whisked away to a compound information page that gives you even more data about the compound – as well as an interactive 3D structure.

These are just a few examples of the enhanced features on our html pages, and for a more-detailed look, check out the video below:

I just wanted to plug a couple of editorials that have appeared recently in other Nature-branded journals, and see if the chemistry community has any feedback they wanted to share here on the blog – or, indeed, by contacting the journals in question. Before you click the full-text links below, both of the editorials are free to access if you are registered on nature.com (this process is free) or, of course, a subscriber. (As far as I am aware, editorials in all the Nature physical sciences titles – including Nature Chemistry – are free to nature.com registrants).

The first is from the March 2011 issue of Nature Photonics and considers online commenting. Simply put in the standfirst of the artice, ‘Would you welcome or loathe the ability to post online comments on articles…?’ The question of online commenting is one that seems to crop up more frequently these days – and from my trawls through the blogosphere, most of the chemists out there who have chimed in seem to think online commenting would not be a bad idea. So, what do you think? Would this add a valuable channel to scientific discourse, enabling what could be thought of as post-publication peer review in a manner such that the comments are always associated with the original article – or is it the case that the majority of people don’t really have the time (or inclination) to get involved in this way?

Somewhat related to this is the question of greater transparency in peer review – the topic of the editorial in the February 2011 issue of Nature Materials. Again, to quote the standfirst at you, ‘Would the publication of anonymous referee reports and editorial decision letters of published papers benefit the scientific debate?’ There seems to be a blog post every week or so about the positives and negatives of peer review (although it seems as though it is mostly the negatives that get the press). There are too many posts to link to, but trust me, they’re not hard to find with your favourite search engine. There’s even an inquiry into peer review being conducted by the Government here in the UK. Any thoughts on publishing referee reports – or peer review in general?

So, happy reading, and feel free to offer feedback here (that you think is relevant for the chemistry community) or by contacting Nature Photonics or Nature Materials directly.

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

The ever effervescent Brian Cox is back on our screens here in the UK, following up his Wonders of the Solar System series with one looking at the Wonders of the Universe. The ‘Wonders’ phenomenon has even spawned its own drinking game!

Last night’s episode was called ‘Stardust – that’s why I love chemistry’, complete with a demonstration of what happens when you drop lumps of sodium into a plastic bottle half-filled with water. Those of you with access to the BBC iPlayer can see the episode here until mid April.

At one point, however, Brian trots out the usual line that there are 92 naturally occurring chemical elements on Earth. It was at this point that I decided to chastise him on Twitter and point out that I think it’s actually 94. What followed was a little bit of Twitter debate, calling into question whether 94 was any better of an answer than 92.

The reason I say 94 is that naturally occuring uranium can decay (all on its own, without any human intervention) to produce both neptunium and plutonium – albeit in trace amounts. So that’s 94. Of course, some of the other lower atomic weight elements are radioactive and don’t hang around forever (most notably technetium), but the fact is that they are found in nature.

So, if we define ‘naturally occurring’ along the lines of ‘elements that would be present on Earth without any influence from human activity’, I’m going to go with elements 1-94 fitting the bill.

Anyone disagree?

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

[This post is based on the editorial in the March 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

Who is the greatest chemist of all time?

These eight simple words pose a question that is far from simple to answer. The first obvious problem is with the concept of ‘greatness’ — how should this be defined and measured? Secondly, would everyone agree with exactly what is meant by the term ‘chemist’? There are some prominent historical figures that both chemists and physicists would claim as their own.

Another complication is a fundamental (and unavoidable) one associated with all questions and polls of this type — the influence of time. Consider the world of sport for example — when a team or an individual becomes very successful, comparisons are often made with so-called ‘greats’ of a bygone era. But in the same way as it would be impossible for the Manchester United teams of 1968 and 1999 to play one another to inform a fair comparison, how do we judge the relative merits of the contributions that Wöhler and Woodward made to chemistry?

In spite of these problems, there is undoubtedly some value in asking (and responding to) questions of this kind. Yes, the answers will be subjective, but it’s the debate surrounding the answers — and indeed the question itself — that often prove more interesting than the final results or ranking. We asked the greatest-chemist question on our journal’s Twitter feed back in early January and gave a comprehensive round-up of the responses we received on this blog.

To our surprise, there were some truly great chemists missing from the list. No Gibbs, no Dalton and no Priestley. One omission in particular, that of the only person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, sparked some debate in the blogosphere at the Curious Wavefunction and Second Messenger. Was Sanger’s name missing because chemists tend to focus on fundamental topics such as structure and bonding rather than more applied aspects? And, as discussed at There (& Hopefully) Back Again, should our evaluations of the ‘greatness’ of a scientist change when we consider not just their momentous achievements, but also their more nefarious (Haber) and/or eccentric (Pauling) pursuits? The greatest-chemist debate continued on a number of other blogs including ChemBark, and ScienceGeist and we encourage you to read them and their comment threads to get a feeling for what others think.

The main point of asking the question was not to uncover a definitive answer as to who the greatest chemist of all time is, but to see if any consensus did emerge and how many different suggestions were put forward. Whereas in physics it is hard to see past Einstein leading the way in this sort of exercise, we were curious as to whether a similar figure would emerge for chemistry.

Would any of us have picked Pauling (the eventual ‘number 1’) to lead the chemistry one with the same certainty? Of course, Einstein and the photos of him with stereotypical ‘mad-genius’ hair have crossed into popular culture — and this is certainly not the case with Pauling. Is the lack of a recognisable figurehead in chemistry a problem? Perhaps a greater awareness of some of the inspirational chemists of the past would help spark the imagination of budding chemists out there today.

Our Twitter poll, as we suggested at the time, was somewhat arbitrary and unscientific — as is the question itself. Nonetheless, it is clear that, even from such a small data set, many different individuals are considered to be greatest chemist of all time. They can’t all be the greatest, but that matters not — they are all great, and this reflects the strength and diversity of chemistry.

Our March issue went live today, featuring a Thesis article (sub req’d) from Michelle Francl about blogging – here’s a little extra from Michelle that expands on her column.

Last fall, Royce Murray stirred up science bloggers by characterizing them as unqualified purveyors of pseudoscience in search of easy money. The response was fast and furious – so robust in fact that performing the Google search that Murray referred to in his argument “qualifications of bloggers” now turns up as many hits to science blogs responding to Murray’s editorial as it does adverts and advice for the unqualified seeking to blog (at least in the top twenty!).

I argue in my Thesis column this month that chemistry blogs are a critical part of the communication network which supports good research – and that scientists should read, and if they are so inclined write, blogs of this sort.

What I didn’t say is that I would extend this to suggest that scientists should be doing more than utilitarian writing. We should move beyond the writing of journal articles, reviews, abstracts, and even blog posts critically commenting on the literature and write about the quotidian challenges of doing science, extol the beauty of our latest compound, wax philosophical about the reality of molecular orbitals, and dare I say it, blog about our pets.

Simply writing more is a strategy to become a faster, fluent and more efficient writer. Why not write summaries of the latest literature? Why do I think writing about the steamboat buffet my student treated me to in Singapore or my cat’s latest predatory exploits is worth my time? Because I can write with the brakes off. I can use language wildly, without worrying about transgressing technical boundaries or overreaching my data.

Learning to deploy rich descriptive language takes practice, and has hidden benefits to the research scientist. Scientists’ field notes and lab notebooks would benefit from fluent, descriptive writing – and so, in my experience, would the science that flows from them. The original sceptical chemist, Robert Boyle, held that science wasn’t officially science unless you’d watched the experiment happen yourself – or read something written so evocatively and carefully that you could think you’d seen it.

So, go for it. Write down everything you know about Jello, or a time you itched or the stupidest thing your dog did last week. Write over the top and outside the bounds for five minutes a day. Post it on your blog or stuff it down the oubliette. Either way, your science will be all the better for it.

As I’m sure many of the readers of this blog will know, 2011 is the International Year of Chemistry. This has chemists looking to both the past and the future of our subject.

When we launched Nature Chemistry back in 2009, our first issue included a feature called ‘The future of chemistry’ where we asked eight leaders in the field to share their vision for how their own fields might (and/or should) develop in the coming years.

If you missed it at the time, we invite you to go and have a look at what they had to say. This (and everything else published in the April 2009 issue) is completely free to access, no registration required.

Ryoji Noyori in Synthesizing our future — Ideally, we should aim at synthesizing target compounds with a 100% yield and 100% selectivity and avoid the production of waste. This process must be economical, safe, resource-efficient, energy-efficient and environmentally benign.

Harry B. Gray in Powering the planet with solar fuel — Some time in the future we will be able to put three components of our atmosphere — carbon dioxide, nitrogen and oxygen — along with sea water into solar reactors to make not only fuels, electricity and pure water, but polymers, food and almost everything else we need.

Mark A. Johnson in Experiment and theory in harmony — With the overall perspective of contributing accurate, experimentally vetted, molecular-level pictures of reactive pathways and relevant structures, physical chemists are in an excellent position to engage chemistry in all of its complexity.

Barbara Imperiali in Interrogating biology with a chemical lexicon — . . . most good things take time and we must remind the community that chemistry, like a fine wine, may take many years to mature.

Gary M. Hieftje in Weighing up the future of scientific tools — Modern science, indeed much of the future, will be driven and enabled by the scientific instruments that are just now emerging.

James H. Clark in Chemistry goes green — The challenge for green chemistry is not just to replace undesirable chemicals . . . but also to make sure that, wherever possible, the substitutes and the chemistry used to manufacture them are green and sustainable.

Achim Müller in Predicting a structured future — . . . chemists should always have their eyes open for interesting but unexpected phenomena that could open new avenues of research.

J. Fraser Stoddart in Thither supramolecular chemistry? — . . . we need to forsake embracing routine projects that we know will yield results and lead to answers that are largely expected, so as to face challenges that are function-oriented and applications-driven . . .

We hope you enjoy travelling back in time just a little to consider what the future may hold!

Stuart

Stuart Cantrill (Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry)

[This post is based on the editorial in the January 2011 issue — the full text can be accessed here, available for free to all registered users. We welcome feedback on our editorials in the comments section below.]

The United Nations has proclaimed 2011 to be the International Year of Chemistry. Under this banner, chemists should seize the opportunity to highlight the rich history and successes of our subject to a much broader audience — and explain how it can help to solve the global challenges we face today and in the future.

Many subjects have been the basis of ‘International Year’ designations by the United Nations and 2011 is chemistry’s year. This provides chemists the opportunity to not only celebrate specific past glories, but also to champion its role in addressing critical challenges in modern society. These global issues include sustainable energy, climate change, and the provision of clean food and water — as prominently featured in the United Nations’ Resolution and also on the International Year of Chemistry (IYC) website.

One historical aspect being brought to the fore is that 2011 is the one-hundredth anniversary of the award of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry to Marie Curie for the discovery and study of polonium and radium. Her scientific achievements are all the more extraordinary because they are set in the context of a very male-dominated era.

Undoubtedly there are now fewer barriers and less bias faced by women in science compared with Curie’s day, but nevertheless, since the inception of the Nobel Prizes in 1901, only one other woman has been awarded the physics prize and only three other women have received the chemistry prize (one of whom is Marie Curie’s daughter, Irène Joliot-Curie). So although Marie Curie’s contributions to chemistry should be celebrated in their own right, it is also a chance to reflect on how far gender equality has come in science — and how much further it needs to go to ensure a level playing field for women and men.

In addition to marking this significant anniversary, two other stated goals of the IYC are to get young people more interested in chemistry and generate more enthusiasm for its creative aspects. Both of these aims are obviously tied up with the future of our subject — chemistry is far from finished as an intellectual discipline (despite what may be written about it elsewhere). There are undoubtedly many discoveries yet to be made and new generations of enquiring young minds will be required to make them.

Two important areas of chemical research highlighted by the IYC prospectus are molecular medicine and advanced materials. Developments in these areas are crucial to modern life and yet they are not always recognized as being fundamentally chemical at their core. Here is an opportunity for chemists to clearly articulate to a wider audience just how much of contemporary science, medicine and technology is underpinned by chemistry.

Take materials as just one example; we need to get the message across that many of the materials intrinsic to our everyday lives would not exist without advances in chemistry — consider how many synthetic organic polymers or designer inorganic ceramics you rely on in a typical day, and imagine what life would be like without them.

The IYC provides a focal point for the past successes of our subject to be celebrated and its future potential to be emphasized — but we should be wary of simply preaching to the choir. As chemists, we have a pretty good grasp of how important our subject is and where it sits in the grand scheme of science itself. The biggest impact of the IYC should not be on chemists, but those who are not (or not yet) chemists.

The IYC provides a framework through which chemistry should be clearly and enthusiastically communicated with the wider public, highlighting how crucial it is in everyday life and why it is vital for our future.