1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I blame it on my parents: I was born when my father was in his 3rd year of college and my mom in her 2nd year. I am told I used chemistry books as a pillow, toys, maybe even food. It turned indigestible, though. Very frustrating, but I developed high frustration tolerance, something an organic chemist really needs.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I would be a sculptor. I would love to be one, actually, more and more. I don’t see a difference between a sculptor and an organic chemist sculpting from carbons, nitrogens, oxygens, etc. You just need an X-ray “diffractometer vision” to fully appreciate it. Otherwise, same thing.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

This question almost implies that the most important impact a chemist has on the world is through his or her professional activities. I am, err, not sure that one makes the most impact by his work. To me that appears to be wishful thinking. Most chemists who are not blessed by inventing penicillin contribute best by being nice people, who are good examples for others, conscious of large problems (environment, global warming, energy situation) because they actually understand a little better these things than an average citizen. And, of course, for those of us who teach chemistry it is inspiring the future scientist, who will discover the new penicillin for sure! Why do I have the feeling I failed at this question?

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

That would be Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the discoverer of oxygen, nitrogen, manganese, molybdenum and tungsten and many other chemicals, including also chlorine (most likely before Sir Davy). The most surprising is, however, that he did all that without almost any professional training, as a small-town pharmacist! His talent and intuition must have been phenomenal – so the dinner would be a BLAST! I have one for you directly from the man himself:

“Oh, how happy I am! No care for eating or drinking or dwelling, no care for my pharmaceutical business, for this is mere play to me. But to watch new phenomena this is all my care, and how glad is the enquirer when discovery rewards his diligence; then his heart rejoices."

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

This summer. Synthesis of dichlorotetrazine from guanidine and hydrazine… That explains why I did it myself.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The most important book in the known universe, Winnie the Pooh! Duh! And as for a CD, that would be the Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. And a CD player with solar power cells, please!

Pavel Anzenbacher is a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Bowling Green State University, OH, and works on the design and synthesis of photonic materials and investigates the photophysical processes as they relate to excited state energy migration and photonic energy processing. His group works on photonic materials focusing on optical sensing and organic electroluminescence (OLEDs).

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Pure curiosity – I have always wanted to be a scientist, but I kind of drifted to chemistry partly because biology seemed to be more about classification than science, and physics seemed unreal and only worked in special situations. Chemistry works, is messy, can be counted, and we can even help the physicists with some of our compounds which turn out to be quantum spin tubes now anyway as the result of some messy chemistry that’s being done in my laboratory…

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I really could not conceive of doing anything else – being allowed to do science and getting paid for it is amazing. If I had to do something else I would probably like to have a go at being an artist specialising in modern art or a mathematician. Both are very different but creative professions and are only constrained by the limits of one’s imagination.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

By doing fundamental science and following our curiosity. I think that the pressure to do relevant things is so high nowadays that we risk completely missing some truly amazing discoveries that could change the world. Having said that, it is also becoming increasingly true that chemistry and chemists can help address some of the biggest issues facing us today – access to clean water, energy, global warming – in fact solving the energy problem and global warming appear to me to be one and the same thing. Why not set out to design a material that fixes carbon dioxide with water and drive the process with photons and then, hey presto, you have access to hydrocarbons to burn without the carbon dioxide hangover. Of course, nature has already been doing this for us, but we need to speed up the kinetics to produce hydrocarbons in real time as it were. Actually, I would favour making methanol since we could burn it and use it in fuel cells.

Chemistry can also help examine some of the most interesting problems in science today relating to complexity, emergent systems and even asking where we came from in terms of the origin of life. This is a big question – I think it may be possible to go from a chemical soup to primitive chemical cells that could be considered to be alive in a matter of a few hundred hours rather than millions / billions of years. I am also looking forward for the chemist / materials scientist than can produce infinitely long carbon nanotubes so we can make a space elevator, then we can all get to become a space tourist without the need for a big rocket.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

There are so many people I would like to have dinner with. Can I not just have a part in Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure and bring them all to my house for a dinner party using the phone box time machine? It would be interesting to see how Newton and Einstein would get on with each other.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

A couple of weeks ago where I was trying to understand the self assembly of a nanoscale transition metal cluster using cryospray mass spectrometry – it was amazing since it worked. When I come into the lab normally my group dive for cover…

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

I would take Ben Okri’s The Famished Road – it’s an amazing book – I have read it many times and it is so rich I think I would never get bored of reading it. I am not sure what CD to take – maybe one that is reflective enough so I could signal to a passing vessel and get rescued from the island? If I had batteries or a solar panel for the CD player maybe I would take some Coldplay or some Philip Glass depending on my mood.

Lee Cronin is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow and works on the design and assembly of complex functional molecules and materials and has interests in inorganic clusters, ligand design, complexity and emergence in chemistry.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I had a terrific chemistry teacher in high school, who let me do an independent study project. Also, my Pchem Professor in College was very good. I loved math and chemistry, but thought of them as two separate areas. When my Professor showed me that the two come together in theoretical chemistry, I was hooked!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

If I had the talent, rock star! But since I don’t, I would have probably pursued statistics. That was my other consideration for graduate study. At the time, I was told that all statisticians could do was actuarial work, but there are so many new opportunities in informatics. I am happy to say I get to dabble a little now… in statistics, not as a rock star.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

In my subfield, we work on teams with other scientists to develop new drug molecules. I think that is a very noble pursuit.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

Maybe Howard Hughes. He was very gifted, and it is such a shame that treatments were not available to help him with his mental illness. For the same reason, maybe Abraham Lincoln. They had such great success while dealing with untreatable and, at times, debilitating illnesses.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

A few months ago, I did some de novo structure-based design to improve a potential inhibitor of HIV-1 protease. A student has been using the design to run dynamics simulations. We are completing the paper now.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The CD would have to be U2’s “The Joshua Tree” or the Black Crowes “Shake Your Moneymaker”. Classics! The book would have to be a photo album of my family. I would miss my husband and son very much.

Heather Carlson is in the College of Pharmacy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and works on theoretical chemistry and computational modeling of protein-ligand interactions. She studies bioinformatics, the basic biophysics of molecular recognition, and applied drug discovery.