1. What made you want to be a chemist?

Organic chemistry, ironically enough. I was studying biology and had taken general chemistry, which I did not find terribly exciting. It was organic chemistry that really put the idea forward that chemists can make molecules, and the idea of making molecules, particularly ones never seen before, has been driving me ever since.

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

If I were not a chemist, something else I’d like to be. If I were not a chemist, a window cleaner, me! With a rub-a-dub-dub…In all seriousness, that is a tough call. It’s funny because my job is a professor, but when I meet people and they ask what I do, I instinctively answer chemist, so it’d be hard to that up give up. I think I’d have to go to culinary school and become a chef. That seems like another profession that combines creativity and the making of new things. As a plus, it would be easier to explain to people what I do.

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

Chemistry has already made tremendous contributions, but it is no time for the science to rest on its laurels. Currently, energy is an area where chemistry can make a major contribution — one that is desperately needed. From more efficient processes and green syntheses to new technologies for better harnessing the sun’s energy to carbon dioxide remediation, these are all chemical problems. That’s not to say that chemistry would not make a large impact on many other areas, but energy crises are and will be sufficiently pressing to demand precedence. Ultimately, most of these energy problems are fundamentally about making and breaking chemical bonds or building new molecules.

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

I’m not a big fan of this going to dinner with historical figures. It seems like a formula for disappointment. However, it would be fun to talk coordination chemistry with Alfred Werner. More than that, it would be wild to share with him some of what we have learned since that time and get his reaction.

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

This morning, I finished brominating an arene and then I protected an amine to build some new ligands, but that is all known chemistry. Not too long ago, I made a new nickel complex that we’re hoping will be a good bond-forming catalyst. It turns out that I can make the nickel complexes, but I don’t know about the catalysis yet.

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

The CD would be an easy choice — Duran Duran’s Greatest. The book is a little more difficult. Given the amount of time “exiled” implies, I’d go with Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Nietzsche. It’d be a good foil for the Duran Duran. I wonder what I did to get exiled…maybe reading James Marshall’s George and Martha: The Complete Stories of Two Best Friends will help me be readmitted to society….

Rory Waterman is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Vermont, where he uses organometallic chemistry to address problems in synthesis, materials, and energy.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

When I was a kid, I wasn’t particularly good at baseball or any other sports, so I would hang out in my basement with a chemistry set and play with it. I had a truly outstanding chemistry teacher in high school (Frank Cardulla, who received the 2000 American Chemical Society Conant Award for High School Chemistry Teaching) and in college I had the privilege of taking courses from and doing research with Dudley Herschbach, the 1986 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry.

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

I thought seriously about going into medicine, but decided I did not have the appropriate bedside manner. I think most of my friends and colleagues would agree with me.

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

Many of the world’s major problems such as climate change and the need for renewable energy sources will be solved by chemists. These problems require a fundamental understanding of matter at the molecular level. Chemists have this.

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

I find Josef Stalin to be the one of the most fascinating historical figures over the last 100 years, but I’m not sure I would want to have dinner with him. Then again, an evening of borscht and vodka might not be so bad.

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

I was pretty involved in experiments on transition state spectroscopy in my research group when I started at Berkeley in 1986. Once I got multiple projects going and realized the students could run the instruments better than I could, I began distancing myself more from the day-to-day operations. But I still visit my labs on a daily basis and (much to the horror of my students) will turn knobs on occasion.

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

War and Peace. I’ve always wanted to read it but never had the time. And Beethoven’s 9th on CD.

Daniel Neumark is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and works on chemical dynamics, spectroscopy, and cluster science, with particular emphasis on using negative ion photodetachment to probe transition states and other transient species.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

As a child I was intrigued with building (my father was in the building trade) so I guess in some respects I took his lead but down to the nanometric dimension. I love the definitive nature of chemistry and the way you can create new things or new processes or provide an understanding of the world around us. I was also lucky to have some great science teachers at school. Mrs. Steenholdt, Mr. Djoneff and Dr. Commons were extremely enthusiastic teachers across the science discipline when I was at high school and really spike my interest. I studied a biochemistry/chemistry major at university and enjoyed the chemistry of biology more than the molecular biological aspects of biochemistry. However, my chemistry teaching is often framed from a biological viewpoint.

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

It was a toss-up between chemistry and landscape gardening when I left school. The latter is an extremely creative profession and combines outdoor work with intellectual inventiveness and manual dexterity. There are some similarities to chemistry here!

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

Chemistry is all pervasive throughout the world within which we live and the society we live in. From medical diagnosis and drug discovery, through the development of novel materials, to addressing the concerns surrounding environmental issues (to name only a few…). Scratch the surface and you’ll find a chemist.

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

Captain James Cook. His voyages of discovery throughout the ‘new world’ were truly amazing, the stuff of legend. His skill as a navigator, explorer and cartographer know no equal. He’d have a few travel stories to tell. If he weren’t available then I could settle for Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso or Vincent van Gogh.

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

A true irony of being an academic is that you are able to spend less time in the lab. However, when time permits I do set up a few crystallisations and solvothermal experiments. I also try to do some crystallography here and there, along with structure interpretation with my students.

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

The book would have to be ‘Blood and Water’, a collection of stories by Tim Winton. I have forgotten how many times I have read this collection. These stories still captivate me; Winton has a truly laconic writing style and his characters transcend their often miserable lives with an undying spirit of hope. However, I doubt that any author can better an opening chapter than the one that begins ‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’ by Roald Dahl. I can still remember the day I first read this as a 6 year old and am taken back to my childhood every time I read it…to my kids. Happy days!

As for the CD… anything by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and as I am limited to a choice of one then it would have to be their best-of compilation album. Nick Cave is a masterful lyricist.

Paul Kruger is in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and works upon all aspects of supramolecular chemistry ranging from organic synthesis and coordination chemistry, through materials and structural chemistry, to host-guest and sensor chemistry.