Page 54 - Visions of the Future Chemistry and Life Science

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World champion chemists: people versus
computers

Jonathan M. Goodman

Department of Chemistry, Cambridge University, Lensfield Road, Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK

Making molecules has been important to human society from prehistoric
times. The extraction of tin and lead from their ores has been possible for
thousands of years. Fermentation has also been controlled to produce
alcohol for millennia. In the past century, carbon-containing molecules
have become increasingly important for the development of new sub-
stances, including plastics, other new materials and health products.
Organic chemistry was originally the study of compounds connected with
life, but, more than a century and a half ago, Wöhler showed it was pos-
sible to make an organic compound (urea, which may be extracted from
urine) from inorganic (that is, not living) compounds. What had seemed a
precise distinction between living and non-living compounds became
hazy. The subject may now be defined as the study of molecules which
contain carbon atoms, although the precise boundaries of the area are not
clear, as the overlaps with biology, with materials science, with inorganic
chemistry, and with physics can all be debated and boundaries drawn and
re-drawn. However, it is clear that understanding of organic chemistry
advanced tremendously in the closing century of the second millennium
Increasing knowledge of the properties of molecules has made it pos-
sible to synthesise very complicated compounds. Organic synthesis is
engineering on an atomic scale, and requires delicate operations to be per-
formed on objects which are too small to see. It also requires techniques of
mass production, because single molecules are usually not useful by them-
selves. A car factory may produce tens of thousands of cars each year, but

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