Editorial: The future is bright, humane, and uneven for chemistry

The American Chemical Society spring and fall meetings matter because they are the largest gatherings of chemists around the world. ACS Spring 2024 was the first I attended as C&EN’s newly appointed editor in chief.

Four things struck me about the recent meeting in New Orleans, and I believe they reflect something about the state of the chemistry enterprise.

1. A large percentage of the attendees were students. This is important because it suggests that the conference and its design is particularly well placed to respond to students’ needs. For instance, registration is largely subsidized for students. Also, so many young people buzzing around exhibitors’ demonstrations or sitting in groups in corridors imply that the practice of chemistry should be future proofed.

2. The field of chemistry feels diverse and dynamic. This is especially the case for fields that traditionalists might say are at the edge of the discipline, like chemical biology and computational chemistry. Chemistry’s position as the central science seems alive and well. And this centrality for an evolving field may be presenting new challenges. I spoke to a journal publisher working in Latin America who said he often had to go through the company’s full list of journals to demonstrate to faculty in the region the range of publishing options available to them.

When I reflected on developments in the field, I noticed two issues so broad and ubiquitous that they did not feel like subfields so much as cross-cutting themes; these were sustainability and artificial intelligence. Their presence was hard to avoid. In fact, my first encounter with an attendee was a conversation about the chemical recycling of polymers, and probably my most commercially sensitive discussion in those 4 days was about quantum computing, large language models, and their contribution to the chemistry ecosystem.

3. This dynamism and growth in the field is very uneven, however. The meetings of the editorial boards for ACS Publications reflected on trends in growth. By most measures, the growth in published chemistry research is notably larger outside the US and Europe. China, in particular, is driving much of the growth globally. For instance, publication output in science and engineering between 2012 and 2022 grew by 6% in the US and 173% in China, according to the National Science Board of the US. Attendees from India and Nigeria were actively lobbying for representation on governance platforms or more editorial coverage in this publication. Such observations present an interesting opportunity for an organization like ACS to reinvent itself if it seeks global influence.

4. Carolyn Bertozzi is genuinely an idol among chemists. Youthful attendees waited nervously in line to take selfies with her. Bertozzi’s work is groundbreaking, of course—her work on bioorthogonal click chemistry is already transforming the fields of chemistry and medicine. But she is not the only genius working in chemistry. There is something about the Bertozzi buzz that appears to offer a unique comment on our time. Part of this influence may be the culture of celebrity. (Science is no exception to the susceptibility of celebrity, as Bertozzi herself has observed, given how few awards recognize teams as opposed to individuals.) Social media platforms have fed the cults of personality with curated news feeds.

Bertozzi’s impact clearly transcends social media buzz. Bertozzi champions a particularly humane brand of scientific practice. She argues that relationships are key to success and encourages her trainees to have a life because she believes they will be more productive—and inspired—as happy, balanced individuals. She also defends the value of diversity in her labs, expecting her mentees to show up as their authentic selves. This philosophy resonates with a generation used to approaching pronouns as a form of expression, not a binary constraint. Bertozzi is living proof that self-​actualization breeds success.

Views expressed on this page are those of the author and not necessarily those of ACS.