Analytica Chimica AC&, 278 (1993) l-2 Elsevier Science Publishers B.V., Amsterdam

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Guest Editorial

An ode to Laitinen: wherefore art thou, chemistry?

Most analytical chemists, if they are suffi- ciently old, remember Herb Laitinen for his two principal roles: as the editor of the “other” jour- nal in analytical chemistry and as the author (with W.E. Harris) of the classic textbook titled “Chemical Analysis”. I cannot claim to have been professionally mature when Laitinen was at the zenith of his editorial prowess. But I did suffer through the none-too-easy problems at the end of each chapter in Laitinen and Harris as much as any other aspiring analytical chemist of my gener- ation. I discovered Laitinen the editor quite by accident. Hunting for a dated article, I stumbled upon the editorial page. I glanced through it and could not help but finish reading it. I skipped over to the next month’s issue and read the editorial. Then I read the next one. By the time I left the stacks, I had not found the article I came for but I had read several dozen Laitinen editori- als.

Reading editorials can become addictive over the years, I suppose. Analytica Chimica Acta now publishes guest editorials. The views are not al- ways convergent on what should be important to analytical chemists. Mottola [l] seeks greater im- portance of equilibrium and kinetic aspects in the “core” discipline. Meanwhile Deming [2] feels that modern analytical chemistry relies less and less on chemical reactions.

I remember my Laitinen [3]. Some 17 years ago, he was commenting on a remark of H.A. Liebhafsky (which Laitinen already classified as “now classic”), namely that “Like it or not, chem- istry is going out of analytical chemistry”. He then paraphrased R.C. Chimside in that it is not so much that chemistry is going out but that physics is coming in. Laitinen went on to point out all the areas in instrumental analysis where chemistry is ill understood and where work is still needed. (As it stands, nearly two decades later,

with all the blessings of physics, electronics and chemometrics, the same problems still remain unsolved!)

Chemistry, whether related to equilibrium, ki- netics, or new reactions+ is indeed going out of graduate-level analytical chemistry classrooms. I, for one, think it is a sad state of affairs because chemistry, in all its glory, is more important than ever before in all frontiers of research. Two decades ago, Laitinen [4] took to task a confer- ence speaker who maintained that analytical chemistry passed its zenith during the Manhattan project. The only rational basis for making such a comment, Laitinen retorted, is to pretend that there were no changes in what was required of analytical chemists in the intervening period. The present day analytical chemist is asked to deter- mine things in quantities smaller than ever before and with a specificity unimaginable a decade ago. Without innovative ingenious chemistry, no amount of electronics or chemometrics would have accomplished that objective. The lion’s share of the credit for the vast enhancement in the power and scope of chromatography that has taken place in the last two decades goes to the clever chemistry that has resulted in ingenious new stationary phases. Postcolumn reaction de- tection and precolumn derivatization have be- come routine and it is all due to chemistry.

There is little doubt that the most challenging frontier in analytical chemistry today is in the biological sciences. It is necessary to differentiate between molecules which differ from each other by 0.01% and then quantitate them at trace lev- els. Perhaps we do not think of it that way, but there is little doubt that the task of designing such specific probes and carrying out such quanti- tation is analytical chemistry, more than anything else. And the marketplace is certainly more than anxious for such chemists: there is a thriving

0003~2670/93/$06.00 Q 1993 - Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. All rights reserved

L Guest Editorial

company whose sole business is to design specific probes and dyes that undergo specific binding (Molecular Probes, Eugene, OR).

I go to Laitinen again: “. . . Our field is so broad, in fact in some respects broader than chemistry as a whole, that it is relatively immune to the shift of emphasis from one area to another.. . ” [5]. The human genome project is the grandest analytical chemistry project to date, far larger in scope and consequences indeed, than the Manhattan project. I admire those with the audacity of even undertaking such a project and I am proud as a fellow analytical chemist. I am not proud, however, when I see that the only way many of our chemistry students can answer the question “Is this a copper ore?” is to look for an atomic absorption spectrometer. I am glad that geology majors still can respond to such a challenge.

My own mentor, Philip W. West, long time editor of this journal, lamented that increasingly the teaching of chemistry involves teaching as little reaction chemistry as possible. The fresh- men are so busy learning why and how carbon dioxide is linear and sulfur dioxide is angular that there is never any time to learn about their chem- ical reactions. Ironically, I cannot remember a single instance where anything I have ever done in my career as a chemist with sulfur dioxide or carbon dioxide has been affected by the knowl- edge of their shapes. It is indeed sad that so little chemistry is taught in analytical chemistry. Be- cause they have had no previous exposure to it, many students of analytical chemistry regard the knowledge many of us “older” folks as akin to

alchemical. It is a process of discovery for an average present day student to realize that there is little difference in coating an air sampling filter or a denuder tube with NaOH rather than Na,CO,: the former becomes the latter in a few minutes!

Surely physics, electronics, computer science and chemometrics have done much to enhance analytical chemistry and each or all of them should be studied by an analytical chemist de- pending on the subdiscipline @he is specializing in. Are any of them more important to analytical chemistry than chemistry? At best, they can be equally important if one’s aspirations are limited to becoming a technician, not an analytical chemist. Is chemistry really disappearing out of analytical chemistry? Well, there seems to be a concerted effort to make that a self-fulfilling prophecy, by deleting it from all required curric- ula. Should I advise students to study molecular biology to participate in the frontiers of analytical chemistry? Would Laitinen have approved?

REFERENCES

1 HA. Mottola, Anal. Chim. Acta, 242 (1991) 1. 2 S.N. Deming, Anal. Chim. Acta, 249 (1991) 303. 3 H.A. Laitinen, Anal. C&em., 47 (197.5) 2073. 4 H.A. Laitinen, Anal. Chem., 44 (1972) 1929. 5 H.A. Laitinen, Anal. Chem., 45 (1973) 1.

Pumendu K. Dasgupta Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry,

Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX 79409-1061 (USA)