As a reader of your publication from its inception, I enjoy and appreciate the coverage of current political and sociological, as well as purely technical, issues related to academic, governmental, and industrial science. Reading an article dedicated to high-performance liquid chromatography in the March 8 issue of The Scientist [Franklin Hoke, page 18] reminded me, however, what relatively niggardly attention you generally devote to analytical instrumentation.
The oversight reflects an unfortunate bias that has historically permeated the field of academic chemistry. While such attitudes are rapidly fading, they retain circulation in some circles. Ask older organic or physical chemists about analytical chemistry, and their mental image is of a service group running mass spectra or nuclear magnetic resonance spectra for them.
Nothing could be further from the current reality! Analytical chemistry, which could probably better be named chemical instrumentation science, is one of the...
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