Letters

My colleagues and I enjoy reading The Scientist and commend you on an interesting and timely publication.

However, I wish to draw your attention to the important inaccuracy and misunderstanding presented in a May 13, 1996, article entitled "Drug, Biotech Firms Beginning To Embrace Combinatorial Chemistry" (K.S. Brown, The Scientist, page 1). It is widely accepted that combinatorial chemistry "was born" in the early 1980s when Mario Geysen, then in Melbourne, Australia, invented the pin method in which simultaneous synthesis of diversified peptides gave rise to the first combinatorial libraries (H.M. Geysen et al., Molecular Immunology, 23:709-15, 1986). A series of publications and patents have appeared since then documenting this advance, and they are undisputed in the field.

Furthermore, nearly every scholarly publication and patent appearing since that time has referenced Geysen's work. Pioneering work by George Smith of the University of Missouri, Columbia, resulted...