Chemists see themselves as beleaguered, unloved, unappreciated. Undergraduates turn away from a chemistry major, and graduate assistantships go begging. Chemistry possesses no federal project on the order of the genome initiative or superconducting supercollider, and industrial chemists in midcareer find themselves the object of corporate "repositionings" and other euphemisms for unemployment.
Meanwhile, for the rest of the world, "chemical" has become a synonym for "bad" (as in chemical dependency, or chemical additive), lawsuits multiply on issues like Agent Orange, and it is difficult for the ordinary citizen to believe that--with acid rain, global warming, toxic waste, and chemical carcinogens--all is well.
The simple truth is that the chemical sciences are in robust health, that chemists and chemical engineers become ever more vital to our civilization with every passing year, and that the promises of "better things for better living through chemistry" have never been more appropriate. Alas, the truth is ...
