I stress bridges both matter and emotion, there is no way to avoid the human person, with his or her immense capacity for curiosity, bold creation, and fear. I will discuss the thalidomide episode, a failure of the system and of individuals. And I will tell of the complicated, creative and tragic life of a great German chemist Fritz Halber. I will make a personal statement of what I see as the social responsibility of scientists and an equally personal one on how a chemist might respond to environmental concerns. My aim is for a middle ground, as hard as that may be to find.
Chemists are no more reflective than any other people.
But the questions the pose, and the craftsmanship with which they answer them, move them to consider polarities, and the associated tensions. Or the dualities press themselves, subconsciously, into the chemist's mind. Because the question of identity, of our identity, shaped in childhood in a complex dance of bonding and separation, matters deeply to us. The processes of nature connect with the interior world of our emotions. Identity and deception, origins, good and evil, sharing and withholding, resurrection, danger and safety, and overcoming obstacles are some of the psychological constructs or mythical structures with which the world of the molecular connects.