While some may feel that no graduate students can adequately describe their research to a non-specialist in a few minutes, organic chemists (specifically, synthetic organic chemists) often find themselves at a much larger disadvantage for making casual conversation about what we do.
Even as chemistry tutors who are used to teaching and talking about chemistry, when we have ample time to describe our day-to-day activities, more often than not, friends and family still tend to image boiling flasks and vividly colored liquids when we mention we work in a lab. The author’s mother has a Ph. D in 19th century French literature, and the author has struggled on numerous occasions to describe his work. Today, we’ll look at why this is so difficult, and take a peek into what organic chemistry researchers actually do.
There are two main reasons that organic chemistry remains a mystery to most people.
1. The first is that most simply aren’t exposed to it.
While a number of courses are required over the roughly eight years that make up a typical high school and college career, organic chemistry is usually only required for chemists, biologists, and pre-medical students. So while most people have some background in physics, history, English literature, or even calculus or a foreign language, that just isn’t the case for organic chemistry. Now this in itself wouldn’t be that bad—plenty of research can be explained to the uninitiated without tons of background—why is organic chemistry so different?
2. The bigger problem is that organic chemistry essentially has its own language.
Organic chemistry is, at its heart, the chemistry of carbon-containing molecules. Carbon is unique among the elements in being able to form complex molecular architectures. Carbon also forms relatively stable chemical bonds with a wide variety of other elements. There are thus an almost infinite number of organic compounds; describing these requires a very specific method of notation. Describing transformations between various compounds also requires specific notations and conventions. Thus, looking at an organic chemist’s notebook reveals an endless parade of sticks, hexagons, and squiggly arrows. While these lie at the heart of our research problems, simply explaining our notation is no easy task. Even if it were, most people who are interested in our research aren’t interested in learning a new language, but the actual research problems we’re tackling.
So then what is it that we do? Generally, synthetic organic chemists are in the business of making molecules.
We’re charged with coming up with elegant and practical syntheses of specific molecules; these molecules are destined for pharmaceuticals, fragrances, industrial catalysts, and a whole host of other applications. Yes, on the macroscopic scale we do mix various (sometimes colorful) chemicals and play with fancy-looking glassware and complex analytical machines, but this doesn’t really get at the interesting parts of our problems—we’re more concerned with the microscopic (or more accurately, nanoscopic) scale. At this scale, the problem is essentially reduced to making and breaking specific chemical bonds.
To picture this, imagine that you’ve been given a huge box of Legos and are told to build a model of the Empire State Building. You’re not given any instructions, but rather, you have a set of rules you must follow as you build your structure.
This is often the situation we find ourselves in. We have specific building blocks we can use and a set of guidelines based on the principles of chemical reactivity; we also have a “target” that is the ultimate goal of our work. And just as you wouldn’t start building a skyscraper from the 67th floor, there is an underlying logic to the order in which we construct various bonds. But unlike Legos, the rules aren’t absolute, so the process is rarely straightforward—imagine that as you add a set of windows to your building, your first six floors collapse. Despite more than two hundred years of research in the field, it is still very much an experimental science.
It’s unfortunate that organic chemistry has earned a reputation as an inaccessible and difficult science. While it is true that there is a certain upfront investment required to truly appreciate the subject, once that is out of the way, the field is full of puzzles that require both logical, analytical thinking and experimentation to solve. However, unlike Lego buildings, the finished products can have immediate impacts in fields ranging from medicine to food science.
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