Jerry L. Atwood has been Professor and Chair at the University of Missouri since 1994. Research in the Atwood group revolves around various aspects of supramolecular chemistry including self-assembly of noncovalent capsules, liquid clathrate chemistry, and the design and synthesis of anion-binding hosts.

Publishing his first article in ChemComm in 1967, Jerry has gone on to become one of the most prolific and most cited authors in ChemComm's 40 year history.  Read the interview with Jerry below to find out his greatest inspiration, why he publishes in ChemComm and what he would have been if he wasn't a scientist...

 

Tell me about the first article you had published in ChemComm. 

The first article I published I was a graduate student and co-author along with my PhD mentor Galen Stucky. It was published in 1967 entitled "Dative metal-nitrogen -bonding in bis(dimethylamino)beryllium"1. I remember Stucky and I were talking about this piece of work, (it was a nice short piece of work) and we said "we need to get this out quickly, there's this new journal, "Chemical Communications", so we sent it there and it was published. 

Why do you choose to publish your work in ChemComm?

 I have always liked the idea of communications and I like the general audience of ChemComm. My area of research has changed completely over the years, starting in organometallic and being in supramolecular now. I always had a feeling that I didn't want to publish papers that were my best papers specifically for a narrow audience. I wanted to make sure that these papers were widely seen and ChemComm is a good medium for that.

I also had British influence. I made my first trip to the UK in 1971. I did sabbaticals at Imperial College with Geoff Wilkinson in 1977, and at the University of Sussex with Mike Lappert in 1985. I've always had a great fondness and tremendous respect for the UK educational system. 

I recruited three graduate students from Imperial College to come and work for me in Alabama in 1977. I've had a lot of UK students who've come to do their PhD's with me and gone on to do very well. I've also had some very talented British postdocs. 

Tell me more about how your research has changed since you first began publishing in ChemComm? 

I started out as an organometallic chemist doing synthesis, structural characterisation and solution nmr spectra. I began to get interested in supramolecular chemistry almost immediately after I took up my first position at Alabama in 1968. There was a key meeting in Poland in 1980 and that meeting formed the basis for the development of the field of supramolecular chemistry. It was one of those meetings where I knew no one when I went there; all of us came from different areas and in that week I made many of my best friends. So in the 1980's I did more and more supramolecular work and less and less organometallic. I changed almost completely from my first published paper being entirely organometallic to the most recent papers being very much supramolecular. 

What is the inspiration behind your research? 

Discovery - I'm always curious about how things work. I've always done discovery-based research where we've been looking for new things. If we do chemistry related to life processes then we know it works amazingly well and amazingly easily. One of the inspirations behind the chemistry I've done is that it relates to life itself. Life processes are all based on chemistry and the chemistry is absolutely amazing, it works in such a facile fashion. So if we can mimic this sort of chemistry then I think we can do really spectacular things. 

What part of you research are you most proud of? 

I'm proud of the work we've done on supramolecular chemistry. A very important part of the work we've done in my group has been training students and one of the things I take the most satisfaction from is the tremendous contributions ex-group members have made in their independent careers. So in terms of contributions to the field, there are two types: one is the work one does oneself in one's own research group and the other type is training students and what the students go on to do in their own research groups. A research programme doesn't start and end with the career of one person, it should continue with knowledge being passed on from one generation to the next. 

What ambitions do you still have to achieve? 

In my group right now we're doing the best research we've ever done and my ambition is to keep on with the kinds of chemistry that interest me. We continue to discover more and more about chemistry and the beginnings of life itself. However, one of the problems with the academic system in the US and in most countries is that the students go for their first degree, then for their PhD. Then for people who want to become academics in the States they have to get an assistant professorship, then promotion to an associate professor, then to a full professor and then to a named chair. These are all goals that are tangible and attainable, but if one gets caught up in the attaining of these various goals, I think one may tend to lose sight of what should drive the everyday work ethic - not to attain a promotion but to do something interesting, to learn something fundamental, to figure out how things fit together in science. The last goal isn't reached with full professorship; the last goal is reached the day after and the day after. 

Which scientist do you most admire? 

The scientist that had the most influence over me and who I admire most was actually my grandmother. She had no formal science training but she had a keen interest in nature and in life. She really stimulated me as a child. I had insect collections, leaf collections, rock collections. I was studying the things that were around me. She helped me, inspired me and motivated me because she was keenly interested in the natural environment around her. That's what motivates me now. 

If you hadn't become a scientist what would you have done instead? 

I wanted to be an astronomer. I wanted to be a physics and math major but I didn't like physics and I liked chemistry so I did a double major in chemistry and math. I chose chemistry graduate school instead of math graduate school because I thought chemistry is alive and math is rather dead. But when I got to chemistry graduate school I thought I was still interested in astronomy. So in my first year in graduate school I enrolled in a class called "Galactic Structures". It was a graduate astronomy course and I thought I was going to learn about galactic structures. Within the first two weeks during the "least squares treatment of film shrinkage" I realised it was incredibly boring. What that taught me was that there is no one course of study where one immediately sees the big picture and grasps it. Any course of study is going to require learning the skills before one can get to the forefront and do the really interesting things. 

If I couldn't have been a scientist at all I think I would probably have been a lawyer. I've always been interested in law and I like to formulate arguments. I work with lawyers everyday now. I do expert witnessing and technical co-ordinating for major law suits. It's fascinating; I do almost 100 % intellectual property which is definitely the best of both worlds. We have a strong orientation towards science in my family. Not being a scientist isn't something that we contemplate that often.