Lots of people are asking if our work published in Science last week on the automatic execution of chemical synthesis literature https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6512/101 will negate the need for chemists & change undergraduate teaching. A few thoughts... 1/5

The idea is to make chemical synthesis safer, more reliable, easier to reproduce, & also not demand endless repetition. Synthetic chemists are highly trained & the lab culture in some organic labs has had a reputation of demanding very long hours to make progress. 2/5

Chemical space is very large & we are limited by the number of steps as the yield is not always 100%. It’s a spiral of ever decreasing returns with high yields needed per step &
a lot of time is spent endlessly refining & squeezing more yield. 3/5

By digitising synthesis we will be able share failed as well as successful procedures, & be able to collaborate widely - perhaps sharing a working synthesis on a repo before the publication. Maybe validation of the ‘synthesis code’ could be required before publication 4/5

Training will include electronic skills as well as practical ones for synthetic chemists. Things are going to change but one thing is sure. The world will need even more synthetic chemists than before because there are an infinite number of molecules to design & discover. 5/5